This 2 Part series you've made needs to become the worldwide standard for teaching this subject. No where has anyone I've ever met been able to describe this in such clarity. All that come across your instruction will leave well informed, thanks to your efforts (myself included).
I have had to turn comments off on my blockchain videos due to spam. If you want to reach out to me, please find me on twitter @anders94 instead. Most of the recent comments (which I've been judiciously deleting these past few years) have been people pushing an "I can get your private keys back for you" scam which, as everyone who has watched these videos knows. is quite impossible. I hate to take such a drastic measure but I'm afraid I just don't have the time.
I watched part1,2, this is so compact and at the same time contains all the core concept of the block chain! Thank you for creating this helped me so much.
Yes, your demonstration and interactive app has explained the BC much better than a lot of other youtube demos. Also, what sparked your interest in Byzantium? I am of Greek background but regardless, it is an era forgotten and under-emphasized in the current Western education paradigm, tres coole!
@@nickosc88 My brother had studied Byzantium and started telling me about it so we ended up recording a podcast about it (12 Byzantine Rulers) which the New York Times ultimately covered. That turned into a book deal for my brother (Lost to the West) and many other media appearances including the Wall Street Journal, NPR and Wired magazine as well as a show called "Ottoman Rising" which will soon be out on Netflix. (January, 2019)
Just wanted to say thank you for this great explanation of this, my group in collage is working on a Block chain project for school and this really helped me explain how it work to them.
I believe visual learning is one of the best methods to understand concepts and thank you so much for investing time and developing stuff for this 2 part block-chain video series!
Thank you for your explanation of a blockchain. You are a fantastic communicator and I very much appreciate your efforts in sharing this knowledge! Thank you!
Arguably, the best video I have come across that explains blockchain using simple language. The 2 part introduction could be a course by itself and many would be willing to pay $$ for it.
Thank you for both of these videos. They were extremely helpful in grasping the concept of a blockchain. Great use of the demo to help us understand the inner workings.
Great explanation! Thanks. Though it does pop some questions for me: - As it seems, the chain is ever growing. Meaning the need for more and more miners and difficulty, while mining profits decrease. How will that stand time ? - As only transactions appear to be stored, finding a balance means traversing the chain to search for all transactions and count them ? - If everything is based on historical data and the chain keeps growing, it might get too big to handle at some point in time I assume. So probably there's more to is, maybe a part 3 ?? :)
Hi, thanks for the comment. - Yes, chains grow forever. (although there are proposals for trimming the chain) That doesn't imply you need more miners though - the same number of miners can keep working together forever - or even decrease with time. Miners also aren't a 1 to 1 so while the overall number of miners has decreased on the bitcoin blockchain, the "hashing power" has drastically increased. A miner might contribute a tiny or a significant portion of overall hashing power. - I took some liberties with my blockchain demo and glossed over the fact that a balance doesn't have to be computed by looking at every block in the past. Instead, unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) are chunks of coin that are completely spent when they are used - meaning you can't spend some fraction of them. This makes it so all you have to do is examine the outputs being spent in a transaction (not their entire lineage) because outputs are all or nothing. If they exist, they have the full value. If not, they are completely spent. This way you only go back one hop to confirm the coin exists. The meta "balance" layer is computed by adding up all the UTXOs you own. I skipped over this complexity because I feel it gets in the way of understanding the overall concept but you have a great scalability point. - Computers are fast, storage is cheap and ultimately you won't have to save the entire chain forever - just summaries - so I don't think this will be a problem long term.
Anders, these videos are phenomenally good and finally shed some light on the technical workings of the Blockchain in a well structured and understandable way. Is there any chance you could continue? And explain consensus around new block creation? Reading blocks? Roles of all actors?
Thanks. Yes, I will continue but it is a question of time. My day job is at Circle and we've been very busy lately, especially with USDC, so I haven't been able to give this the time it deserves.
