This Book's Mission
The Ethereum blockchain has been described as the driving force behind the next generation of the internet. The blockchain has built-in smart contract capabilities, a large developer community, and its own native cryptocurrency. In this section we will learn about how the book is structured and get you equipped with the tools you'll need to start writing your own blockchain and smart contracts.
Join the Community#
🎳 Join us over at the
#cryptochannel in our Discord server - here.
Code and Offline Downloads#
👩💻 Download the complete set of code for this course here
This Book's Mission#
The Ethereum blockchain has been described as the driving force behind the next generation of the internet. This blockchain solution has built-in smart contract capabilities, a large developer community, and its own native cryptocurrency. Although the platform has been established since 2015, there is still a long way to go before Ethereum (and other tools like it) can change the nature of the internet as we know it.
Ethereum has been used to create a variety of tools to disintermediate how people access services across many industries. Traditionally, people using the internet rely on third parties to obtain access to services, such as using Paypal or eBay to buy, sell and send money around the world.
Conversely, Ethereum leverages its public, decentralized infrastructure to create services that perform the same functions, without the need for those third parties. This eliminates the need to establish trust with and pay fees to them. Users can also have free access to audit the code that performs the functions. A couple of Ethereum-based web applications you could look at are:
MakerDAO - created a token called Dai, a digital currency that is pegged to the US Dollar and can be used anywhere
Rarible - created a marketplace where digital collectibles can be bought and sold
Both of these platforms exist on the Ethereum blockchain. As long as someone has internet they will be able to use the applications mentioned.
We will learn the fundamentals of blockchain and then start writing smart contracts for the Ethereum blockchain. After we write the smart contracts, we will send the code of the smart contracts to the Ethereum blockchain. Once the contracts are sent to the blockchain,we will learn how to interact with the code that lives on the Ethereum blockchain.
The first smart contract we will create will be a simple smart contract. It will teach the basics of the smart contract language called Solidity. Once we understand some of the fundamentals, we will dive into a slightly more complex smart contract (how to set up a smart contract that interacts with a cryptocurrency called Ether). Once we understand how smart contracts can interact with cryptocurrencies that have value, then we will design and deploy an ERC 20 token smart contract.
Some of the languages and tools we will cover in this book to write and deploy smart contracts include Solidity, Remix, and Truffle JS.