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2022 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Blockchain in a Nutshell

Authors : Duc A. Tran, Bhaskar Krishnamachari

Published in: Handbook on Blockchain

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Blockchain enables a digital society where people can contribute, collaborate, and transact without having to second-guess trust and transparency. It is the technology behind the success of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many disruptive applications and platforms that have positive impact in numerous sectors, including finance, education, health care, environment, transportation, and philanthropy, to name a few. This chapter provides a friendly description of essential concepts, mathematics, and algorithms that lay the foundation for blockchain technology.

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Footnotes
1
Comparing based on blockchain length (the number of blocks in the blockchain) is adopted in most blockchain networks, but other comparison criteria have also been explored, for example, choosing the “heaviest” blockchain copy as the correct one, where “heaviness” is a weighted generalization of the length.
 
2
This problem is described on this page: https://​eth.​wiki/​sharding/​Sharding-FAQs.
 
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Metadata
Title
Blockchain in a Nutshell
Authors
Duc A. Tran
Bhaskar Krishnamachari
Copyright Year
2022
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07535-3_1

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