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Blockchain in a Nutshell

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Handbook on Blockchain

Part of the book series: Springer Optimization and Its Applications ((SOIA,volume 194))

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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Notes

  1. 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. 2.

    This problem is described on this page: https://eth.wiki/sharding/Sharding-FAQs.

  3. 3.

    https://polygon.technology.

  4. 4.

    https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/layer-2-scaling/optimistic_rollups/.

  5. 5.

    https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/layer-2-scaling/zk-rollups/.

  6. 6.

    https://www.optimism.io.

  7. 7.

    https://offchainlabs.com/.

  8. 8.

    https://dydx.exchange.

  9. 9.

    https://zks.org.

  10. 10.

    https://multichain.org/.

  11. 11.

    https://www.parity.io/technologies/substrate/.

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Acknowledgements

Duc A. Tran’s work for this chapter was partially funded by Vingroup Joint Stock Company and supported by Vingroup Innovation Foundation (VINIF) under project code VINIF.2021.DA00128. Bhaskar Krishnamachari’s work was supported in part by the USC Viterbi Center for Cyberphysical Systems and the Internet of Things.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Massachusetts, 100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA, 02125, USA

    Duc A. Tran

  2. University of Southern California, 3740 McClintock Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Bhaskar Krishnamachari

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  1. Duc A. Tran
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Correspondence to Duc A. Tran .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA

    Duc A. Tran

  2. Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    My T. Thai

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Bhaskar Krishnamachari

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Tran, D.A., Krishnamachari, B. (2022). Blockchain in a Nutshell. In: Tran, D.A., Thai, M.T., Krishnamachari, B. (eds) Handbook on Blockchain. Springer Optimization and Its Applications, vol 194. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07535-3_1

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