Preface

Over the past 10 years, blockchain and its affiliated technologies have been used to add transparency and dis-intermediate unnecessary parties involved in critical processes. Along similar lines, AI has been adopted to optimize processes and predict outcomes in an accurate and cheap way. Together, AI and blockchain are catalyzing the pace of enterprise innovation. The convergence of these two technologies is expected to revolutionize some aspects of the digital landscape as we know it today. This book is a guide to help you understand the basic concepts of blockchain and AI, analyze their use cases, and implement these technologies across various industries such as healthcare, finance, trade, and supply chain management. The book also guides you to build applications using Ethereum, machine learning, and MóiBit.

Who this book is for

This book is for blockchain and AI architects, developers, data scientists, data engineers, and evangelists who want to bring the power of AI to blockchain applications. If you want a perfect blend of theoretical and practical use cases to understand how to implement smart cognitive insights in blockchain solutions, this book is what you need! Having some familiarity with the concepts involved in machine learning and blockchain is required.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Blockchain, helps you understand the basics of blockchain and the contrasts between various forms and implementations. If you are already comfortable with the basics of blockchain and its applications, you may skip this chapter and start with Chapter 2, Introduction to the AI Landscape.

Chapter 2, Introduction to the AI Landscape, as the name suggests, introduces you to the basics of AI and its history, and draws contrasts between some of its basic forms and implementations. If you are already comfortable with the basics of AI and its applications, you can directly head to Chapter 4, AI- and Blockchain-Driven Databases.

Chapter 3, Domain-Specific Applications of AI and Blockchain, covers some of the well-known applications of blockchain and AI.

Chapter 4, AI- and Blockchain-Driven Databases, is crucial for learning how to connect blockchain with AI. We will be introducing and contrasting traditional data management tools and decentralized databases, as well as filesystems.

Chapter 5, Empowering Blockchain Using AI, covers some of the exclusive applications that use both AI and blockchain to address some real-world challenges.

Chapter 6, Cryptocurrency and Artificial Intelligence, examines some of the applications of AI in cryptocurrency trading.

Chapter 7, Development Life Cycle of a DIApp, introduces you to the DIApp design pattern and outlines the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) processes involved.

Chapter 8, Implementing DIApps, demonstrates how to build a live application that utilizes blockchain, AI, and decentralized databases to solve a real-world challenge.

Chapter 9, The Future of AI with Blockchain, ends the book by suggesting new use cases to analyze and ways to apply the learnings from the book to build your own DIApp.

To get the most out of this book

Although we don't expect you to be thoroughly acquainted with the basics of blockchain and AI, it would be helpful to be familiar with these technologies. Also, one of the learning outcomes for the book is to see how to build a DIApp, which combines the best of blockchain and AI. If you are interested in learning how to build a DIApp, you should be familiar with the basics of Solidity smart contracts, machine learning, and Python.

Software/hardware covered in the book	OS requirements
Developing a DIApp that can help track COVID-19 infections in animals and objects requires the following: Python 3.7 Node.js 12 Firefox or a Chromium-based browser with access to the internet	macOS Mojave or higher Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or higher

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code via the GitHub repository (link available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

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We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

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Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk image file as another disk in your system."

A block of code is set as follows:

modifier onlyBy(address _account) {
       require(
           msg.sender == _account,
           "Sender not authorized to update this mapping!"
       );
       _; // The "_;"! will be replaced by the actual function body when the modifier is used.
   }

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

just run-server

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "The rules of creating blocks and the acceptance of blocks are specified by consensus algorithms called PoW or Proof of Stake (PoS)."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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