Nearly a decade ago cryptocurrencies came into existence, but it was not until 2017 when they expanded considerably. Thus, blockchains still remain in their initial stages, but they will definitely greatly influence financial systems, countries’ economies and the life of an everyday man in the future. This master’s thesis, which consists of five main chapters, is roughly divided into two parts. The first part, which covers the first two chapters of the thesis, describes in detail the main characteristics of the most important blockchains Bitcoin and Ethereum and presents their functionality.
The second part of the thesis explains how to establish a development environment for writing basic smart contracts in the programming language Solidity. Then follows a description of the ERC20 token standard which determines a common list of rules that need to be applied in Ethereum. The last chapter focuses on computer security when developing smart contracts, shows, through examples, good and bad practices and security deficiencies, and finally, lists some of the most basic examples of known attacks.
|