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A guided story, from the first problem to the next question

Understand how blockchain got here.

Follow the ideas, experiments and failures that connect digital money to the systems being built today. Learn the story at your own level.

Start the storyFind my learning level

START WITH ONE QUESTION

If a digital file can be copied, how can digital money be spent only once?

That question leads to a shared ledger. The next ones lead to programmable rules, markets and new trade-offs.

Try the shared-ledger example

Follow the chapters

An editorial reading map. These periods overlap; the dates describe the story, not when our articles were published.

012008–2013Agreeing on digital money022014–2017Making shared rules programmable032018–2020Building markets and lending042021–2022Testing promises through failures052023–todayCost, usability and outside rights06Possible futuresConditions, evidence and open questions

Choose how deeply to go

Beginner

Everyday examples. Explain the idea in your own words.

Start with the foundations

Intermediate

Mechanisms and worked examples. Follow how the result changes.

Understand how it works

Advanced

Primary sources and assumptions. Test the claims and trade-offs.

Read the evidence closely

A connected five-part learning route

The DeFi story: markets, incentives and failures

Read from liquidity pools to lending, Sushi, the 2021 incident evidence and the lessons after FTX.

Explore the DeFi route

Browse all topics and levels · Practice with the exit-cost calculator

Latest articles and tools

Hashcash, b-money and Bitcoin: How the Ideas Fit Together

Trace how Hashcash made messages costly, how b-money proposed shared balances, and how Bitcoin combined ideas into a payment history. Compare the or…

Three Blockchain Futures and the Evidence That Would Change Them

Explore three possible blockchain futures through evidence you can check: usable payments, dependable applications and sustainable infrastructure. Le…

The Merge: What Changed and What Did Not

Understand what Ethereum changed in the Merge, what stayed the same, and why staking withdrawals came later. Separate consensus, transaction executio…

Two Different Failures: Terra’s Reflexivity and FTX’s Custody

Terra and FTX failed in different ways. Follow the difference between a token’s stability mechanism and a custodian’s ability to return assets, then …

Tokens and the ICO Era: Code, Claims and Incentives

A token balance tells you how many units you hold, not what you are entitled to receive. Follow the ICO era through three separate questions: what th…

The DAO and the Governance Question

The DAO’s 2016 crisis exposed a question that code alone could not settle: who decides what happens after a failure? Follow the incident, the hard fork and the governance choices behind the response.…
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