How Bitcoin actually works, from blocks and transactions to scripting and Turing completeness

Bitcoin: A Little Deeper

Bitcoin: A Little Deeper is my 25-part technical series on how Bitcoin works, from blocks and transactions to mining, validation, privacy, and Turing completeness. The main sequence runs from Blocks and Transactions through Proof of Work, Governance, Nodes and Mining, the P2P Network, Validation, and Pruning, into Transactions in Depth and Privacy. The supplementary deep dives take one piece at a time: hash functions, Merkle trees, how proof of work actually works, digital signatures, the coinbase transaction, SPV, offline payments, Bitcoin Script, and Turing machines and the Bitcoin computer.

Read it in order if you want the whole machine, or jump to the part that is bothering you. Either way, you should be able to explain the protocol to someone else afterward, without the hand-waving.

The parts, in order

  1. Part 1: Bitcoin in Practice: Blocks
  2. Part 2: Bitcoin in Practice: Transactions as Ledger Events
  3. Part 3: Bitcoin in Practice: Proof of Work
  4. Part 4: Bitcoin in Practice: Core Properties of Bitcoin
  5. Part 5: Bitcoin in Practice: Governance
  6. Part 6: Bitcoin in Practice: Network Policies
  7. Part 7: Bitcoin in Practice: Nodes and Mining
  8. Part 8: Bitcoin in Practice: Bitcoin Server Network (BSN)
  9. Part 9: Bitcoin in Practice: ChainTracker
  10. Part 10: Bitcoin in Practice: Transaction Validation
  11. Part 11: Bitcoin in Practice: Mining Valid Blocks
  12. Part 12: Bitcoin in Practice: Pruning and Other Duties
  13. Part 13: Bitcoin in Practice: Transactions in Depth
  14. Part 14: Bitcoin in Practice: Bitcoin Privacy in Depth

Supplementary

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