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Blockchain in Dire Need of Daily Affirmation Following 51 Percent Attack

Back in January, hackers pulled off the once unthinkable: They gained control of more than 50 percent of Ethereum Classic’s blockchain network, proving that with enough computing power, blockchain can (and decidedly will) get hacked.

Sadly, Blockchain has been struggling with this realization ever since. He was supposed to be invincible, after all. The next big thing in finance, the Internet, contracts, cloud storage, social networking, encrypted messaging, proof of ownership, voting, real estate, and even food safety.  

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The Role of Erlang in Programming Blockchains

With the advent of blockchain technology, we’re witnessing an explosion of interest in bringing to life the decentralized applications of the future. Some of the best-known programming languages used in the development of blockchain platforms are object-oriented languages. Languages such as C++, Python, and the purpose-built Solidity have so far dominated the blockchain scene.

Functional programming languages are quickly becoming a developer’s first choice when building Dapps, as they largely influence what can and can’t be done, and possess unique features that help them exhibit important comparative advantages.

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Blockchain to Revolutionize Banking Sector

The banking sector forms the backbone of any economy. With the technology innovations making way into the arena, the banking sector has been moving away from traditional methods. It has shown steady acceptance of modern age banking methods for the faster and more dependable outcome. On the other hand, blockchain technology has gained popularity on a large scale since its introduction in 2008. This development has presented the impending benefits of blockchain technology in the banking sector in terms of transparency and security.

Concerns Related to Present Day Banking

One of the primary aspects of the banking sector is security. Though in India, with more than 90 percent of the transactions are performed in cash, digital channels are increasingly popular nowadays. This has increased the scenario for cybercrime. Cyber attacks are prominent in recent times. The massive data breach of over 3 million debit and credit cards that occurred around 2 years back has shown the prominent security gaps in the banking segment. Another area of concern is the increased occurrence of fraudulent transactions. Reports and sources reveal that there has been approximately a 20 percent increase in bank fraud cases over the past five years.

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Most Bitcoin Trades Are Fake, Study Concludes

While the price of Bitcoin has rallied quite a bit over the past month (up 36 percent to $5,243.72 as of April 8, noon EST), another recent headline is much less jubilant. According to a new study, almost 95 percent of all Bitcoin trades are actually fraudulent.

In their study, which looked at trading data across the top 81 exchanges (by volume) over four days in March, Bitwise Asset Management concluded that of the $6 billion in average daily Bitcoin trading they observed, only $273 million of this is real.

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Building on Ethereum: Part 6 – Bootstrapping the Client

In this series, I’m discussing the phases of a project encompassing a non-trivial set of Ethereum smart contracts and the React/Redux application that communicates with them.

The project, called In-App Pro Shop, aims to help Ethereum developers easily support in-app purchases, and it was written over the last half of 2018 as a way of learning about the Ethereum development ecosystem.

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Using Private Blockchain Network for End-to-End Encryption of Documents in ONLYOFFICE

The existing documen security measures are not perfectly sufficient. ONLYOFFICE created the solution to this problem that combines end-to-end encryption with blockchain technology. Read this article to learn more, and take part in the testing of the developer preview.

Why Basic Encryption Won’t Ever Succeed

The existing encryption technologies feature minor yet considerable gaps when it comes to possible accidents at the point of cloud security, namely leakages, insider access to the storage, or data transfer interventions. This happens for reasons related to both the solution and the users.

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A Guide to Blockchain Immutability and Challenges

There are thousands of tales spread throughout the world about blockchain. It is true that this technology is premier among all. Not only did it give birth to cryptocurrencies but it also resolved various security issues.

As I mentioned, a number of tales are there, but the most questioned and discussed tale is the immutability of a blockchain. In this post, I am shedding some light on this aspect. So, let's take a glimpse.

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Blockchain-Based Excise Stamp Replacement System

The Task

Using QR codes as a replacement for excise stamps would allow decentralized and transparent control of the consumption goods logistics, delivery, and selling from the supermarkets and shops. This would eliminate the possibility for fraud and selling counterfeit wares, as well as increase the tax revenues.

The Solution

We have designed and developed a blockchain-based system that uses QR codes instead of excise stamps. Any manufacturer of excise goods can order the required amount of QR codes from the governmental authority. Each unit of the goods is then marked with the QR code, like a pack of cigarettes as shown in our example:

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A Complete Guide to Blockchain Programming

Blockchain is the way of the future. It is not farfetched to think that the future will be built around this emerging technology. Blockchain started off as a public, permissionless technology, and later, another type of blockchain was introduced, each for its own specific set of use cases. Public/permissionless blockchains are open, decentralized, and slow, whereas private/permissioned blockchains are closed and centralized, either partially or completely. 

