Topic
Content
BlockchainEpisode 04
Why agreement is the hard part of every distributed system, what the impossibility results actually say, and how proof of work and BFT voting make different bargains with the same problem.
Start tutorial
BlockchainEpisode 03
Follow one transaction from the moment it is signed to the moment it is final — keys, mempool, block assembly, validation and propagation, with nothing skipped.
Start tutorial
Blockchain
Five proposals that come up repeatedly, why each one fails on inspection, and what the person asking for it usually actually needs.
Read
BlockchainEpisode 02
A database with an audit log is cheaper, faster and simpler than any blockchain. This is the specific set of conditions under which it stops being enough.
Start tutorial
Blockchain
Blockchain was not invented to be a database. It was invented to answer one question about digital money that had gone unanswered for twenty years.
Read
BlockchainEpisode 01
A practical introduction to blockchain — what the data structure actually is, why it exists, and how it changes the way a group of systems maintains a shared record.
Start tutorial
Study materials
The original 2008 paper. Nine pages, and still the clearest statement of the double-spending problem and the proof-of-work answer to it.
Open resource
Condensed notes for the series: the vocabulary, the four conditions, the consensus comparison table and the questions to ask of any chain.
The minimal chain built across the series: block structure, hash linking, validation and a toy consensus loop, in one runnable project.
Reference for accounts, transactions, gas, the EVM and the node software. The section on transaction lifecycle pairs directly with episode three.
Open resource
Operating a permissioned network in practice — validator configuration, QBFT settings, genesis files and the parameters that decide how the chain behaves under load.
Open resource
