Xun Yi - Blockchain Foundations and Applications (SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology)

SpringerBriefs present concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical applications across a wide spectrum of fields. Featuring compact volumes of 50 to 125 pages, the series covers a range of content from professional to academic.

Typical publications can be:

SpringerBriefs are characterized by fast, global electronic dissemination, standard publishing contracts, standardized manuscript preparation and formatting guidelines, and expedited production schedules.

On the one hand, SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology are devoted to the publication of fundamentals and applications within the different classical engineering disciplines as well as in interdisciplinary fields that recently emerged between these areas. On the other hand, as the boundary separating fundamental research and applied technology is more and more dissolving, this series is particularly open to trans-disciplinary topics between fundamental science and engineering.

Indexed by EI-Compendex, SCOPUS and Springerlink.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

The concept of a blockchain was invented in 2008 originally for the use in the first digital currency Bitcoin. Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, open, and growing ledger or list of verifiable permanent records, which are linked and are made immutable by applying cryptography. Blockchain is maintained by a decentralized peer-to-peer network. Once the data is recorded in the ledger, it cannot be altered, which means that the ledger is tamper-resistant. The participants of a blockchain network can independently and inexpensively verify the validity of the records stored on the blockchain ledger.

The success of Bitcoin has inspired numerous other applications of the blockchain technology. Rapidly expanding applications of blockchain have revolutionized many aspects of modern society including the cloud data storage, commerce, crowdsourcing and crowdsensing systems, data structures, digital right management, distributed databases, economy, financial services, healthcare, imported product traceability, IoT information sharing, large-scale networks, law, logistics supply chains, medical records, multiagent symbiotic systems, payment systems, security, smart cities, synchronization, transportation systems, trust management, and video games. Fast development of the blockchain applications has attracted the attention of a rapidly growing number of researchers and industry practitioners.

The aim of this monograph is to provide a comprehensive and rigorous exposition of the basic concepts and most important modern research results concerning blockchain and its applications with emphasis on including complete technical details. The book includes the required cryptographic fundamentals underpinning the blockchain technology, since understanding the concepts of cryptography involved in the design of blockchain is necessary for mastering the security guarantees furnished by blockchain. The book contains an introduction to cryptographic primitives, and separate chapters on Bitcoin, Ethereum and smart contracts, public and private blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain applications.

Thorough presentation of the required cryptographic prerequisites and examples of modern research results on blockchain and applications would be of great interest to active researchers keen to develop novel applications of the blockchain in the field of their investigation.

Industry practitioners would also find the book useful and interesting as they need to compare and choose appropriate blockchain applications for their industry, combine several options, and may wish to modify the existing applications or develop new ones.

The book will be also beneficial as a reference text for the undergraduate students in computing and information technology courses where a rigorous monograph on the foundations of blockchain and its applications may be necessary. The text can be also used as a general introduction for self-study by the higher-degree research students at the corresponding departments.

The level of presentation is accessible to the undergraduate students in the departments of computer science, information technology, engineering, or mathematics with sufficient explanations provided. The text adheres to the level of clarity and rigour adopted by the modern high-quality research publications.