blockchain.md

• Basic Concepts Of The Blockchain.
  • The Short Unofficial Definition
    • Blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, the special block & chain structure and crypotography make the distributed ledger trustless.
  • The Basic Characteristics: Distributed, trustless, immutable, accountable -> Therefore can be DECENTRALIZED
    • Distributed: distributed ledger, managed by peer-to-peer(p2p) network (For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks)
      • Centralized: all nodes are connected to the central node. Lead to single point of failure, scaling issue, and inefficiency problem
    • Trustless: It is Anti-fraud by consensus mechanism design (PoW made bitcoin the first digital currency to solve the double spending problem without the need of a trusted authority or central server.)
    • Immutable: Records are immutable by blocks & chaining design (Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires collusion of the network majority.)
    • Accountable: Records are accountable by cryptography implementation
  • Introduction To Bitcoin.
    • "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", authored by the name Satoshi Nakamoto in Oct., 2008.
    • It's released as open-source software in Jan., 2009.
    • It's blockchain's first successful application(project), has all of the basic characteristics of blockchain.