SUMMARY

Home
Origins
- Origins of Digital Cash
- Why Digital Cash Was Hard
- The Cypherpunk Movement
- David Chaum and DigiCash
- Hashcash
- b-money
- Bit Gold
- Who Was Satoshi Nakamoto?
- The Bitcoin Whitepaper
- The Genesis Block
- Early Bitcoin History
Money and Economics
- Money and Economics
- What Is Money?
- Functions of Money
- Commodity Money
- Fiat Money
- Banking and Credit
- Inflation and Deflation
- Central Banking
- Monetary Policy
- Money Supply
- The Cantillon Effect
- Network Effects in Money
- Bitcoin as Money
- Austrian economics
- Other economic perspectives
Cryptography
- What Cryptography Does
- Hash Functions
- SHA-256
- Hash Collisions
- Preimage Resistance
- Public-Key Cryptography
- Private and Public Keys
- Elliptic Curves
- secp256k1
- Digital Signatures
- ECDSA
- Schnorr Signatures
- Merkle Trees
- Merkle Proofs
- Commitments
- Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Distributed Systems
- Distributed Systems Basics
- Peer-to-Peer Networks
- Replication
- Consensus
- Byzantine Faults
- Byzantine Generals Problem
- Sybil Attacks
- CAP Theorem
- Finality
- Probabilistic Finality
Blockchain Fundamentals
- What Is a Blockchain?
- Blocks
- Block Headers
- Transactions
- Hashes and Block Linking
- Merkle Roots
- Genesis Blocks
- Block Height
- Block Time
- Chain Reorganizations
- Consensus Rules
- Fork Choice
- Permissionless vs Permissioned Networks
Bitcoin
- How Bitcoin Works
- Bitcoin Nodes
- The Bitcoin Network
- Full Nodes
- Light Clients
- Bitcoin Core
- Transactions
- The UTXO Model
- Inputs and Outputs
- Transaction Fees
- The Mempool
- Transaction Confirmation
- Coinbase Transactions
- Bitcoin Script
- ScriptPubKey and ScriptSig
- P2PKH
- P2SH
- SegWit
- Taproot
- Ordinals and Inscriptions
- Mining
  - Proof of Work
  - Mining
  - Mining Difficulty
  - Difficulty Adjustment
  - Nonce
  - Block Rewards
  - The Halving
  - Mining Pools
  - ASICs
  - Hashrate
  - 51% Attacks
  - Energy Consumption
- Monetary policy
  - 21 Million BTC
  - Issuance Schedule
  - Stock-to-Flow
  - Lost Coins
  - Fee Market
  - Long-Term Security Budget
Forks and Protocol Upgrades
- What Is a Fork?
- Temporary Chain Forks
- Soft Forks
- Hard Forks
- Backward Compatibility
- Protocol Upgrades
- BIPs
- Bitcoin Governance
- Miner Signaling
- User-Activated Soft Forks
- Bitcoin Cash
- Bitcoin SV
- SegWit2x
- The Block Size Debate
Wallets and Key Management
- What Is a Wallet?
- Addresses
- Private Keys
- Public Keys
- Seed Phrases
- BIP-39
- HD Wallets
- BIP-32
- BIP-44
- Derivation Paths
- Hot Wallets
- Cold Storage
- Hardware Wallets
- Multisig
- Custodial vs Non-Custodial Wallets
- Key Backup and Recovery
Bitcoin Scaling
- The Scaling Problem
- Block Size
- SegWit as a Scaling Upgrade
- Transaction Batching
- Payment Channels
- Sidechains
- Liquid Network
- Federations
- Statechains
- RGB
- Bitcoin Rollup Proposals
Lightning Network
- Lightning Network
- Payment Channels
- Funding Transactions
- Commitment Transactions
- HTLCs
- Routing Payments
- Liquidity
- Channel Capacity
- Watchtowers
- Lightning Nodes
Ethereum
- What Is Ethereum?
- Ethereum Accounts
- Externally Owned Accounts
- Contract Accounts
- Transactions
- Gas
- Gas Price and Fees
- Blocks
- Ethereum State
- State Trie
- JSON-RPC
- Ethereum Nodes
- Execution Clients
- Consensus Clients
- The Merge
- Proof of Stake
- Validators
- Staking
- Slashing
- Finality
Ethereum Virtual Machine
- The EVM
- Bytecode
- Opcodes
- Stack
- Memory
- Storage
- Calldata
- Message Calls
- Contract Creation
- Gas Accounting
Smart Contracts
- Smart Contracts
- Solidity
- Contract ABI
- Functions
- State Variables
- Mappings
- Events and Logs
- Modifiers
- Errors and Reverts
- Payable Functions
- Inheritance
- Libraries
- Proxy Contracts
- Upgradeable Contracts
- Testing
- Deployment
Tokens
- What Is a Token?
- ERC-20
- Balances
- Transfers
- Allowances and Approvals
- ERC-721
- ERC-1155
- NFT Metadata
- Minting and Burning
- Wrapped Assets
- Wrapped Ether
- Token Supply
Building Web3 Applications
- Web3 Application Architecture
- RPC Providers
- Connecting Wallets
- WalletConnect
- Reading Blockchain State
- Calling Contracts
- Sending Transactions
- Signing Messages
- Typed Data and EIP-712
- Transaction Receipts
- Event Indexing
- viem
- wagmi
DeFi
- What Is DeFi?
- Stablecoins
- Collateralized Stablecoins
- Centralized Stablecoins
- Decentralized Exchanges
- Automated Market Makers
- Constant Product Formula
- Liquidity Pools
- Liquidity Providers
- Impermanent Loss
- Slippage
- Lending
- Borrowing
- Collateral
- Liquidations
- Flash Loans
- Oracles
- Yield
- Staking vs Lending
- Uniswap
- Aave
- MakerDAO / Sky
- Curve
Layer 2 and Scaling
- Why Layer 2 Exists
- Layer 1 vs Layer 2
- Rollups
- Optimistic Rollups
- Fraud Proofs
- Zero-Knowledge Rollups
- Validity Proofs
- Sequencers
- Data Availability
- Blobs
- EIP-4844
- Bridges
- Canonical Bridges
- Cross-Chain Messaging
- Arbitrum
- Optimism
- Base
- zkSync
- Starknet
Blockchain Security
- Security Model
- Private Key Theft
- Seed Phrase Theft
- Phishing
- Malicious Signatures
- Approval Attacks
- Reentrancy
- Access Control
- Integer and Precision Bugs
- Oracle Manipulation
- Flash Loan Attacks
- Front Running
- MEV
- Bridge Exploits
- Upgrade Risks
- Smart Contract Auditing
- Formal Verification
Blockchain Infrastructure
- Infrastructure Overview
- Running a Node
- RPC
- RPC Providers
- Archive Nodes
- Indexers
- The Graph
- Block Explorers
- Mempool Infrastructure
- Blockchain Data Pipelines
- Event Processing
- Reorg Handling
- Webhooks
- Caching
- Reliability
Governance
- Protocol Governance
- Bitcoin Governance
- Ethereum Governance
- BIPs
- EIPs
- Core Developers
- Validators and Miners
- Users and Node Operators
- DAOs
- On-Chain Governance
- Off-Chain Governance
Regulation and Society
- Regulation and Society
- Custody
- Exchanges
- KYC and AML
- Privacy
- Financial Surveillance
- Censorship Resistance
- Self-Custody
- Stablecoins and Dollarization
- CBDCs
Reference
- Progress
- Writing guide
- Contributing
- Glossary
- Resources