从零学习加密货币 1 概述 《Distributed Ledgers & Cryptocurrencies》

Electronic crypto-currencies such as bitcoin, and more generally the concept of a blockchain or distributed ledger, have the potential to revolutionise financial transactions and the role of financial institutions and regulators. This module will provide a foundation in the distributed ledgers and crypto-currencies, and will include the following topics: consensus in distributed systems, the CAP theorem, economic consensus, block-chains, Bitcoin, P2P contracts.

电子加密货币，像是比特币，是一种区块链或者是分布式帐的概念，是有潜力颠覆金融交易行业的。本栏目提供一些加密货币的基本知识。主要包括一下内容：分布式系统中的共识，CAP定理，经济共识，区块链，比特币，P2P合同。

我们需要注意几点：

- 这个领域比较新颖，大概是2008年兴起的

- 理论和技术仍然在融合，两者并未发展成熟，所以请学会质疑。

 

1 问题提出

我们理想的电子货币是要解决两个问题：

1. the e-money is authentic (not counterfeit) 电子货币是要被认证的。（不能伪造）
2. The same e-money cannot be spent more than once (double-spend porblem) 同一个电子货币不能被花费两次。

常见的解决方法就是：需要一个信得过的人或者机构去认证货币并且记录所有的交易者。

假设没有一个这样的人，怎么办呢？我们先记住这个问题

 

2 认识比特币

• Bitcoin was first truly decentralized system for e-money比特币是第一个真正的电子货币去中心化系统
• Asymmetric key cryptography
• 非对称密钥加密
• 性质：1.没有中央权威；2.去中心化；3.没有货币的双重支出；4.开放和公开；5.匿名（实际上是假名）
• 协议：Proof of Work（PoW）；Proof of Stake (PoS) ； Proof of Authority (PoA) ； Proof of Identity (PoI) ； Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET)

3 分布式账目技术

• Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)
• All nodes on a distributed ledger agree on the values of the variable(s) on the ledger. They have a shared state.
• The ledger also preserves past states (the history), so the protocol is stateful.
• This property can prevent “double-spending” of some currency or asset.
• 这个技术适用于：Cryptocurrency transactions；Currency transactions；Transactions involving exchanges of ownership of assets；Promises and commitments

4 作业

• List the sequence of events involved in acceptance of new blocks by nodes.
• Describe the mathematical problems used in Bitcoin for PoW.
• What is the total maximum number of Bitcoin to be issued? How many have been issued so far? What will miners be paid after the maximum is reached?
• What is a wallet? What is the difference between wallets held on personal machines versus wallets held on an exchange?
• List the major Bitcoin exchanges and their country of location. Is there a major exchange which has not been hacked at least once?

每周一篇博文，从零学习加密货币