Introduction to Blockchain

Readers of this book are likely to have some knowledge and basic idea about the enormous potential of the trending, decentralizing, and trustworthy technology called blockchain. This technology represents an innovation in the digital ecosystem that has significantly impacted trusted computing activities, resulting in an enhanced level of protection from cyber security threats. This chapter lays out the fundamentals of blockchain technology, presenting its theoretical background, historical milestones, and present growth trends. Further, the conceptual view of a block in blockchain and the types of blockchain are described. The chapter discusses the basic skill set and libraries required to start doing “blockchain programming,” which is a key objective in this book. The chapter ends with a few examples and their implementation in Python.