Catching Up to Crypto

CHAPTER 5A Short Course in Blockchain: Hashing, Mining, and Forking

In this chapter I'm going to give you a primer on the core technology that powers crypto: the blockchain. It's important to say up front that crypto is based on code and math; that's what makes it special. And the nitty‐gritty of crypto, the blockchain, is university‐level math that's difficult to grasp. In fact, this chapter is hardly going to scratch the surface of the nuts and bolts of blockchain. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, that's okay – just hang on. If at the end of this chapter you want to learn more you should pursue that curiosity; good blockchain developers are few and far between.

Blockchain 101

“Blockchain” is a confusing term that conjures up mental images that make it harder to conceptualize. You can thank David Chaum for the name. Suffice to say that a blockchain is a database in the same way money is. It's a way to organize information that's easy to sort through. But the beauty of blockchain isn't that it's a new method of storing information (which it is); the beauty is in how the information is put on to this chain of spreadsheets and is shared and distributed across thousands of computers. So let's break down the core elements of blockchain.

Blocks and Chains

The “block” in the blockchain is a spreadsheet with some special instructions and a bunch of transactions. Every blockchain starts with one block – the “genesis” block. After a certain amount of time, the programming of the ...