
Blockchain Basics - sitepen
https://www.sitepen.com/blog/2017/09/21/blockchain-basics/
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cygned
There are so many explanations on blockchains out there and the only one that
made really sense to me was:
[https://anders.com/blockchain/](https://anders.com/blockchain/)

Watch the video, play with the examples and suddenly everything will make
sense.

~~~
jokoon
Great explanation.

Although I'm more curious about the mining process and how public/private keys
are used.

~~~
hdhzy
Mining is just finding a combination of values that the hash of them will have
a number of zeros in it. (intentionally brute force problem)

Public key crypto is used to confirm that the coins can move from one account
to another, or to be more precise from one output to another input. (there are
no accounts in Bitcoin, that's just an illusion)

~~~
jokoon
And how is it possible for newly mined blocks to be worth less bitcoins that
earlier blocks? I'm talking about the limited quantity of bitcoins. How is
that achieved?

~~~
hdhzy
The amount that the miner can claim is hardcoded in the client, something like
"if block no < X you can create out of thin air only N coins". After some time
N will be zero and the incentive for the miner will come purely from fees.

Of course a miner could just use a different, bigger value but then the block
would not be accepted by anyone else and be basically worthless.

The rules are there because everyone is using the same client or bug to bug
compatible alternative.

