Mastering Ethereum

What Hacker News says

1. jll29Sep 2022
   Read 'Mastering Ethereum' https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ethereum-Building-Smart-Con...

   The short of it is:

   - The block chain is a distributed ledger database, where all peers hold a full copy to avoid manipulation (faking an entry is only possible by controlling >50% of machines in this peer-to-peer network).

   - Spending money is implemented by adding a transactional record to the blockchain ledger at the end saying X amount moved from account A to B. A block is like a page in a paper ledger and they are appended with cryptographic hashes to avoid improper interference.

   - Ethereum supports smart contracts, which are little scripts in a language called Solidity. So you can implement legally binding (and unstoppable) contracts along the lines of "if (condition) then (pay some money to someone)". Executing smart contracts cost a little bit of money. All Ethereum nodes collectively implement a distributed VM, and that money (called "gas") is the incentive to keep the network running. Smart contracts are highly interesting, and they have applications far beyond electronic currencies. For example, we played with implementing electronic rights management (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-36691-9_... - which turned out to be less than ideal due to a stack size limit in the current Ethereum VM, but hey).

   - Whenever a new block (page in the ledger) needs to be created because the previous one is full, a randomized alg. determines who is permitted to do that ("mining"). The old process (proof of work) was environmentally a disaster (it still is for the Bitcoin ecosystem), which is why the Ethereum people implemented a smarter method (proof of stake - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake).

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2. w4llstr33tAug 2021
   I think it would be worth understanding how Bitcoin works first. It's designed to be more robust. It doesn't change as often (some criticize it due to that), however, it could also be seen as a strength. You could read the Bitcoin white paper [1]. If you wanted to learn more about programming Bitcoin, you could also check out Mastering Bitcoin 2nd Edition - Programming the Open Blockchain by Andreas M. Antonopoulos [2].

   Ethereum was created after Bitcoin. It was designed to be more of an open programming platform. It was designed to be Turing Complete and enabled the use of "smart contracts". The DeFi space runs on smart contracts and Ethereum kicked off DeFi. This is the Ethereum white paper [3]. Mastering Ethereum by Andreas M. Antonopoulos & Gavin Wood is another book you could check out [4].

   Here are a couple of introductions to DeFi, as well [5][6].

   The hack that everyone is discussing here was on Poly Network, which a layer 2 solution for Ethereum [7]. Layer 2 solutions were created due to lower the high gas fees on Ethereum, as well as increase transaction throughput. Ethereum itself is also working on moving to Ethereum 2.0 which would help address the issues that layer 2 solutions are trying to solve [7].

   Edit: Poly Network actually appears to be more of a bridge between different networks (Ethereum, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain) [9], so it's worth noting that this wasn't a direct hack on Polygon, which is a layer 2 solution for Ethereum.

   [1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

   [2] https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook

   [3] https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/

   [4] https://github.com/ethereumbook/ethereumbook

   [5] https://ethereum.org/en/defi/

   [6] https://blog.coinbase.com/a-beginners-guide-to-decentralized...

   [7] https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/polygon-crypto-matic-netw...

   [8] https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/

   [9] https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/p1qfdo/psa_...

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3. dogman144Aug 2021
   If you’re technical, read Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum, both for free on GitHub https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook, and https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/

   Reason being is that how most of crypto works is a derivative of bitcoin or ethereum. And, it’s fairly normal in a technical sense, just applied in a unique way that needs to be understood via good ref doc.

   Once you wrap your head around those two anchor protocols and get a sense of how it relates to its comp sci primitives (file systems, p2p, cryptographic certs), it can be really demystified - ie “blockchain” is stored as blocks on a file system, in the comp sci sense.

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4. rawtxappFeb 2021
   It would take quite a bit time, but with enough dedication, it's not that difficult. The books: Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum (although ethereum one is a bit outdated now) cover a lot of it pretty nicely and you can find them for free on github.
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5. vmceptionOct 2020
   Crypto my dude

   The jack of all trades are making 7 figures building “DeFi” infrastructure

   You just deploy a smart contract that helps people simplify a more complex task and your code takes a few percentage points

   No overhead costs, incorporation, lawyers, banks etc necessary

   Never been easier to make money

   Basically the key concept that appeared this year is called “composability” where the outputs of one operation can be used as inputs of the next operation, so this is analogous to the interchangeable parts era of the industrial revolution

   Smart contracts are extremely limited in the kinds of operations they can do, with most data structures algorithms being too expensive so you never have to employ the bullshit technical questions or any academic knowledge

   But you probably should read a book like O’Reilly’s “Mastering Ethereum”. Ethereum introduces a concept called an “EVM” (like JVM) which is used on several more platforms that arent called Ethereum, so you should be familiar with that.

   Oh! You also dont need to be distracted by:

   “Consensus model ideology”

   “I could use a database for this”

   or any other self limiting thing.

   because “you could also make money”

   Lets be honest you were probably going to work for some ad tech startup anyway, all crypto projects have just as little utility for the world while possibly having the argument for much more utility, and you dont have to pretend like you are an investor that wont get zeroed out by VC liquidity preferences

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6. vhpoetAug 2020
   Please let me know if I'm missing an important book.

   The list has the top rated books first.

   American Kingpin by Nick Bilton

   The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson

   The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

   Mastering Ethereum by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

   The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin

   Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

   The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous

   Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper

   The Internet of Money by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

   Creating the Twentieth Century by Vaclav Smil

   Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier

   Blockchain Bubble or Revolution by Neel Mehta

   Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez

   Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies by Arvind Narayanan

   Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

   Inventing Bitcoin by Yan Pritzker

   The Little Bitcoin Book by Bitcoin Collective

   Serious Cryptography by Jean-Philippe Aumasson

   An Altcoin Trader's Handbook by Nik Patel

   Programming Bitcoin by Jimmy Song

   The Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth

   Bitcoin by Knut Svanholm

   Bitcoin & Black America by Isaiah Jackson

   The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains by Antony Lewis

   Mastering Monero by SerHack

   Grokking Bitcoin by Kalle Rosenbaum

   Why Buy Bitcoin by Andy Edstrom

   The Book of Satoshi by Phil Champagne

   This Book Will Save You Time by Misir Mahmudov

   Bitcoin by Knut Svanholm

   Cryptocurrency Investing For Dummies by Kiana Danial

   The Dreams of Reason by Heinz R. Pagels

   21 Lessons by Gigi

   Bitcoin Clarity by Kiara Bickers

   Rethinking Money by Bernard Lietaer

   From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond by John H. Clippinger

   The Bitcoin Revolution by Dominick Barbato

   How Money Got Free by Brian Patrick Eha

   Handbook of Digital Currency by David LEE Kuo Chuen

   Blockchain Technology Explained by Alan T. Norman

   Cryptoassets by Chris Burniske

   Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain by David Gerard

   Blockchain Basics by Daniel Drescher

   Code by Lawrence Lessig

   Blockchain and the Law by Primavera De Filippi

   Blockchain by Mark Gates

   Bitcoin by Dominic Frisby

   The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman

   The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna

   The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance by Brett Scott

   Bitcoin For Dummies by Prypto

   The Truth Machine by Paul Vigna

   Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott

   Digital Cash by Finn Brunton

   Blockchain by Melanie Swan

   Introducing Ethereum and Solidity by Chris Dannen

   Building Blockchain Projects by Narayan Prusty

   Investing in Ethereum by Oscar Flynt

   Bitcoin and Blockchain Security by Ghassan Karame

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