The one I've tried to read most recently (Mougayar's The Business Blockchain) also felt kind of superficial.
I'm interested in both technical foundation and practical/business applications.
Any books, videos, courses, or other resources you recommend?
That's where I would start.
I love this blog..
That being said. What's actually kind of good (with actual technical specifications) is Bitcoin wiki, even when it's slightly outdated; then official bitcoin website; and sometimes bitcoin stack exchange website (but that can become outdated too).
I don't think Blockchain can be disconnected from Bitcoin, and if you do, it's very general and not that specific.
For the record I've found Coindesk helpful for general updates, and I signed up for the blockchain course on Coursera.
On the other hand, there are some people who have been bitcoin enthusiasts but have since left the scene, such as mike hearn.
But yeah you are right.
Wish you and your partner in crime stopped spreading false information and just focused on Bitcoin. It should stand on its own merits not on dishing other projects.
And if you want a compiled list of resources for learning: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6CKmAqa1_nzRGVicnlHY1BaaUk...
Someone tells a joke based on a prompt. This would be your Genesis block. Then everyone else competes to tell the funniest joke based on only that and the new prompts from the audience.
Repeat until you have an ongoing, hilarious comedy routine that cannot be edited after the fact without being found out because that would ruin the whole routine. It just wouldn't be as funny.
Inserting metadata into the blockchain. https://medium.com/@bkawk/inserting-metadata-into-the-blockc...
Andreas M. Antonopoulos: "Consensus Algorithms, Blockchain Technology and Bitcoin" [UCL] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE7998qfjgk
I work in the field and the most difficult thing is to separate the noise from the signal. On talks with financial institutions and the government, they say they want to use the blockchain but when you ask about how many nodes they are planning to run they came up with one, or doesn't understand the question. Also, there are a lot of use cases that are not realistic because they depend on oracles or there is no way to enforce the smart contract in the real world.
[1] http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes
[2] http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-C...
[4] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DQ770nGnHfJOoRSqTLmI...
The intro to bitcoin concepts is great place to learn about blockchain.
https://21.co/learn/introduction-to-bitcoin-concepts/#introd...
Once you've read Mastering Bitcoin, install the reference implementation, and start playing with the API while pointing to the testnet. When you get stuck, look to the Bitcoin reference documentation... it's pretty good too.
Happy hacking
You'll need (at present) about 80 GB of disk space to hold the blockchain. The full node client will download it for you or you can torrent a recent snapshot of the blockchain and then synchronise from there (quicker).
The software you can obtain from here:
https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node
Or you can use git to pull the source code from GitHub and compile it yourself. I've done both, and found the developers on GitHub friendly and responsive to pull requests, even helpful to a newbie submitting a first pull request.
Beware that running a full node will try to eat all your upstream bandwidth. It takes a few days for the Bitcoin network to notice the existence of your new full node, but the number of connections will grow (others asking you for pieces of the blockchain, as well as transaction verifications). You can learn a lot about the Bitcoin ecology this way.
Bear in mind that the word "blockchain" is an evolving word; almost every definition I've read differs. Some see it as barely different than a distributed database that doesn't allow deletions. Many others see it as paradigm shifting.
I have a blockchain/bitcoin tutoring service at www.blockchaintutoring.com. I did a Show HN but didn't get a single comment :(
I'm a programmer myself, but my target market is not the typical HN user. I'm looking to teach more business types and people in the law profession, for example. I'm preparing a small course plan to help people get from 0 to knowledgeable. The course will certainly be a bit technical, but I would not cover for example the pros and cons of the blocksize debate unless someone asks for that information.
I invite you to contact me, either through my website's contact form or the email address there provided. We can chat, and then if you ever choose to use the service, it's going to be at a discount for HN users. Your questions will definitely help me tailor my offering.
You can find my email just under the "Contact Us" heading. It is bitcointutoring~at~gmail. I have received the message you sent me through your form, and am writing you a reply. The form confirms the email was sent by writing "Success! Message received." in green under the form. I agree it is not so evident.
Although this paper does not directly address the blockchain, I believe it and the thesis below are at the root of the concept. (If you want to go down the rabbit hole, check out the references page of the above paper). Fair warning, the above paper is from 1999/2000 so obviously much has changed, but still worth reading.
Robust Composition: Towards a Unified Approach to Access Control and Concurrency Control by Mark Samuel Miller:
Ethereum is a platform that uses a blockchain to build and record consensus. Conceptually, the blockchain is a technology underpinning each cryptocurrency. Across the many cryptocurrencies in use, there are many blockchains keeping track of who owns what.
It is never correct to refer to a capitalized "Blockchain," or refer to it singularly without articles (a or the), imho. We don't refer to other data structures that way, like a priority queue.
2) Longest lecture Nick Szabo, inventor of blockchains, ever gave was in the money museum in Zurich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWuN2R2DC6c
3) Study the original source code (bitcoin version 0.0.1).
^ Following along with this helped me a lot. Bitcoin is a rather large onion, but, as others are saying, implementing parts of it is the only way to go.
a database contains data that can be deleted and/or overwritten. Other than examining changelogs and reverting changes according to 'external requirements', a database is a non-auditable pot of changeable information. A blockchain cannot be re-written without a "hard fork" of the network that makes it exist. It is that simple. Consequently,you can also easily audit a blockchain or any part (wallet) of it. To audit a database is not impossible, but auditing a ledger is entirely simpler.
Banking people throw "blockchain" around as a buzzword without necessarily understanding the total difference in the way they operate compared to databases. The fact that the blockchain is a ledger is best demonstrated to them by the notion that a printed bank statement is a 'de facto' ledger of the transactions on a single account. Banks have always told customers that keeping printed (usually monthly) statements is how a permanent record is kept of your transactions. This is because they routinely wipe system transactions to avoid the storage and security costs of keeping a copy of the data. I have bank statements on paper going back to my very first bank account and transaction. They take up a great deal of physical space, but they do represent a permanent and uncontestable history of my finances. They are my personal paperblockchain. If only banks had been willing to keep everyone's transaction data in perpetuity then I wouldn't have boxes of paper in my attic. But that would be hugely impractical and costly. Blockchains for every account are feasible, but not on the horizon given the state of current cryptography and the huge data costs.
Banks trying to get into blockchain tech are only looking at high level intra-bank functionality, which would be well served by a new system, especially given that they don't trust each other but have historically agreed that they should, and pragmatism has cemented the system. A new system is absolutely needed.
rebranding is hardly the point. Blockchains exist as something entirely novel and challenging to legacy database structures. The folders you refer to - do you mean cryptocurrency wallets? The wallets where people can be their own bank? They are just blockchain 1.0 btw.
Database journaling ? Keeping things in folders ? what you have just described.