#100DaysOfCrypto

Recently, Andreessen Horowitz, published it’s Crypto Canon — a curated reading list and resources, organized to take readers from basic to advanced topics around in all things crypto and blockchain.

To be systematic in my own self-learning, I’m starting #100DaysOfCrypto to go through each of the resources and provide a digestible summary for newcomers to the space. My constraint is thus: Each post will be no more than 500 words (fewer words when there’s overlap between articles). I’m hoping to provide a quick summary, but also commentary, connecting concepts to each other along the way.

This is by no means a replacement to reading the actual articles. However, I’d like to think of these posts as notes in the margins. At the end of this series, a reading list with notes in the margin should be available as get-up-to-speed syllabus.

I will generally start from the basics, but may occasionally skip to advanced topics. In any case, I’ll number each article, so they can be read linearly from one post to the next.

Next, the first post in the series.

Post #1: WTF is Blockchain?

Author: Mohit Mamoria

This is the first article anyone interested in blockchain or cryptocurrency should read. I dare say, even before Satoshi’s white paper (summary here).

Mamoria, in very intuitive fashion, describes blockchain using a hypothetical example of a ten-person network keeping a ledger. Just imagine your group of friends keeping a tally of who owes whom how much.

Instead of diving into the technical features, this article offers a problem-based approach. What problem does blockchain solve? Whenever two friends need to send money to each other, an intermediary needs to get involved. This is the primary starting assumption of blockchain — that, third party intermediaries are problematic. The driving question:

Is there a way to maintain the register among ourselves instead of someone else doing this for us?

In other words,

Can we all be our own banks?

As the article takes the reader, step-by-step to understanding foundational concepts like: Mining, Hash Functions, Proof of Work, Dishonest actors and 51% Attacks. You’ll want to pay attention — these concepts reappear throughout your journey.

Mamoria also helpfully addresses an implicit question that more seasoned people in the space overlook:

Why do we need to store transactions in the blockchain anyway?

As will be evident in the next two posts, there’s an intuitive appeal to approaching blockchain from the ground up, through first principles. Everyone has been in a situation where they owe money and have to pay a friend back. That’s an appropriate place to start demystifying cryptocurrencies.