The Helium Cryptocurrency Project

In this chapter, we shall begin the construction of the Helium cryptocurrency. Our implementation is going to include all of the features that you expect in a production-quality cryptocurrency. Helium is modeled after Bitcoin, which is the canonical standard. We will implement Helium in Python. Python is a simple yet powerful language whose syntax is lucid and exceptionally easy to understand. Python is an ideal language for clearly exposing the algorithms and techniques that constitute the backbone of a cryptocurrency. The downside of using Python is that it is an interpreted language and thus inherently slow. This limitation makes it unsuitable for a production environment.