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You're reading from  Mastering Blockchain - Fourth Edition

Product typeBook
Published inMar 2023
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803241067
Edition4th Edition
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Imran Bashir
Imran Bashir
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Imran Bashir

Imran Bashir has an M.Sc. in Information Security from Royal Holloway, University of London, and has a background in software development, solution architecture, infrastructure management, and IT service management. He is also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the British Computer Society (BCS). Imran has extensive experience in both the public and financial sectors, having worked on large-scale IT projects in the public sector before moving to the financial services industry. Since then, he has worked in various technical roles for different financial companies in Europe's financial capital, London.
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Blockchain

As we discussed in Chapter 1, Blockchain 101, a blockchain is a distributed ledger of transactions. Specifically, from Bitcoin's perspective, the blockchain can be defined as a public, distributed ledger holding a timestamped, ordered, and immutable record of all transactions on the Bitcoin network. Transactions are picked up by miners and bundled into blocks for mining. Each block is identified by a hash and is linked to its previous block by referencing the previous block's hash in its header.

The data structure of a Bitcoin block is shown in the following table:

Field Size Description
Block size 4 bytes The size of the block.
Block header 80 bytes This includes fields from the block header described in the next section.
Transaction counter Variable The field contains the total number of transactions in the block, including the coinbase transaction. Size ranges from 1-9 bytes.
Transactions Variable All transactions in the block.

The block header mentioned...

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Mastering Blockchain - Fourth Edition
Published in: Mar 2023Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803241067

Author (1)

author image
Imran Bashir

Imran Bashir has an M.Sc. in Information Security from Royal Holloway, University of London, and has a background in software development, solution architecture, infrastructure management, and IT service management. He is also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the British Computer Society (BCS). Imran has extensive experience in both the public and financial sectors, having worked on large-scale IT projects in the public sector before moving to the financial services industry. Since then, he has worked in various technical roles for different financial companies in Europe's financial capital, London.
Read more about Imran Bashir