Blockchain Refresher

Welcome to Bitskwela's course on Blockchain Architecture! This course will explore different topics about the blockchain, such as its types, layers, and the blockchain trilemma. But before everything, we need to refresh on the basic definition of a blockchain. 

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A blockchain is a digital ledger or a collection of financial data that stores transactions happening in the network secured by cryptography, in the form of blocks. This is immutable, decentralized, distributed, secure, and fully verifiable. What makes this unique is that once data becomes encoded onto this chain of blocks, it becomes nearly impossible to change it.

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Read our full module on blockchain here

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You can even check our past lessons on cryptography and Bitcoin here

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The blockchain, as we know it, has the potential to transform and redefine the way we do everything, from the simplest of things to the most complex systems in our world today. Its different properties - transparency, immutability, and decentralization can greatly improve efficiency in networks.

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The first version of the blockchain was introduced in 2008 as part of a proposal for bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi's version of the blockchain was built on numerous ideas and concepts from the previous three decades, such as Merkle trees, Peer-to-peer networks, and digital signatures. Bitcoin's blockchain officially launched last January 3, 2009.

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Since then, numerous other versions of blockchains have been created while consistently gaining more and more traction worldwide. Curious about what the different types of blockchains are? Head over to the next module to find out!