This is the best explanation method I ever found; It's would be great if you continue guide us to more deep levels of cryptos and block chains structure and to explain what is really happening . thanks
I have already thanked you in a previous comment and I'll do it again here ! Great videos, very clear path and use of tiny incremental information to associate the concepts ! I have another question and a suggestion for a potential next video (as you have mentioned you are looking for them). Something that has my skeptic (read pessimistic) mind tingling is the fact we can create offline wallets. While I do understand that the odds of creating the exact same private address are pretty (read infinitely) small, they are still possible. So theoretically someone that has access to large pools of computing power could spend its large resources on randomly generating private keys, then could generate the public keys from them, check the balances and ultimately steal that currency if he won the lottery and landed on a positive match. I reiterate that I understand the chance are incredibly small, but I would assume that with the rise of computing power, inter-connectivity and number of private addresses being created that could potentially become a problem eventually. Also, what could happen if someone were to create a private address and that pure stroke of luck (or bad luck depending on the balance) that was already in use. Finally my suggestion for a video would be explain the roles of the various actors in the blockchain on a very macro level, by taking us on a chronological journey from the transaction inception to it's confirmation to the return of the UXTO in the originating wallet. Thanks again for your videos !
Yeah, good points. You are right - someone could happen upon the same private key. This is why you don't use common ones, like the number 1 or any kind of series, like 22222...I can't stress enough the importance of using good randomness - or "entropy" - when picking a private key. (I did a video on some hardware that seeds good randomness here th-cam.com/video/iDuhLQ43tvQ/w-d-xo.html even though computers are deterministic) If you were to take all the computers ever created and run them for 13.82 billion years (since the beginning of the universe) statistically speaking, you would not be able to find even a single match. The numbers are just so big that they are hard to describe. There are around 7 with 18 zeros behind it grains of sand on planet earth. There are 1with 24 zeros behind it stars in the universe. There are 1 with 82 zeros behind it atoms in the universe. A private key is one of 1 with 168 zeros behind it. In other words, there are many orders of magnitude more possible private keys than atoms in the universe.
Anders, thanks for taking efforts to build a demo to explain the concept instead of slides, animations etc. This is really amazing! You are my Blockchain Guru ! I am keen to learn more like BFT, Consensus, Merkle tree etc in a practical way. I seem to have mined your video from the internet universe....it feels like mining a cryptocurrency :-)
Thank you for your explanation it was very clear ! Your clarity is amazing and I can tell that you are helping me with memoire that I writing about Blockchain !
Thanks a lot for this video Anders. Really awesome in terms of how you explain everything. One question: how does this work i.e. from a (Message + Public Key + Signature), how do you derive (verify) that the message was signed by someone who had access to the private key? I can search on Google but that would not guarantee that I would get as good an explanation as this video provides. So, asking you. Thank you.
@ Anders great explanation! cleared many doubts but raised a few more, can the same transactions be picked up by more than one node (miners), how is that mechanism build ? have a few more questions, where can I connect with you?
Nice explanation of the key concepts around cryptocurrency, including digital signing of transactions, hashing of blocks and linking blocks into blockchains. Thanks!
So perfect work. interesting, simple and specific explanation you are a brilliant . thanks for sharing this and I hope if there are still more details it will be a pleasure to hear you in a third video.
Hadn't heard about the issue - do you see errors in the JavaScript console? Can you open an issue on the GitHub page describing in detail what doesn't work as well as your browser version?
Thank you for your great video. I have a question. Does the blockchain have an underlying algorithm to generate a hash-key, each time data is modified or transferred? Because “Random”- I am not sure a computer is capable of producing “random”. Just fo the computer to define random, it would still need to generate cases, to define/ distinguish “random” as being true vs all the other pre defined cases? Or was what I said just wrong?
Good question - deterministic computers have very hard times coming up with randomness. It is better to harvest randomness from the environment. I did a video about a device which does this here: th-cam.com/video/iDuhLQ43tvQ/w-d-xo.html
Fantastic explanation. The best I've seen so far while researching blockchain. I would love to see an example explaining transactions other than sending money =)
Thank you very much. You are a very good teacher :-). Please consider making a video explaining the difference between Proof of work and Proof of stake.
