This book introduces you to the value that blockchain brings to the enterprise. We focus on private permissioned blockchains, which we describe in Chapter 1, and why they are suitable for use in an enterprise environment. While we make comparisons to public unpermissioned networks in Chapter 1, we don’t discuss public networks beyond this. This book looks at how to choose the best scenario for blockchain, and at considerations for designing a blockchain network, before finally looking at how to develop your blockchain application.
Throughout this book we focus on a real-world scenario for commercial papers with Chapter 5 introducing a developer tutorial and how to run and extend a commercial paper network on blockchain.
While this book is focused on those people designing and developing blockchain networks, the early chapters have a broader scope. There’s no prerequisite reading required, although if you would like to extend the commercial paper scenario in Chapter 5, then knowledge of Node.js would be advantageous.
This book contains six chapters, each chapter building on the previous.
Chapter 1 introduces blockchain for the enterprise, and describes the main concepts of a private permissioned blockchain.
Chapter 2 looks at how to identify when to use blockchain, and includes a set of detailed steps on how best to choose a good blockchain scenario.
Chapter 3 considers many of the options you will face when designing a blockchain network.
Chapter 4 describes the artifacts that need to be developed for a blockchain network, namely smart contracts and client-side applications.
Chapter 5 explains how to run the commercial paper scenario, and how to extend the scenario with additional functions.
Chapter 6 takes a look at the future of blockchain for the enterprise.
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.
Constant width
Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.
This element signifies a general note.
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A special thanks to our colleague Evie Wright, for reviewing our draft versions of this book, providing valuable feedback and being part of the many discussions as we worked on this book. Evie joined our IBM Blockchain Engagement Team for a year out from her undergraduate studies at university.
We also want to thank our following colleagues for reviewing our draft versions, without which this book would not have received the much-needed sponsorship, direction, and support required:
Anita Chung
Alejandro Pinto
R. Colby Murphy
Finally, thanks to our colleague Horea Porutiu for reviewing and providing feedback on the draft version.