Decentralized Ledgers Book

Introduction

Chapter 1: Historical Context

Democratization of knowledge. Money, language, printing.

Decentralization and resilience.

Git.

"Blockchain"

Chapter 2: Hashing

Fingerprinting, naming data.

SHA implementation.

Chapter 3: Asymmetric Cryptography

Key generation, digital signatures.

RSA implementation, ECDSA implementation.

Chapter 4: Merkle DAG

Graphs.

Directed Graphs for tracking state.

DAG's for tracking state without cycles.

DAGs with hashes for data integrity.

Bitcoin block structure.

Chapter 5: Consensus

Byzantine General's problem. Proof of work, proof of stake.

Hashcash,

Casper.

Chapter 6: Smart Contracts

Bitcoin script and static analysis.

EVM/Solidity, Turing completeness.

Simplicity and declarative semantics.

Chapter 7: User Experience

Transactions, addresses, wallets.

Transaction chains, quantum safe addresses.

Bitcoin transaction format.

BIP32, Hirearchical deterministic wallets.

Chapter 8: Governance

The five polities of a cryptocurrency: users, markets, miners, developers, and exchanges.

Upgrading decentralized networks, flagging and BIPs. Generally, requires at least 3 of these groups to agree.

Appendix A: Whitepaper

Guided walkthrough of the Bitcoin white paper.

Appendix B: Scaling

Blocksize debate.

Offchain transactions.

Segwit.

Sidechains, lighting network.

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