Bharatharaj Babu

Day 2: What I Covered - Blockchain Primitives and Consensus - Dan Boneh

Hey, so today I continued with the a16z playlist, saw the second video by Dan Boneh on Blockchain primitives and consensus. It was a really good video to get an improved overview / refresher on blockchain and how it works.

Some Stuff Covered in the talk - Blockchain Primitives and Consensus

Here’s some stuff I learned from the video:

  • What are the different layers in a blockchain?

  • What are the functions of each layer in the blockchain?

  • What is a sybil attack?

  • What are the different execution environments available in blockchains?

  • What are the most common cryptographic primitives?

  • What is BLS signature aggregation?

  • What are merkle commitments?

  • Intro to Zero Knowledge Proof Systems - What are SNARKs, zkSNARKS, provers, verifiers, etc?

I also worked a bit on the NFT marketplace application, added functionality to switch network when in incorrect network. Planning to start with the Patrick Collin’s course tomorrow. Also want to explore factory smart contracts - basically deploy new smart contracts from an existing smart contract, as I have never implemented something with that before.