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Preface

Writing Mastering Ethereum

Intended Audience

Why Are There Bees on the Cover?

The Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is a species that exhibits highly complex behavior that, ultimately, benefits the hive. Each individual bee operates freely under a set of simple rules and communicate findings of importance by 'dancing'. This dance carries valuable information like the position of the sun and relative geographical coordinates from the hive to the target in question. By interpreting this dance, the bees can relay on this information or act on it, thus, carrying out the will of the 'hive-mind'.

Although bees form a caste-based society and have a queen for producing offspring, there is no central authority or leader in a beehive. The highly intelligent and sophisticated behavior exhibited by a multi thousand member colony is an emergent property from the interaction of the individuals in a social network.

Nature demonstrates that decentralized systems can be resilient and can produce emergent complexity and incredible sophistication without the need for a central authority, hierarchy, or complex parts.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.

Constant width

Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

Constant width bold

Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.

Constant width italic

Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.

Tip

This icon signifies a tip or suggestion.
Note

This icon signifies a general note.
Warning

This icon indicates a warning or caution.

Code Examples

The examples are illustrated in Solidity, JavaScript and Python, and using the command line of a Unix-like operating system. All code snippets are available in the GitHub repository in the code subdirectory of the main repository. Fork the book code, try the code examples, or submit corrections via GitHub:

All the code snippets can be replicated on most operating systems with a minimal installation of compilers, interpreters and libraries for the corresponding languages. Where necessary, we provide basic installation instructions and step-by-step examples of the output of those instructions.

Some of the code snippets and code output have been reformatted for print. In all such cases, the lines have been split by a backslash (\) character, followed by a newline character. When transcribing the examples, remove those two characters and join the lines again and you should see identical results as shown in the example.

All the code snippets use real values and calculations where possible, so that you can build from example to example and see the same results in any code you write to calculate the same values. For example, the private keys and corresponding public keys and addresses are all real. The sample transactions, contracts, blocks, and blockchain references have all been introduced in the actual Ethereum blockchain and are part of the public ledger, so you can review them on any Ethereum system.

Using Code Examples

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if example code is offered with this book, you may use it in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Mastering Ethereum by Andreas M. Antonopoulos (O’Reilly). Copyright 2018 Andreas M. Antonopoulos LLC, 978-1-491-97194-9.”

Some editions of this book are offered under an open source license, such as CC-BY-NC, in which case the terms of that license apply.

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at [email protected].

Ethereum Addresses and Transactions in This Book

The Ethereum addresses, transactions, keys, QR codes, and blockchain data used in this book are, for the most part, real. That means you can browse the blockchain, look at the transactions offered as examples, retrieve them with your own scripts or programs, etc.

However, note that the private keys used to construct addresses are either printed in this book, or have been "burned." That means that if you send money to any of these addresses, the money will either be lost forever, or in some cases everyone who can read the book can take it using the private keys printed in here.

Warning

DO NOT SEND MONEY TO ANY OF THE ADDRESSES IN THIS BOOK. Your money will be taken by another reader, or lost forever.

O’Reilly Safari

Note

Safari (formerly Safari Books Online) is a membership-based training and reference platform for enterprise, government, educators, and individuals.

Members have access to thousands of books, training videos, Learning Paths, interactive tutorials, and curated playlists from over 250 publishers, including O’Reilly Media, Harvard Business Review, Prentice Hall Professional, Addison-Wesley Professional, Microsoft Press, Sams, Que, Peachpit Press, Adobe, Focal Press, Cisco Press, John Wiley & Sons, Syngress, Morgan Kaufmann, IBM Redbooks, Packt, Adobe Press, FT Press, Apress, Manning, New Riders, McGraw-Hill, Jones & Bartlett, and Course Technology, among others.

For more information, please visit http://oreilly.com/safari.

How to Contact Us

Please address comments and questions concerning this book to the publisher:

  • O’Reilly Media, Inc.
  • 1005 Gravenstein Highway North
  • Sebastopol, CA 95472
  • 800-998-9938 (in the United States or Canada)
  • 707-829-0515 (international or local)
  • 707-829-0104 (fax)

To comment or ask technical questions about this book, send email to [email protected].

For more information about our books, courses, conferences, and news, see our website at http://www.oreilly.com.

Find us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/oreilly

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/oreillymedia

Contacting the Author

You can contact me, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, on my personal site: https://antonopoulos.com/

Information about "Mastering Ethereum" as well as the Open Edition and translations are available on: https://ethereumbook.info/

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aantonop

Follow me on Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/aantonop

Many thanks to all my patrons who support my work through monthly donations. You can follow my Patreon page here: https://patreon.com/aantonop

Acknowledgments

I owe my love of words and books to my mother, Theresa, who raised me in a house with books lining every wall. My mother also bought me my first computer in 1982, despite being a self-described technophobe. My father, Menelaos, a civil engineer who just published his first book at 80 years old, was the one who taught me logical and analytical thinking and a love of science and engineering.

Thank you all for supporting me throughout this journey.

Early Release Draft (GitHub Contributions)

Many contributors offered comments, corrections, and additions to the early-release draft on GitHub. Thank you all for your contributions to this book.

Following is a list of notable GitHub contributors, including their GitHub ID in parentheses:

  • Christopher Gondek (christophergondek)

  • Javier Rojas (fjrojasgarcia)

  • Jon Ramvi (ramvi)

  • Kevin Carter (kcar1)

  • Krzysztof Nowak (krzysztof)

  • Liang Ma (liangma)

  • Matthew Sedaghatfar (sedaghatfar)

  • Mike Pumphrey (bmmpxf)

  • Qiao Wang (qiaowang26)

  • Will Binns (wbnns)

  • Bryant Eisenbach (fubuloubu)

  • Assaf Yossifoff (assafy)

  • Nagesh Subrahmanyam (chainhead)

  • Xavier Lavayssière (xalava)

  • Vignesh Karthikeyan (meshugah)

  • Adam Zaremba (zaremba)

  • Steve Klise (sklise)

  • Jonathan Velando (rigzba21)

  • Pierre-Jean Subervie (pjsub)

  • Martin Berger (drmartinberger)

  • Jason Hill (denifednu)

  • Diego H. Gurpegui (diegogurpegui)

  • Zhen Wang (zmxv)

  • Roger Häusermann (haurog)

  • Joel Gugger (guggerjoel)

  • Yash Bhutwala (yashbhutwala)

  • Yeramin Santana (ysfdev)

  • Nichanan Kesonpat (nichanank)

  • Tim Nugent (timnugent)

  • Pong Cheecharern (Pongch)