What is Blockchain?

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that wishes to take the place of traditional forms of payment. It operates on open-source, censorship-resistant technology and there’s no one single point of control, unlike with a typical bank. This ability has made Bitcoin appealing to people who believe Bitcoin’s origins were less problematic–Satoshi Nakamoto is actually an alias for someone or someone unknown, but the original inventor drew inspiration from time-stamped transactions that had been developed by other computer programmers.

The original term for blockchain technology was coined by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in a paper published in the Journal of Cryptology in 1991. In the paper, they discussed time-stamping blocks of data to prevent tampering and putting it into an append-only data structure, creating the first description of blockchain technology. Bitcoin is the most widespread implementation of this type of technology, and their work inspired its whitepaper.

Blockchain technology is a newly-emerging field that includes many cryptographic components. These notes will guide you through what a blockchain is and the different cryptographic elements it needs to function, as well as briefly introduce both mining and blockchains.