Our course "Learn Blockchain from 0 to 1" has a total of 25 lectures. The core of lectures 1-11 is about Bitcoin, and the core of lectures 12-25 is about blockchain. In lecture 12, we reviewed the contents of lectures 1-11 as a whole. Here we will briefly mention them and mainly review the core contents of blockchain in lectures 12-25:
The first lecture, "The Evolution of Currency in Human Society", focuses on two points: the background of the birth of Bitcoin and blockchain. First, human economic activities promote the emergence of decentralized digital currencies, and Bitcoin is the representative of decentralized digital currencies; the Internet has brought human society into the information age, and blockchain will lead human society into the era of value transfer.
In the second lecture, "Bitcoin's transfer mechanism and seven required terms", we must remember the seven core terms: mining, miners, computing power, proof of work, proof of equity, blocks and blockchain.
Lecture 3: "How Bitcoin Transfers Work". The key thing we need to remember is that Bitcoin's accounting uses a competitive accounting method, and while accounting, you can get Bitcoin rewards and transaction fee rewards. This simultaneous accounting reward is also the only mechanism for Bitcoin issuance.
Lecture 4: "The Technical Origin of Bitcoin". In this lecture, we talked about how the "decentralized" feature relies on asymmetric encryption and distributed storage technology; the "unalterable" feature relies on proof of work, consensus mechanism, and longest chain mechanism; and the "unforgeable" feature relies on the UTXO structure.
Lecture 5: "The meaning of Bitcoin's price". Bitcoin has gone through a process from nothing to something. Its price is determined by its value and affected by supply and demand. The factors affecting supply and demand are diverse and global.
Lecture 6: "The Upstream of Bitcoin - Mining (Part 1)", when choosing a mining machine, you must consider three things: computing power, power consumption, and historical reputation.
Lecture 7: "Bitcoin's Upstream - Mining (Part 2)", in this lecture we talked about operating a mining farm, which requires four major costs. The operation and design of the mining farm have been professionalized. There are two cooperation models for mining pools: PPS and PPLNS. PPS is that the mining pool prepays the miners in advance based on the miners' computing power after theoretically calculating the income that can be obtained, so the miners can get a fixed income; PPLNS is different. It is based on the situation of block production and the proportion of each miner's computing power, so that each miner can get income dynamically.
Lecture 8: "Bitcoin Midstream - Trading". In the absence of a license, the key to judging the quality of a trading platform is to look at the market depth and liquidity of the platform.
Lecture 9: "Bitcoin's Midstream - Storage". Depending on whether the complete blockchain data needs to be synchronized, wallets can be divided into: full-node wallets, light wallets and centralized wallets; We have made 4 suggestions for storing and managing Bitcoin: choose a wallet from the Bitcoin official website or other digital asset official websites, download from official channels, back up private keys in a timely manner, and pay attention to the development of technology in a timely manner.
Lecture 10: "Bitcoin Expansion and Fork". A hard fork is when the Bitcoin protocol rules change, the old nodes that have changed refuse to accept the blocks created by the new nodes, and the blockchain will be divided into two independent chains; a soft fork is when the Bitcoin protocol rules change, the old nodes will not be aware that the rules have changed, and continue to accept the blocks created by the new nodes according to the changed rules.
Lecture 11: "Changes in Bitcoin Policies in Countries Around the World", we mentioned that Germany was the first country to recognize the legal status of Bitcoin. Russia has experienced a transition from prohibition to support. The United States is at the forefront of regulation. Japan began to accept Bitcoin as a legal payment in April 2017. The policies of different countries are also constantly changing.
Lecture 12: The Birth of Blockchain Satoshi Nakamoto created the Bitcoin blockchain through a combination of technologies such as timestamps, proof of work, asymmetric encryption, and UTXO. There are three technical problems with Bitcoin: 1) the scripting language is too complex and development is too difficult; 2) the ecosystem foundation is poor and there are not enough participants; 3) the scripting language does not meet the "Turing complete" standard, which limits further use. These three problems led to the birth of other blockchain projects, the typical representative of which is Ethereum.
Lecture 13: Consensus Mechanism of Blockchain, in this lecture we talked about proof of work, longest chain mechanism, and proof of stake. Proof of work is used to prove that we have done a certain amount of work and have the right to keep accounts. Each block of the blockchain must refer to its previous block to get rewards, which is called the longest chain mechanism. Proof of stake is used to compete for the right to keep accounts based on the number of coins you own in this network.
Lecture 14: "Blockchain Industry Development", in addition to the various attentions paid to blockchain by investment institutions, we also learned about "side chains", which can transfer value in both directions with the main chain to make up for the lack of main chain functions. The side chain and the main chain are isolated from each other, so even if the side chain is attacked, it will not harm the main chain.
Lecture 15: Classification and Application of Blockchain Projects. Blockchain projects are roughly divided into four categories: Category 1: Digital assets, which are divided into general digital assets and anonymous digital assets. They are used for transactions like currency; Category 2: Smart contract platform. It mainly provides the underlying platform for developers to implement decentralized applications on it; Category 3: Global payment. It mainly realizes the transaction of digital currency between countries and between banks; Category 4: Platform application. Most applications are built on Ethereum, covering multiple fields including finance, social networking, games, property rights protection, etc., which is currently the fastest growing field of blockchain assets.