This 2 Part series you've made needs to become the worldwide standard for teaching this subject. No where has anyone I've ever met been able to describe this in such clarity. All that come across your instruction will leave well informed, thanks to your efforts (myself included).
Thanks very much. Much appreciated.
Daaaaamn, that's the best explanation of blockchain I've ever seen in my life. Congrats!
I have had to turn comments off on my blockchain videos due to spam. If you want to reach out to me, please find me on twitter @anders94 instead.
Most of the recent comments (which I've been judiciously deleting these past few years) have been people pushing an "I can get your private keys back for you" scam which, as everyone who has watched these videos knows. is quite impossible. I hate to take such a drastic measure but I'm afraid I just don't have the time.
I watched part1,2, this is so compact and at the same time contains all the core concept of the block chain! Thank you for creating this helped me so much.
great explanation. You should have 1,000,000 views. Thanks
Yes, your demonstration and interactive app has explained the BC much better than a lot of other youtube demos.
Also, what sparked your interest in Byzantium? I am of Greek background but regardless, it is an era forgotten and under-emphasized in the current Western education paradigm, tres coole!
Because "Byzantine generals problem" is the logical basis for reaching the consensus amongst peers (bc miners) where everybody trusts nobody.
@@nickosc88 My brother had studied Byzantium and started telling me about it so we ended up recording a podcast about it (12 Byzantine Rulers) which the New York Times ultimately covered. That turned into a book deal for my brother (Lost to the West) and many other media appearances including the Wall Street Journal, NPR and Wired magazine as well as a show called "Ottoman Rising" which will soon be out on Netflix. (January, 2019)
@@whatever2981 *Text Brsmith231 on Instagram. To get your private key.*
@@nickosc88 *Text Brsmith231 on Instagram. To get your private key.*
I don't usually comment on TH-cam videos. But you have done a hell of a good job in explaining the entire concept so easily. Thanks very much!
I have never seen such an elegant simple and MEANINGFUL demo anywhere. Everyone just talks big, and confuses more! Thanks a ton.
That's weird I just watched Blockchain 101 Part 1 and 30 min later you uploaded Part 2 after 1 year break :) Amazing visualisation. Thanks!
Great timing!
never leave a comment, but i have to congrat you, great work and thank you for the time invested.
can you please explain the verification part?
*Text Cloudbase7 on Instagram. To get your private key.*
@@zummotv1013 *Text Cloudbase7 on Instagram. To get your private key.*
Andres, I've been dealing with Blockchain technology for quite a while now... your explanation is simple, elegant and clear! thank you very much!
Saved me 3 days of research. So perfectly explained is crazy. Thank you very very much 🤗😁
can you please explain the verification part?3:36
@@zummotv1013 magic...
Man free information thank you. I wish other people were like you Sir. Every one else wants something in exchange for knowledge thank you.
Big THANK YOU for your time invested in sharing knowledge. Your clarity is amazing.
A humble thanks - much appreciated!
*Text Cloudbase7 on Instagram. To get your private key.*
Best video out there explaining Blockchain, thank you! You're only missing timestamp
Thanks. Yeah, I opted not to add them to reduce complexity and to not have to get into the inaccuracy of the timestamps. But good catch!
Just wanted to say thank you for this great explanation of this, my group in collage is working on a Block chain project for school and this really helped me explain how it work to them.
Glad it was helpful - thanks for the comment.
Thank you for crystal clear explanation. Nowhere will you find such detailed yet comprehend-able video...
This video and part 1 are the videos I send to anyone asking me to explain what a blockchain is. So clear. Thank you for making these!
I believe visual learning is one of the best methods to understand concepts and thank you so much for investing time and developing stuff for this 2 part block-chain video series!
