Apache Kafka and Blockchain: Friends, Enemies, or Frenemies?

This blog post discusses the concepts, use cases, and architectures behind Event Streaming, Apache Kafka, Distributed Ledger (DLT), and Blockchain. A comparison of different technologies such as Confluent, AIBlockchain, Hyperledger, Ethereum, Ripple, IOTA, and Libra explores when to use Kafka, a Kafka-native blockchain, a dedicated blockchain, or Kafka in conjunction with another blockchain.

Use Cases for Secure and Tamper-Proof Data Processing With a Blockchain

Blockchain is a hype topic for many years. While many companies talk about the buzzword, it is tough to find use cases where Blockchain is the best solution. The following examples show the potential of Blockchain. Here it might make sense:

How Bitcoin Processing Units Are Being Used For Mining Digital Currency

It’s a famous fact that bitcoin mining hardware has changed by leaps and bounds lately due to the growth of new central processing units in the marketplace. The new machines may conduct Bitcoin processing at a faster rate when compared with the computers of yesteryear.

Furthermore, they consume less power. Field programming team array processors are connected with CPUs to boost their computing power. While selecting hardware for Bitcoin processing, ensure it includes a large hash rate that would deliver spectacular results to your users. According to experts, the rate of data processing is measured in mega hash rates each second, or GIGA hash speeds per second.

Transaction Execution — Ethereum Yellow Paper Walkthrough (4/7)

In this post, we start looking into how the Ethereum platform executes transactions. We will learn transaction validity rules and why they exist. After that, we will deep-dive into transaction execution and understand the steps taken by nodes while processing a transaction.

This post is the fourth in the series Ethereum Yellow Paper Walkthrough. The goal of this series is to demystify the concepts in the paper, making it accessible to a broader audience. If you missed the previous posts, here they are!

Writing About Security [Prompts]

Ever struggle with what to write? No worries, we've got you covered. Here's a list of security prompts and article ideas to help cure even the worst cases of writer's block. So, take a moment, check out the prompts below, pick one (or more!), and get to writing.

Also, please feel free to comment on this post to bounce around ideas, ask questions, or share which prompt(s) you're working on. 

Top 5 Free Courses to Learn Blockchain Programming

Hello, all — hope you all are having a great time and are working towards your goals for this year. I have been sharing a lot of courses and tutorials recently about what to learn this year, starting from tools and frameworks to libraries and programming languages, but one of the most important technologies you can learn this year is blockchain development.

It's one of most talked about technologies at the moment and is considered to be the Next Big Thing after the invention of the Internet, as blockchain technology can provide a way to attain digital trust on via the Internet.

List of Top Blockchain Rapid Prototyping Tools

On one hand, blockchain and cryptocurrency use cases are making it to the headlines on a daily basis, yet the rate of decentralized solutions actually entering the market space is still on the lower side.

While the market is ready to be decentralized, businesses are taking their own sweet time to come up with a blockchain-based solution to present to the market.

AWS Just Made Blockchain a Helluva Lot Easier (and Cheaper) to Implement

With just a few clicks, businesses can now create, manage, and scale blockchain networks, Amazon Web Services announced in a press release Monday. While it revealed the initiative late last year, AWS is now making the service generally available.

“Customers want to use blockchain frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum to create blockchain networks so they can conduct business quickly, with an immutable record of transactions, but without the need for a centralized authority,” said Rahul Pathak, Amazon Managed Blockchain's general manager at AWS. “However, they find these frameworks difficult to install, configure, and manage.”

Hyperledger vs. Ethereum: Which Will Benefit Your Business?

Initially, cryptocurrency markets started out on a slow incline, but this year, in the first week of April, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum demonstrated new momentum with a 20 percent gain in investment ratio.

“This is a time of great opportunity” for enterprises. How? The new changes and growth will facilitate greater adoption of Hyperledger and Ethereum among the leading enterprises and communities of respective organizations.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Building on Ethereum (Part 1): Decisions

In this series, I'll be 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.

The Goal

I wanted to create a system wherein developers of Ethereum-based apps or games with in-app purchases could mint the items they sell as ERC-721 tokens (like CryptoKitties). It would handle most of the heavy lifting so that those developers could get on with the business of writing a kick-ass product.

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.