In this article, I am going to discuss what you need to learn in order to start building apps that use blockchain technology. When I first started learning blockchain, a lot of questions popped into my head. What are the different types of blockchains? Which programming languages should I use to program efficiently? And what are the platforms for blockchain development?

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Ethereum Yellow Paper Walkthrough (3/7): Gas and Payment

Another day, another Ethereum Yellow Paper blog post! In this post, we will learn more about gas and payments in Ethereum. We will also brush over the economics behind Ethereum and why fees are so important in the Ethereum ecosystem.

After reading this post, we will understand why transaction costs are called gas and what the difference is between gasPrice and gasLimit. We will also understand what miner nodes are and what strategies they use to select transactions. This post refers to section five of the Ethereum Yellow Paper.

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Building on Ethereum (Part 3): Set Up and Test

In this series, I'm discussing the phases of a project encompassing a non-trivial set of Ethereum smart contracts and the React/Redux application that communicates with them.

The project, called In-App Pro Shop, aims to help Ethereum developers easily support in-app purchases, and it was written over the last half of 2018 as a way of learning about the Ethereum development ecosystem.

This project revealed many aspects of the power and constraints of Ethereum and its programming language Solidity. I hope to pass as much of that on to you as possible in this series.

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Time to Bring a Revolution to Agriculture Through Blockchain

It wasn't too long ago when agriculture started reaping the benefits of technologies from precision farming, and now, there are many technologies available to help farmers maximize their profits. Now, farmers have many technology options available to get all the information needed for every phase of farming.  The world's population is constantly growing and many farmers are leaving their profession, especially in developing countries, and the burden is growing on the remaining farmers that feed the world.

With the emergence of Bitcoin, the world has seen new capabilities of technology in completing safe and secure transactions that are low cost and trustworthy. However, it is important to understand the underlying technology used for Bitcoin and how it is beneficial for the agriculture industry.  Until now, everyone has seen a central governing authority where single-party governs all transactions. Blockchain technology is shifting trust on a completely new level because there is no central authority that hack-prone, expensive, and/or time-consuming. On a blockchain, all nodes connected to the blockchain have their own copy, and before making a transaction, a consensus happens between nodes to allow the transaction. Technically, this is a distributed database, and if someone wants to hack the system, then it is extremely complex or, in simpler terms, chances are slim to none.

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Blockchain Data Management

In my last blog, I provided a brief on the basics of blockchain. In this blog, I will try to further explore how the actual data gets stored/managed on a chain of blocks.

As you all know, a blockchain is a distributed architecture that follows a peer-to-peer network and essentially inherits all of the advantages of a peer-to-peer network, like performance, avoiding a single-point failure, etc.

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The Need for Layer 3 on the Internet of Value

Over the past decade, we have witnessed the emergence of revolutionary innovation, of which the evolutionary significance is yet to be fully recognized. Of course, we’re referring to the blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and, more generally, the phenomenon that we describe as the Internet of Value. Blockchain and related technologies have the opportunity to transform the world of finance and other value systems, in exactly the manner by which the Internet has transformed the way we exchange information.

There have been some key milestones leading up to this point: the launch of Bitcoin in 2008; the emergence of altcoins from 2011 onwards; the launch of Ethereum in 2015. We call this Layer 1 — the foundational level — with the economic function of value creation and the technical one of ensuring the basic functionality of accounting and transfer of crypto assets. All of this is implemented on the basis of distributed registries and with the conditions of interaction strictly regulated at the code level.

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Public Vs. Private Blockchain

Blockchain is a super hot topic right now — with every business — from big banks to small businesses —wondering how they can leverage this new technology to help get ahead and one-up their competition. But what exactly is blockchain? 

To delve a little deeper into the specifics of blockchain, particularly as it relates to business purposes, we need to outline the differences between a public blockchain and a private blockchain.

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10 Tools for Blockchain Development

Blockchain, though known to most people through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, is used for much more than powering cryptos. Recently, a lot of companies have been coming up with innovative ways of putting this technology to use, from using it as a decentralized voting system to managing a global shipping system.

Even big companies like IBM and Samsung have adopted it for use. So it's natural that all this interest in it brings about the need for blockchain developers. In fact, according to a report from Upwork, blockchain happens to be the fastest growing skill on its platform, surpassing skills like TensorFlow and machine learning in the top 20 list. This means there are a lot of jobs for blockchain developers.