Azure Blockchain Development Kit for Mobile Apps

Azure Blockchain Development Kit for Mobile Apps

This week, James is joined by friend of the show Marc Mercuri, Program Manager on the Azure Blockchain Development Kit Team, who introduces us to the world of blockchain. He shows us a full end to end scenario of why and how you would use blockchain in applications. He then walks us through the new Azure Blockchain Development Kit that simplifies development using blockchain for web and mobile with some fantastic Xamarin mobile apps.

Consensus in Private Blockchains

Consensus in Private Blockchains

This episode of Blocktalk provides a review of consensus algorithms that are used, primarily for consortium based deployments.  This include the popular Proof of Authority, Proof of Work and a variant of BFT. 

The core concepts of the algorithms are introduced and a demonstration of using the popular GETH client to provision a PoA based network, and how the consensus can be chosen at blockchain creation time, demonstrating the popular pluggable consensus.  Additional details and sample code are available on GitHub: https://aka.ms/bt-consensus9F

IPFS in Azure

IPFS in Azure

This video introduces the use of IPFS (Interplanatory File System) in a consortium setting.  The concepts of how this technology can be helpful to remove centralization of storage that is not part of the block in the blockchain is shown.  Along with this is a short demonstration of how the marketplace offering for IPFS in Azure can make creating these storage networks simple is shown.

Decentralized Identity and Blockchain

Decentralized Identity and Blockchain

This video introduces the concept of decentralized identity and how blockchain enables hosting these identities in a decentralized fashion. The demo provides a walkthrough of a decentralized identity that is anchored on Ethereum blockchain and is consumed using uPort application. 

Additional details and sample code are available on GitHub at  https://github.com/Azure-Samples/blockchain

Introducing the Azure Blockchain Development Kit

Introducing the Azure Blockchain Development Kit

This video introduces the Azure Blockchain Development Kit, highlighting new samples that show case three key themes

  • Connect – Connect users, organizations, and devices to blockchain solutions, highlighting IoT, SMS, and Bots.
  • Integrate – Integrate to existing legacy systems and protocols, highlighting legacy (FTP, Flat File) and media.
  • Deploy – DevOps for blockchain using Azure DevOps and OSS tools for Truffle. Highlighting dev, test, and build pipelines.

Deployment details and sample code are available on GitHub at http://aka.ms/blockchaindevkit

Blockchain for Supply Chain Management

Blockchain for Supply Chain Management

How can blockchain technology help improve the supply chain?

All physical products must take a journey from the factory to the consumer and this journey is called the supply chain. Unfortunately, the path to the consumer isn’t straightforward, there are sometimes dozens of intermediaries involved in this process.

That includes quality assurance, drivers, procurement officers, etc. Blockchain acts as an immutable store of data, and removes the need for one or more third parties. It can help save both businesses and consumers time and money in this case. In this video Siraj Raval demonstrates a solidity app that tracks asset, talk about a real world example called SyncFab, and discuss the different ways blockchain can affect the supply chain.

Code for this video: https://github.com/syncfab/smartcontract