Enough of the Hype: A Practical Introduction to Blockchain

Enough of the Hype: A Practical Introduction to Blockchain

There are so many people who talk about Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and Distributed Ledgers, but have never touched a piece of code. For some, though, it might change our world but for others it is just all hype, and why would we change things? Unfortunately there’s very little in the way of practical demonstrations, especially for simple examples. So I’ve created demos using Ethereum on a Microsoft Windows environment (but it should work the same with Linux).

With the following I create the genesis record, and then create new accounts, and make a payment:

and here I create a contract for some static maths functions which are mined onto the Blockchain:

and a “Hello World!”:

and a simple purchasing system:

and some transactions:

and again:

and in managing the Blockchain:

and contracts and addresses:

Here’s the associated page:

Conclusions

One must understand we are building a new Web — in fact a new world — and one which does not suffer from the centralisation of our existing Web. The methods we currently employ for our existing Web are based on the ways we have done things for centuries. But we are learning as we go, and we all need to learn both the strengths and weaknesses of a technology which could be one of the most disruptive in the history of our existence.

Go change the world, or not? You decide!