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Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, Decentralized Applications and beyond.

Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, Decentralized Applications and beyond.

The need for blockchain. What exactly is blockchain? How is the blockchain implemented? Mining, Consensus, Rewards and decentralization. Application of blockchain, problems to blockchain.

Satwik Kansal

April 16, 2018
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  1. A humble question How many of you have tried to

    learn blockchain in the past and found it to be a complicated and confusing technology?
  2. Blockchain is a very simple concept on it’s own. In

    the following slides, we’ll - Understand the “need” of blockchain - Learn how blockchain works interactively - See some real word applications and technology advancements.
  3. Current state of internet-based apps - An integral part of

    our lives - Immense improvement in the past 10 years (BFC) However, there are problems - Too many middle-men - Black box operation of the apps - It’s centralized and concentrated!
  4. Enter Bitcoin! - Whitepaper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash

    System - No need to trust a centralized authority (like banks) to make payments. - Combination of cryptography, peer-to-peer networks and several other concepts from the past to achieve all this. - The data was stored in a thing called “blockchain”
  5. What banks primarily do? - Maintain a record of transactions

    Bitcoin, did exactly this! And in a transparent and automated fashion!
  6. Highest level definition of blockchain - It’s a way to

    store data. - The data can literally be anything! - In Bitcoin’s case, the data was “who paid how much to whom”, but it can even be virtual cats. - Blockchain offers highly desirable characteristics - Immutability - Un-hackablity - Persistence
  7. Hash function The characteristics of an ideal hash function are:

    • Easily computed • High degree of randomness • Not reversible
  8. What hashing and linking does? - Hashes serve as “fingerprint”

    of data. - It enables us to - Detect modifications to the data - Make hacker do extra work if he intends to manipulate the data. But guess what?, there’s a problem :(
  9. Making the “extra work” difficult - a.k.a Proof of work.

    - Adding constraints to acceptable block hashes. - Let’s see “Hashcash” with a live example.
  10. Concerns with Bitcoin - 51% attack - Network congestion -

    High fees - Energy sustainability - Quantum attacks - Limited application (payments, and storage of wealth)
  11. Technological Advancements: Smart contracts It became possible to entirely automate

    the processes of trust like voting, maintaining ownership of an asset (car, property, posts, etc), replacing intermediaries with automatically executing pieces of code.
  12. Blockchain 3.0: Other Technological Advancements • Smart contracts • Proof

    of Stake • Block-DAGs • Permissioned chains • Gossip protocol and the quest continues...
  13. Blockchain 3.0: A promising future? - Governance through blockchain (DecisionToken)

    - Digital identity (Civic Platform) - Supply chain management (Modum) - Renewable Energy Trading (Power Ledger) - Distributed computation (GridCoin, Golem Network) - Distributed storage (StorJ)
  14. A few roadblocks, however - Regulations? Good or bad? -

    Threat to centralization - Wide adoption - Solutions looking for problems - INSANITY! (Shitcoins, shilling, FOMO and FUD)
  15. Developing stuff with blockchain - Shameless Plug: Implementing a blockchain

    app from scratch in Python https://github.com/satwikkansal/ibm_blockchain OLIDITY Serpent Lisp Like Language
  16. Thank you! A bit more about me... - Freelance Developer

    (Data Science and Blockchain Technologies) - Author, IBM developerWorks, "What the f*ck Python?" - GSoC 17 student, GCI 17 and GSoC 18 mentor - Rank 1 Github python developer in India [email protected] Handle: @satwikkansal