Purpose of the assessment (with ULO Mapping)

This assignment assesses the following Unit Learning Outcomes; students should be able to demonstrate their achievements in them.
b. Apply socio-technical contexts in modern network applications and management;
c. Utilise common and emerging types of middleware to design and manage networked applications;

Assignment #01 Description

Blockchain is a new and upcoming transforming technology designed as a complete decentralised system. "Block" represents the set of records that needs to be saved and "Chain" links those blocks together for security purpose with the help of hashing function. Blockchain is simply a database containing transactions that are validated by network community instead of a single centralised authority. After validation the data in the form of a block is linked to the previous block, hence creating a Blockchain. Blockchain gained its recent popularity because of its applications like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Instructions:

Students need to read three to four articles about Blockchain Applications to explore how these applications work and their different features. Students can choose to research about any Blockchain application, like:
- Bitcoin
- Ethereum
- Truthcoin
- Factom
- Namecoin
The articles must be from the books, conferences or journals. The sources of information must be reported in IEEE format at the end of your report.

- Task 1

Write a report covering and detailing two Blockchain applications while emphasizing on the following aspects:
- Field and Purpose of the application
- Working model of the application
- Scalability issues
- Features and Weaknesses of the application
- Socio-Technical aspects

- Task 2
Prepare a Powerpoint presentation discussing the main features of the decentralised architecture of Blockchain. The Powerpoint presentation should have at least 10 slides and students should present for 6-8 minutes during lab time in Week 8.

Further instructions:

- Do not use Wikipedia as neither source nor reference.
- Read articles from the books or the ones published in journals and conferences for each topic and then rewrite those using your own words.
- Use IEEE style referencing, and make sure to properly reference any diagrams/ graphics.