Introduction
In this episode, we once again welcome @sputnik-meng_, a Ph.D. candidate in cryptography at Tsinghua University, to delve into _blockchain technology and _digital currency systems_, with a focus on Bitcoin.
Key Discussion Points
1. Academic Research on Digital Currencies
- Historical Context: The 1983 client-bank-merchant model
- Blind Signatures: Enhancing privacy in transactions
- Divisibility & Transferability: Core features of digital currencies
- Malleable Signatures: Flexibility in cryptographic operations
2. Bitcoin Timeline & Trivia
- Launch: System design and client release
- Evolution: Technology → Market pricing → Media → Legal scrutiny
- The Pizza Purchase: The infamous 10,000 BTC pizza transaction
- Satoshi Nakamoto: The enigmatic creator’s identity
3. Blockchain Technology
- Security & Liveness: Ensuring robust distributed systems
- Hash Functions & Collision Resistance: Foundational cryptographic principles
- Birthday Attacks: Exploiting probability in hash collisions
- Proof of Work & Mining: The backbone of Bitcoin’s decentralized consensus
- Difficulty Adjustment: Maintaining consistent block times
- Merkle Trees & Vector Commitments: Efficient data verification
- Digital Signatures: Authenticating transactions
FAQs
Q1: What makes blockchain technology secure?
A: Decentralization, cryptographic hashing, and consensus mechanisms like Proof of Work collectively ensure tamper resistance.
Q2: Why is Satoshi Nakamoto anonymous?
A: Privacy aligns with Bitcoin’s ethos of decentralization, though theories about their identity abound.
Q3: How does Bitcoin mining work?
A: Miners solve complex mathematical puzzles to validate transactions and add blocks to the chain, earning BTC as rewards.
👉 Learn more about Bitcoin’s technical underpinnings
References
- History of Bitcoin
- Satoshi Nakamoto (Wikipedia)
- Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (Original Whitepaper)
- Stanford University Cryptography & Blockchain Course Notes
Glossary
- Blind Signature: Privacy-preserving cryptographic technique.
- Malleable Signature: Allows modification without invalidating.
- Collision Resistant: Hash function property preventing identical outputs from different inputs.
- Vector Commitment: Compresses data for efficient verification.
Stay tuned for our next episode on zero-knowledge algorithms!
by Hackathon DAO, in partnership with THUBA