Anders thank you for sharing. Please continue with your series of blockchain explanations. 👍
Thank you for your explanation of a blockchain. You are a fantastic communicator and I very much appreciate your efforts in sharing this knowledge! Thank you!
The best and easiest How Blockchain / coinbase chain works. Simple, elegant and relevant. Thank you
Arguably, the best video I have come across that explains blockchain using simple language. The 2 part introduction could be a course by itself and many would be willing to pay $$ for it.
Thanks Anders for such simplified videos (part 1 and part 2). Looking forward to part 3.
I may have left a comment before, but this (and part one of this series) is excellently and clearly explained. Thanks!
Hi Anders, what great explanation. I will recommend everyone to get started with this video before reading anything.
Thank you for both of these videos. They were extremely helpful in grasping the concept of a blockchain. Great use of the demo to help us understand the inner workings.
Thank you, this is an excellent nuts and bolts description of a blockchain and how it provides security through signatures.
Where has this been my whole semester..? Thank you!
This is the best video series have seen on this subject.
Thanks god for people like you with the patience to teach. Most people knowledgeable in this subject have no idea how to explain it
Wow! Finally someone really explain and exemplify blockchain.
Please make a lot of videos!!
Amazing explanation Anders. Your videos explained the crypto section of a blockchain very well. Thanks.
Never really write comments. But this video really cleared my understanding of Blockchain. Thanks professor
best stuff on blockchain i have seen till now
Thank you so much Anders, you make me a total outsider sees hopes in learning and understanding blockchain. and get into the industry!
One of the most satisfying and best explanation videos. Thank you.
Your Blockchain 101 videos are required viewing for all of my friends who are new to cryptocurrencies whom I am trying to help!
Thanks! Glad it can be useful.
Best Blockchain explanation (Part-2) I've ever seen, thanks for this great video tutorial
spent lot of time understanding block chain but your video was the best, wish I had seen this first. thank you
Great explanation! Thanks. Though it does pop some questions for me:
- As it seems, the chain is ever growing. Meaning the need for more and more miners and difficulty, while mining profits decrease. How will that stand time ?
- As only transactions appear to be stored, finding a balance means traversing the chain to search for all transactions and count them ?
- If everything is based on historical data and the chain keeps growing, it might get too big to handle at some point in time I assume. So probably there's more to is, maybe a part 3 ?? :)
Hi, thanks for the comment.
- Yes, chains grow forever. (although there are proposals for trimming the chain) That doesn't imply you need more miners though - the same number of miners can keep working together forever - or even decrease with time. Miners also aren't a 1 to 1 so while the overall number of miners has decreased on the bitcoin blockchain, the "hashing power" has drastically increased. A miner might contribute a tiny or a significant portion of overall hashing power.
- I took some liberties with my blockchain demo and glossed over the fact that a balance doesn't have to be computed by looking at every block in the past. Instead, unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) are chunks of coin that are completely spent when they are used - meaning you can't spend some fraction of them. This makes it so all you have to do is examine the outputs being spent in a transaction (not their entire lineage) because outputs are all or nothing. If they exist, they have the full value. If not, they are completely spent. This way you only go back one hop to confirm the coin exists. The meta "balance" layer is computed by adding up all the UTXOs you own. I skipped over this complexity because I feel it gets in the way of understanding the overall concept but you have a great scalability point.
- Computers are fast, storage is cheap and ultimately you won't have to save the entire chain forever - just summaries - so I don't think this will be a problem long term.
Thanks a lot for the brief explanation but it clears the gamut of unknown & unseen concept that's rising fast. Obliged to see more from your end.
Anders, these videos are phenomenally good and finally shed some light on the technical workings of the Blockchain in a well structured and understandable way. Is there any chance you could continue? And explain consensus around new block creation? Reading blocks? Roles of all actors?
Thanks. Yes, I will continue but it is a question of time. My day job is at Circle and we've been very busy lately, especially with USDC, so I haven't been able to give this the time it deserves.
Ditto what Charles Blubaugh wrote. Best video on the subject I've seen to date. Kudos
thankyou Andrew, it helped me understand blockchain more clearly.
