A Tutorial On Creating a Blockchain and Cryptocurrency with Consensus Protocol in Python

Abstract

The concept of decentralization has gained a lot of focus when it comes to Blockchain. The Blockchain technology is a decentralized peer to peer distributed ledger. Many industries have been using Distributed Ledgers (DTL) before the blockchain technology. But the state of the art technology has overshadow the use of all DTLs due to its immutable nature. With the use of this technology new horizons of innovation has been explored. Bitcoin, the first cyrptocurrency, has used the blockchain technology which has received extensive attentions. In this paper, we have addressed the mechanism of the blockchain technology and a detailed tutorial of how to implement it practically. Specifically we have focused on the practical implementation of how to create a blockchain, mine a block and create a cryptocurrency. Secondly, there is detailed discussion on major platform i.e. bitcoin in which blockchain has been explored a lot. Finally towards the end, the Proof of Work Consensus algorithm is elaborated in detail. Our goal is to help readers easily understand the mechanism along with the important features of the blockchain without having to read all the blockchain specifications and application or the state-of-the-art papers that generally describe the system.