Blockchain technology is one of the most talked about disruptive technologies of the decade, and Ethereum is the most popular blockchain implementation. Blockchain technology holds the promise of making business interactions faster, cheaper, and more trustworthy.

Ethereum For Dummies introduces blockchain and Ethereum, covers their effect on today’s ways of doing business, and teaches you how to design and develop your own Ethereum decentralized applications. You learn how to set up a development environment and write smart contracts that create and control transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.

About This Book

Blockchain technology has the potential to change how business operates. The unprecedented opportunities blockchain promises to provide include easy data sharing among large groups, transparency, trusted transactions, and complete historical audit trails. Today, most organizations protect transaction data as a valued asset, but sharable data could change everything. Sharing trusted data with many participants in a business process has the potential of revolutionizing how organizations interact with one another, reducing the need and cost of middlemen and providing unprecedented transparency to business processes.

Staying current and pertinent means becoming part of this emerging blockchain business model. Ethereum For Dummies gives you the foundation of blockchain and Ethereum, and teaches you, in clear language, how to design and write your own software for the Ethereum blockchain environment.

Foolish Assumptions

I don’t make many assumptions about your experience with blockchain technology, application programming, or cryptography, but I do assume the following:

• You have a computer and access to the Internet.
• You know the basics of using your computer and the Internet, and how to download and install programs.
• You know how to find files on your computer’s disk and how to create folders.
• You’re new to blockchain and you aren’t an experienced software developer. If you already know how to write software applications, you can skip the sections on programming basics.

Icons Used in This Book

The Tip icon marks tips (duh!) and shortcuts that you can use to make learning and using Ethereum and Solidity easier.

Remember icons mark the information that’s especially important to know. To siphon off the most important information in each chapter, just skim through these icons.

The Technical Stuff icon marks information of a highly technical nature that you can normally skip over.

The Warning icon tells you to watch out! It marks important information that may save you headaches when writing your own blockchain applications.

Beyond the Book

In addition to the material in the print or e-book you’re reading right now, this product also comes with some access-anywhere goodies on the web. Check out the free cheat sheet for more on Ethereum and Solidity at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/ethereumfd.

You’ll find summary information on Ethereum and Solidity tools as well as tips on how to use them effectively. The cheat sheet is a reference to use over and over as you gain experience in developing Ethereum decentralize applications.

In addition, if you’d rather download the code you see in this book instead of typing it, go to www.dummies.com/go/ethereumfd. You can download zip files for each of the projects you’ll create to develop and test smart contracts.

Where to Go from Here

The Dummies series tells you what you need to know and how to do the things you need to do to get the results you want. Readers don’t have to read the entire book to just learn about some topics. For example, if you just want to learn about smart contracts, you can jump right to Chapters 8 and 9. On the other hand, if you need to set up your own development environment, read Part 2, which tells you how to do that with clear, step-by-step instructions.