Lecture 16: "General Project Assets". In this lecture, we talked about 5 general digital assets, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, New Coin, Decred, and Dogecoin. We learned about their technical parameters, advantages, disadvantages, and risks.
Lecture 17: "Anonymous Digital Assets" discusses four anonymous digital assets: Dash, Monero, Zcash, and PIVX. Dash uses the "mixing" mechanism, Monero uses "ring signatures", and Zcash uses "zero-knowledge proofs" to achieve the anonymity of digital assets (PIVX is similar to Dash).
Lecture 18: "Smart Contract Ethereum (Part 1)", Ethereum's product planning has four stages, namely Frontier, Home, Metropolis, and Tranquility. We are currently in the Home stage, so in the fourth quarter of 2017, Ethereum will be upgraded to the third version. We learned the concepts of "Ether" and "Ethereum Virtual Machine": "Ether" is the virtual currency built into Ethereum, and "Ethereum Virtual Machine" is the operating environment for running smart contracts.
Lecture 19: "Smart Contract Ethereum (Part 2)", the number of Ethereum and the distribution of Ethereum. In this lecture, we talked about the number of Ethereum, the mining process and distribution of Ethereum. We said that the number of Ethereum is composed of the pre-sale part and the mining part. The rewards that miners can get include block rewards, uncle block rewards, and uncle block reference rewards. The difference between Ethereum ETH and Ethereum Classic ETC is because of a hard fork in July 2016.
Lecture 20: Global Payment and Settlement. In this lecture, we will talk about the blockchain projects of global payment, Ripple and Tether. Ripple, built on an open and neutral protocol, supports instant and low-cost international payments between different ledgers and networks around the world; while Tether can achieve the anchoring of virtual currency and legal currency, and the digital currency can be exchanged with legal currency at the same value.
Lecture 21: "Platform Applications". In this lecture, we talked about three blockchain platform applications, including the market prediction platform Augur, which is the first application on Ethereum; it also includes the computing resource trading platform Golem, a project that can theoretically achieve global sharing of computing power; we also talked about the digital tokenization platform DigixDAO, a project that creates a mapping relationship between blockchain virtual assets and physical assets, and is a demonstration of putting physical assets on the chain.
Lecture 22: "Possible changes brought by blockchain", we said that the changes that blockchain may bring are mainly concentrated in four areas: areas related to blockchain assets, areas related to accounting methods, areas related to public trust, and areas related to controllable anonymity. The impact of blockchain on digital currency, financial technology, and the Internet of Things is far-reaching.
Lecture 23: "Application of Blockchain in Traditional Fields", we mainly introduced three fields: smart contracts, crowdfunding, and notarization. Ethereum is considered to be the representative of blockchain smart contract development platform; crowdfunding was originally called "coin crowdfunding", now called "ICO", which is a financing behavior and method of raising funds using digital assets; notarization, we said that it can have a certain application space in the field of public services.
Lecture 24: "Classification of Blockchain". In this lecture, we talked about the public chain, in which anyone can participate in blockchain data maintenance and reading, it is completely decentralized and not controlled by any organization; the consortium chain, in which the nodes participating in the blockchain are selected in advance and are open to specific organizations and groups; the private chain, which is open to individual individuals or entities, is the only participating node, and access to and use of data is subject to strict permission control.
Lecture 25: "Policies of Countries Around the World on Blockchain". In this lecture, we mentioned that the United States has legislative support and investment encouragement; Canada has a positive view and is watching and exploring; China and South Korea have determined that ICO is illegal public financing; Japan is very active in legislation. They passed the Payment Services Act on April 1, 2017, which stipulates that Bitcoin is one of the legal laws; in Europe, central banks of various countries are more active in introducing policies than in other areas.
After finishing these 25 lessons, I believe you will have a more systematic understanding of blockchain. If you don’t understand something, you can listen to the audio and read the transcript several times. I believe you already understand blockchain better than the people around you. Learning blockchain knowledge can supplement your knowledge and become an expert in blockchain. In a big way, you can stand at the source of time and explore the future of the world. Maybe one day you will change the world because of blockchain entrepreneurship!
Blockchain technology breeds great opportunities. Take a half step ahead with a global vision and firmly grasp the opportunities of the future. Here I would like to borrow Kevin Kelly's words: "The future is here, but it is not yet popular." Before others understand blockchain, you master it before others and use it for your career and life. I believe you will be very different! I am very much looking forward to seeing and hearing your stories of how you have become different because of learning blockchain.
The market was boring today, so when I was looking for some information, I came across this document that I had collected before. I thought it was pretty good. Yumo will update the content of one lecture every day until all 25 lectures are completely updated. Then everyone can fully learn and understand the blockchain. However, understanding the blockchain and making money by buying coins are two different concepts. You need to follow Yumo to learn the thinking of the dealer and you can easily make money in the currency circle.
