This chapter served as an introduction to the technology behind blockchain. The chapter started by explaining that a blockchain is a digital system of recording transactions of assets in a list that is replicated across available nodes in the network. A block in the chain is somewhat analogous to pages in a book.
The chapter continued by answering the question of how a blockchain works, and it described the flow of data in a blockchain once a transaction is submitted, from the broadcast of transactions to all other nodes using a peer-to-peer network to the verification steps in the consensus protocol. I reviewed each step in the flow of data, its purpose, and the changes that occur to the data.
In the next section, you learned what ...