Agree with previous, amazing clarity. You break it down beautifully. Thank you so much!
You are the best , best explanation ever part 1 and part 2 . I would be happy to see an explanation how blockchain is used for singularitynet for AI
Super awesome and super simple explanation of a seemingly complex topic.. thank you very much for this. Appreciate it.
This is the best explanation method I ever found; It's would be great if you continue guide us to more deep levels of cryptos and block chains structure and to explain what is really happening . thanks
I'm working on some followup content that will continue digging in.
Thank you so much.. This has been the best series for me to understand the basic mechanics of block chain..Much appreciated!
Great video again, really helpful! Very cool to see the essence of the blockchain explained in such an easy to understand way.
Thank you very much Anders. This is the best video to understand Blockchain.
Best tutorial on blockchain I've seen so far. Thanks a lot.
I have already thanked you in a previous comment and I'll do it again here ! Great videos, very clear path and use of tiny incremental information to associate the concepts ! I have another question and a suggestion for a potential next video (as you have mentioned you are looking for them).
Something that has my skeptic (read pessimistic) mind tingling is the fact we can create offline wallets. While I do understand that the odds of creating the exact same private address are pretty (read infinitely) small, they are still possible. So theoretically someone that has access to large pools of computing power could spend its large resources on randomly generating private keys, then could generate the public keys from them, check the balances and ultimately steal that currency if he won the lottery and landed on a positive match. I reiterate that I understand the chance are incredibly small, but I would assume that with the rise of computing power, inter-connectivity and number of private addresses being created that could potentially become a problem eventually. Also, what could happen if someone were to create a private address and that pure stroke of luck (or bad luck depending on the balance) that was already in use.
Finally my suggestion for a video would be explain the roles of the various actors in the blockchain on a very macro level, by taking us on a chronological journey from the transaction inception to it's confirmation to the return of the UXTO in the originating wallet.
Thanks again for your videos !
Yeah, good points. You are right - someone could happen upon the same private key. This is why you don't use common ones, like the number 1 or any kind of series, like 22222...I can't stress enough the importance of using good randomness - or "entropy" - when picking a private key. (I did a video on some hardware that seeds good randomness here th-cam.com/video/iDuhLQ43tvQ/w-d-xo.html even though computers are deterministic)
If you were to take all the computers ever created and run them for 13.82 billion years (since the beginning of the universe) statistically speaking, you would not be able to find even a single match. The numbers are just so big that they are hard to describe. There are around 7 with 18 zeros behind it grains of sand on planet earth. There are 1with 24 zeros behind it stars in the universe. There are 1 with 82 zeros behind it atoms in the universe. A private key is one of 1 with 168 zeros behind it. In other words, there are many orders of magnitude more possible private keys than atoms in the universe.
do you have a source for the # of sand grains, stars etc, I can't find a trusted one
Anders, thanks for taking efforts to build a demo to explain the concept instead of slides, animations etc. This is really amazing! You are my Blockchain Guru ! I am keen to learn more like BFT, Consensus, Merkle tree etc in a practical way. I seem to have mined your video from the internet universe....it feels like mining a cryptocurrency :-)
Ha! Thanks, FWIW I'm working on a smart contracts explainer now.
Great explanation Andres!! Even after reading lot of material , seeing this video made my understanding crystal clear!!
Thank you for your explanation it was very clear ! Your clarity is amazing and I can tell that you are helping me with memoire that I writing about Blockchain !
Wow, this is the best explanation I've watched on TH-cam...Thank you!
Again, a very well orchestrated explanation! Very much like part 1.
You made blockchain explanation so simple. Great Video
This is by far the best explanation.
Such a fantastic explanation! The internal signature piece has been alluding me for weeks... Thank you!!!
These two videos are so amazing. TYSM for taking the time to make them.
