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How networks work
Consensus is not agreement about truth or value; it is agreement about the order of transactions and which valid history counts.
10lessons
77 minreading in all
Working knowledgewhere it starts
01
Lessons in this track
01
What is a blockchain network actually agreeing on?Consensus is not agreement about truth or value; it is agreement about the order of transactions and which valid history counts.
7 min · Working knowledge
02
Proof of work: what the electricity actually buysMining converts energy into a cost of rewriting history; the security claim rests on that cost, not on the arithmetic being difficult.
7 min · Working knowledge
03
Proof of stake: the bond a validator postsStaking swaps an external energy cost for capital locked inside the system that the protocol can destroy when a validator signs two histories.
8 min · Working knowledge
04
Why confirmed means different things on different chainsProbabilistic depth, economic finality and per-block agreement are three different promises, and confirmation counts are institutions translating them.
8 min · Advanced
05
Forks and reorganizations, and what each one costsA fork may be a one-block race, a coordinated rule change, or an attack; the three differ in cost by orders of magnitude.
8 min · Advanced
06
Who miners and validators are, and how they get paidBlock producers are businesses with power bills or locked capital, earning from new issuance, user fees, and the value of ordering transactions.
7 min · Foundation
07
The security budget and what happens as the subsidy fallsBlock rewards pay for security now; on capped-supply chains fees must grow into that role, and no mechanism guarantees they will.
8 min · Advanced
08
What a node does, and why running one mattersA full node checks every rule itself; light clients, archive nodes and hosted endpoints each trade part of that checking for convenience.
7 min · Foundation
09
How a network upgrades itself, and who actually decidesChanges travel through proposals, client releases and coordinated activation, and the decisive power belongs to whoever chooses to run the software.
8 min · Working knowledge
10
What a layer 2 inherits from its layer 1, and what it does notRollups borrow data availability and settlement from a base chain, while sequencing, upgrade keys and withdrawal delays remain their own risks.
9 min · Advanced
10 lessons
DeFi
10 lessons
Institutional access and regulation
10 lessons
Market structure
10 lessons
Protocol economics
12 lessons
Risk
8 lessons
Stablecoins and payments
10 lessons
Start here
10 lessons
Supply and issuance
6 lessons
Using this site
12 lessons