How does Blockchain work? (Technically. cryptography, distributed databases)

Communities Science, Engineering, & Security
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Can we gather some resources to help us understand the technical side of how the blockchain works, how blockchain contracts work (e.g. etherium), how Blockstack works, how altcoins aim to improve the tech, or what potential for alt-forks of this tech there is?

I see a lot of people talking about and dealing in cryptocurrency, but to put it bluntly a lot are just plebs trying to profit off of a wave. I want us to understand how it’s built.

@wendell or @ryan have you researched this enough to provide any insight/resources?

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Here ya go



Basic explanation

This is a technical explanation

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Thanks. Would love some resources on Ethereum Contract / arbitrary code. But I will be searching myself in the meantime as well.

[EDIT] The third video is awesome because the guy goes on with a 3h more in-depth course. Good concept overview if you want to eventually get into the programming side, or just understand why it works.

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Simple enough for a truck driver to understand

Personally I am more interested in how blockchain will change our lives, Trunews reports that in was a hot topic at London's tech week.

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Best explanation i found:

https://anders.com/blockchain/

Watch the and play with the website.

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Essentially whenever someone has a coin wallet that information about how much you own is distributed to every other user

When someone makes a transaction that transfer is an amount from one person to another that information is sent out to everyone as a new piece of the chain

The act of mining is actually the mathematical process of decrypting the information and fact checking it against all other previous versions of the chain

Essentially when someone Minds a block it is verifying that the next piece of the chain is in fact legitimate and which case everyone else is updated with the next proven piece

Thus keeping everyone's wallets information up-to-date

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Forgive that despicable talk-to-text Butchery I'm sure you can get the general idea though out of what it sent

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Fintech, related to subject:


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Can't believe you linked a linus tech video to teach people stuff :slight_smile:

The third or last video was really interesting :slight_smile: I enjoyed it.

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Lol gotta give a simple answer before you give a long one

With an understanding of basic coding (furthest topic I got was recursive sorting algorithms) I got interested in how the program works behind the scenes

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Here's a great article on what Ethereum does best, and why ICOs are its newly discovered "killer app": https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-an-initial-coin-offering/

  • How should we keep track of what funding opportunities / requests from new techs arise through Ethereum?
  • What does this say for the value / fluctuations of the Ether coin itself (and Bitcoin)?
  • Does this mean that Ethereum is destined to inevitably spawn a new disruptive replacement that will cause its demise (or at least cause its focus/value to shift away from it for x periods of time)?