Hey everyone, welcome back to the course. In the last session, we discussed about the blockchain technology stack. Till now, we have seen how blockchain utilizes different external services apart from the core blockchain engine in order to provide some feasible solutions for various problems under multiple domains. In this lecture, we are going to talk about the blockchain ecosystem. You are already familiar with the blockchain architecture. You also know about how the blockchain works.

But your end goal is to establish a concrete ecosystem around your solution where the project continuously grows. And that's why we need to define all the different entities which are going to interact with over blockchain. This is to make sure that we have a feasible and efficient ecosystem around over solution. Typically, in a blockchain ecosystem, we always start with the blockchain project. We need to make sure that we have a specific project or a solution available for the problem at hand. It should not be the case where we are taking up a use case, which is not at all suitable for blockchain solution.

Blockchain is not a silver bullet. The blockchain is not a solution to solve world hunger and poverty. Utilize the blockchain only where it fits in efficiently. We need to work with the problem we're employing blockchain reaps benefits instead of increasing overheads. So the first step Building the blockchain ecosystem is to provide a blockchain project. There are already multiple projects running throughout the world.

Bitcoin was the first project which was released in 2009. And introduced us to the world of blockchain. We also have other projects like aetherium, which brought us the concept of smart contracts. Apart from aetherium, we have Neo which is more like a Chinese aetherium blockchain. And it introduced us to the idea of using Python programming language for the creation of smart contracts. We also have a stellar blockchain, which provides extensive API's for developers to build applications fast.

So we need to either select a project which is already existing in the world or create a blockchain project from the start. But for building the blockchain ecosystem, we need to have a foundation blockchain project over which the other entities will revolve around. Once we have finalized the blockchain project, the next thing we need to do is to get over blockchain users who are blockchain users. blockchain users are regular people like you and me, who make use of blockchain or tokens to achieve some results. Users can also be traders or investors who might store multiple cryptocurrencies at their end, in the hope to sell them later at a higher price. We require users who would use over a blockchain project.

For example, suppose we are creating a solution for a ticketing system, where people will come to over application and buy movie or concert tickets. For our projects, users are going to be the people who are going to watch a movie or attend a concert, we need to build a utility for our projects, only then users are going to use them. For our ticketing system, we can control the reselling of the tickets, or even control the distribution of tickets, thus creating a utility for users that nobody can force the tickets or resell the tickets at a higher price. Similarly, Bitcoin was built with the utility of serving payment for goods and services. Currently, Bitcoin blockchain is having more than 50,000 merchants registered across the globe, including Microsoft, PayPal and subway. Although Bitcoin is the first mover in the space of blockchain, it always keeps A large part of blockchain dependent on its users also holding the high utility for the blockchain.

We also need to look into such potential opportunities for users and how they can benefit from over blockchain project. Asking questions to oneself about what type of problem is your project solving? What kind of users would your project require? What are the different utilities for your project apart from the given issue will help you build a quality product. You can have something similar to Bitcoin blockchain, providing high efficiency against a single problem. Or you can create something which serves multiple issues.

Always keep in mind that if you have users for your project, your project will keep on growing. But if you don't have users for your project, then it might also shut down Now we have defined our project and its users. But the users who are using over blockchain need to trade the asset or cryptocurrencies defined under the blockchain project. They require a system from where the users can buy and sell tokens or assets. Every blockchain project has a robust exchange working under the blockchain ecosystem. In core, what is a blockchain exchange.

Blockchain exchanges are developed by blockchain team or community for maintaining the tokens of the blockchain projects. A typical exchange is defined in such a way to find the cheapest rates for the cryptocurrencies, making it more affordable and tradable for all the users. blockchain exchanges mostly work on the principle of demand and supply people who want to be Buy tokens raise a request for the demand of cryptocurrency and people who already hold the tokens can service this need, sell off their cryptocurrencies over the exchange. Usually, blockchain exchange doesn't store the tokens by themselves. They only help users in exchanging the tokens. Although they might change some fees over the transactions or withdrawals.

The current exchanges even add additional security layer on user accounts by only allowing the access of services with hardware wallets. Most of the blockchain exchanges are created to serve multiple currencies, thus enabling the users to keep multiple private keys and addresses. Now we have a structure ready for users to interact with blockchain. After this, we require a function to maintain the integrity of data uploaded by users over the blockchain. blockchain miners maintain this integrity and immutability of data. Miners over the blockchain provide the validation and verification of all the data in our blockchain system.

Miners work continuously to protect the blockchain. In public blockchain, miners are like independent nodes, which validate and confirm the blocks over the blockchain. Miners make sure that integrity is maintained continuously throughout the system. In private blockchain, we might have central organizations who have authority over the nodes in the network. And in that case, we can have predefined miners for the system. In the case of public blockchain, anyone can be a miner.

Anyone who has a computer and runs the blockchain code over it can be a miner. Since the integrity of blockchain is directly related to the number of independent nodes on the network, there is also a need to add incentive for miners for helping in securing the network. Different block chains utilize different consensus algorithms. However, most of the block chains contain some form of rewards to provide the incentives. There could be a reward system or transaction fees which could be provided to the miners as rewards. Now we have most of our system running.

We are almost done building over ecosystem. We started with blockchain project for the problem at hand Added utility for the same in order to maintain the users. After that we provided capabilities to the miners to provide security and preserve the integrity of data over blockchain. We also talked about blockchain exchanges, where blockchain users can. We also talk about blockchain exchanges where blockchain users can transact for tokens or cryptocurrencies. But the core of any project is always going to be the developers who are going to build a blockchain ecosystem.

Blockchain technology is dependent on the potential of the developers working behind the project. A strong team of developers can lead a successful blockchain project. There are two kinds of blockchain developers under the blockchain ecosystem. The first one Are the blockchain developers who build the blockchain core with different levels of functionalities and algorithms. The other ones are the decentralized application developers who build the applications on top of the blockchain, utilizing the features of blockchain and showcasing them to the end users. The development of smart contracts has created a lot of opportunities for businesses to extensively use blockchain and utilize it in their use cases.

After setting everything up, we require a front end application where the users can interact with blockchain platform. Applications should be built with good user experience and make sure that the users can utilize the power of the blockchain effectively most of the block Projects already have multiple applications running over them. If you are building your own ecosystem, make sure you provide a suitable user application to showcase what you are trying to achieve. Some of the examples of the decentralized applications are crypt pad, which is a decentralized document sharing platform similar to Google Docs. Human IQ is also one of the startup from London and aims to connect the unbanked people with the global economy. At your which is one more example is a peer to peer, Oracle and prediction marketplace.

And finally, filament which is bridging the gap between IoT and blockchain. Various other applications are also available in the market. Always make sure that when you are building blockchain ecosystems You must have a blockchain application showcasing the users the utility and the power of your project. This was about the blockchain ecosystem. In the next lecture, we are going to talk about the comparison between different blockchain platforms. If you have any queries feel free to contact us at info at the rate v two blocks.com