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Blockchain is a technology that tends to be misunderstood by managers that need to make technology acquisition decisions. This book will provide readers with a basic understanding of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT), the technologies that underpin it, and the technologies DLT is built upon. The book is purposefully not a book on how to code or explore other technical aspects of blockchain (other than the fundamentals). Rather, it provides managers with the basic understanding of the architectures and consensus algorithms, how they work, the design trade-offs of each architecture type, and what problems and use cases the core characteristics of DLT are best suited to solve providing business managers with the core information they need to ask the right questions of vendors when making business value assessments and acquisition decisions.
List of contents
DLT Types and Design Trade-offs.- Learning Objectives.- Proof-of-work.- Proof-of-stake.- Proof-of-storage.- Proof-of-authority.- Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG): AKA "The Tangle".- Hash and Merkle Trees.- Byzantine Fault Tolerance.- Mining and Making Money.- Power Consumption.- Understanding the Fuss.- Bitcoin Demand History.- Stablecoins.- Use Cases and Applications.- Global Activity - Investment and Projects.- Which Use Cases Are Getting the Attention?.- Standards: IEEE 2418 and ISO/TC 307.- Securing IoT.- Questions for Managers to Ask.- Examples: Appliance Service Plan; Emobility; Utility Metering.
About the author
Dr. Gerald R. Gray is a Senior Technical Executive at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), where he works on special projects within the Information Communication and Cyber Security (ICCS) program, coordinating cross-program and cross-sector collaboration. In this capacity, Dr. Gray also participates in the development of industry standards as a member of International Electrotechnical Committee (IEC) TC57, and IEEE organizations. He is also a member of the GridWise® Architecture Council and a member of the Board of Directors for the Utility Communication Architecture International Users Group (UCAIUG). Dr. Gray earned a Masters of Administrative Sciences in Managing Information Systems from the University of Montana and a Doctor of Philosophy in Organization and Management with a specialization in Information Technology from Capella University.
Summary
Blockchain is a technology that tends to be misunderstood by managers that need to make technology acquisition decisions. This book will provide readers with a basic understanding of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT), the technologies that underpin it, and the technologies DLT is built upon. The book is purposefully not a book on how to code or explore other technical aspects of blockchain (other than the fundamentals). Rather, it provides managers with the basic understanding of the architectures and consensus algorithms, how they work, the design trade-offs of each architecture type, and what problems and use cases the core characteristics of DLT are best suited to solve ─ providing business managers with the core information they need to ask the right questions of vendors when making business value assessments and acquisition decisions.