Thanks a lot for this video Anders. Really awesome in terms of how you explain everything. One question: how does this work i.e. from a (Message + Public Key + Signature), how do you derive (verify) that the message was signed by someone who had access to the private key? I can search on Google but that would not guarantee that I would get as good an explanation as this video provides. So, asking you. Thank you.
The details of that are a bit more involved. (but not overly scary) I'm working on a video about this now.
Thank you so much for both these videos. This is the first time I've really been able to get my head around how block chain technology works :)
@ Anders great explanation! cleared many doubts but raised a few more, can the same transactions be picked up by more than one node (miners), how is that mechanism build ? have a few more questions, where can I connect with you?
Wow. such a great explanation. Excellent work. Thank you so much!!
can you please explain the verification part?3:36
Perfect. Your explanation about blockchain was exceptionaly clear. Thank you so much.
Your demos are AWESOME! I'm hungry for more! Please don't keep us hanging :')
Thank you so much. just superb. All others, these 2 videos should be the pre-req before diving in the blockchain.
Nice explanation of the key concepts around cryptocurrency, including digital signing of transactions, hashing of blocks and linking blocks into blockchains. Thanks!
Finally a part 2:) Many thanks for the great explanations in both the first and second videos.
WOW! I will watch and learn anything you teach even if it is plumbing!
Awesome and very simplified explanation .Both part 1 and 2 gave me a very good clarity .
Excellent explanation! now I have much more clear idea about what is bockchain and how it works. THANKS
So perfect work. interesting, simple and specific explanation you are a brilliant .
thanks for sharing this and I hope if there are still more details it will be a pleasure to hear you in a third video.
Both part 1 and 2 are clear with simple examples. Thank you Anders
Thanks very much for this. The best explanation of blockchain ever!
Thanks Anders your explanation is the best as far as I have seen.
Brilliant visual explanation. Many thanks for the video and the demo files. This is a great way to explain things to noobs.
Again, masterful presentation and demo!!!! So glad I found you...
Great video for anyone who want to know how blockchain actually works!
Thank you for creating this. It's a very clear and concise explanation.
Really clear explanation. Made me understand the blockchain a lot better. Thanks for making these 2 videos
Amazingly simple and clear representation.. grateful
Thanks for the interactive video! by the way, the demo doesn't seem to work in IE. any idea if this would be fixed?
Hadn't heard about the issue - do you see errors in the JavaScript console? Can you open an issue on the GitHub page describing in detail what doesn't work as well as your browser version?
happy to see you are back
Excellent since it has been explained in a very simplistic manner
WOW! More 1400 vs 6! Excellent result!
Thank you Andres for this amazing explanation...
Thank you for your great video. I have a question.
Does the blockchain have an underlying algorithm to generate a hash-key, each time data is modified or transferred? Because “Random”- I am not sure a computer is capable of producing “random”.
Just fo the computer to define random, it would still need to generate cases, to define/ distinguish “random” as being true vs all the other pre defined cases? Or was what I said just wrong?
Good question - deterministic computers have very hard times coming up with randomness. It is better to harvest randomness from the environment. I did a video about a device which does this here: th-cam.com/video/iDuhLQ43tvQ/w-d-xo.html
Thanks very much Andres. Hopefully Blockchain will make people like you more famous than the Kardashians :D
Very interesting and easiest explanation about how works blockchain. Thank you!
Most Clear explanation ever !!. keep posting please
Thank you, I finally understood the operation of the blockchain
Fantastic explanation. The best I've seen so far while researching blockchain. I would love to see an example explaining transactions other than sending money =)
Yep - on the longer-term list of things to cover.
Thank you very much. You are a very good teacher :-).
Please consider making a video explaining the difference between Proof of work and Proof of stake.
Yep, its on my list. I probably should get to this around the time Ethereum moves to PoS.
Very clear, you are gifted, Anders!
This helped me a lot in understanding the blockchain and cryptostuff! Will share!
A very nice explanation of PKI. Not an easy concept to cover, but you did it great. Keep up the great work.
Very clear step by step explanation. Thanks for making and sharing!