Some technology startup companies are raising money in a new way, by issuing digital tokens in return for funds. This is often colloquially called “doing an ICO”, and this article aims to explain how this works.
Continue reading “A gentle introduction to Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)”
A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger. But new distributed ledgers are emerging. These are databases where control over the data’s evolution is shared between entities. Here’s a handy cheatsheet.
Continue reading “What’s the difference between a distributed ledger and a blockchain?”
This post tries to describe two very different uses for blockchain technology: Digital Token Ledgers that record ownership changes of digital tokens, and Activity Registers that record timestamped proofs of existence of data or agreements about data. Bitcoin is used for both.
Continue reading “The emergence of blockchains as Activity Registers”
This article attempts to explain the difference between the revolutionary disruptive innovation of bitcoin and the evolutionary efficiency innovations of industry workflow tools, and why calling them both “blockchains”, even as a generic term, is incredibly confusing.
For the rest of this post, I will use the phrase “industry workflow tools” instead of industry blockchains, as some of the emerging solutions being proposed in this space are not blockchains (eg, R3’s Corda is not a blockchain but Digital Asset’s solutions are – however, both companies are proposing industry workflow tools).
Continue reading “Confused by blockchains? Revolution vs Evolution”
I have been looking for a one pager explaining the difference between users, miners, nodes and other participants on the bitcoin network. I couldn’t find one so I attempted to draw my own. Here it is.
Click on the image for a high-resolution copy you can download, share, copy and print.
Feedback very welcome!
I enjoyed listening to episode 107 of the podcast “Epicenter Bitcoin” where Gideon Greenspan, CEO and Founder of Coin Sciences was interviewed about MultiChain. Gideon also writes a great blog. Here are my notes on parts of the podcast that I found particularly interesting. Misunderstandings and paraphrasing errors are mine.
Note: The term ‘miner’ is used frequently in the podcast but I try to refer to them here as block-makers or block-adders.
This gets fairly technical; if this is hard to follow, it may be helpful to read my introductions to blockchains, bitcoin, digital tokens, and smart contracts first.
Continue reading “In a nutshell: MultiChain (Epicenter Bitcoin interview – Nov 2015)”
In the context of data security, the immutability of data stored on blockchains is important. What do people mean when they say “Blockchains are immutable”? In this post I try to explain the key concepts.
It may be useful to read introductions to blockchains and Bitcoin if you have just arrived here or are unfamiliar with them.
Continue reading “A gentle introduction to immutability of blockchains”
Digital tokens have come to the fore recently, firstly with excitement about cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, then with digital tokens being used to represent different assets on a blockchain. What are they? How can you digitise a token? Why is it important?
When I hear the word ‘token’ I think of round plastic things like a casino chip, or something which I can use to exchange for a beer under a specific system or in a specific marketplace.
We will explore the original usage of the phrase ‘digital token’, then take a look into the world of cryptocurrency tokens, differentiating between blockchain-native tokens like BTC on Bitcoin or ETH on Ethereum, and asset-backed tokens like IOUs on Ripple.
Recently over dinner, I was asked to explain bitcoin mining, and I struggled as it is entangled with a number of other concepts. Here’s my attempt at breaking it down into bite-sized pieces.
I’m often asked what’s in a blockchain, so I put this infographic together as an aide memoire using bitcoin’s blockchain as the example.
Although other blockchains will have differences, the overall structures should be similar.
Infographic designed by fractalphia.com
This is also available in French produced by BitConseil.
Click here for a higher resolution version that is a great size and shape to print out on A3 and stick on your wall as a quick reference!
