Blockchain Science: Distributed Ledger Technology

by Roger Wattenhofer

About the book Distributed ledgers and blockchains are much older than Bitcoin, and a large amount of work in distributed systems and cryptography is about storing transactions securely. The area is central in computer science, about half of all Turing Awards (the “Nobel Prize of Computing”) of the last decade can be linked to distributed ledgers. This book will give a scientifically precise description of the most interesting approaches that have emerged, before Bitcoin and after. For both permissioned and permissionless blockchains, this book will provide a deep and thorough understanding. The book discusses the basic techniques when building fault-tolerant distributed systems and various protocols and algorithms that allow for fault-tolerant operation. About the third edition Apart from many minor improvements, this third edition of the book contains a lot more content. In particular, the third edition includes new chapters and sections on broadcast, shared coins, selfish mining, DAG-blockchains, payment hubs, proof-of-stake, strong consistency and logical time. In addition, the book features an appendix, discussing some of the underlying fundamentals such as game theory, physical clocks, and Markov chains. About the author Roger Wattenhofer is a professor at ETH Zurich. Before joining ETH Zurich, he was at Brown University and Microsoft Research. His research interests include fault-tolerant distributed systems, efficient network algorithms, and cryptocurrencies. He has published more than 300 scientific articles.

Genres: Computer Science

289 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 22, 2019