bcw3b

Sep 16

Layer 1 and Layer 2

I want to briefly touch on the concepts of Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks here as well.Layer 1 solutions: This refers to base layer blockchain implementations like Bitcoin or Ethereum.Layer 2 solutions: These are applications added on top of a layer one, like Chainlink or Arbitrum.Layer 2s like Arbitrum and Optimism are special in that they're trying to solve the problem of scalability. These protocols leverage something called rollups. We won't go too deep, but the idea is that the p...

bcw3b

Sep 16

Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Bitcoin and BlockchainYou might be familiar with Bitcoin, which is one of the first protocols to utilize the revolutionary blockchain technology. The Bitcoin Whitepaper, authored by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, described how Bitcoin could facilitate peer-to-peer transactions within a decentralized network using cryptography. This gave rise to censorship-resistant finance and presented Bitcoin as a superior digital store of value, often referred to as digital gold. There is a fixed amoun...

bcw3b

Sep 16

Traditional Networks vs Blockchain

Traditionally, when you run an application be it a website or something that connects to a server you are interacting with a centralized entity. This is the opposite of what you may recall from our distributed blockchain example, in that the server is controlled and run by a single centralized group. Blockchains, as we saw, run on a network of independent nodes. In our previous example, each of the Peers was representative of an independent node operator. The term node typically refers to a s...

bcw3b

Sep 16

Layer 1 and Layer 2

I want to briefly touch on the concepts of Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks here as well.Layer 1 solutions: This refers to base layer blockchain implementations like Bitcoin or Ethereum.Layer 2 solutions: These are applications added on top of a layer one, like Chainlink or Arbitrum.Layer 2s like Arbitrum and Optimism are special in that they're trying to solve the problem of scalability. These protocols leverage something called rollups. We won't go too deep, but the idea is that the p...

bcw3b

Sep 16

Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Bitcoin and BlockchainYou might be familiar with Bitcoin, which is one of the first protocols to utilize the revolutionary blockchain technology. The Bitcoin Whitepaper, authored by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, described how Bitcoin could facilitate peer-to-peer transactions within a decentralized network using cryptography. This gave rise to censorship-resistant finance and presented Bitcoin as a superior digital store of value, often referred to as digital gold. There is a fixed amoun...

bcw3b

Sep 16

Traditional Networks vs Blockchain

Traditionally, when you run an application be it a website or something that connects to a server you are interacting with a centralized entity. This is the opposite of what you may recall from our distributed blockchain example, in that the server is controlled and run by a single centralized group. Blockchains, as we saw, run on a network of independent nodes. In our previous example, each of the Peers was representative of an independent node operator. The term node typically refers to a s...