A complete, plain-English guide to how blockchains actually work — and where they don't.

Welcome to Blockchain: The Chain of Trust.

Everyone has heard of blockchain; far fewer can explain it. This complete guide fixes that. Across twelve in-depth chapters — with clear diagrams throughout — it builds the entire idea from the ground up: the problem of trust, the cypherpunk history, distributed ledgers, hashing and blocks, consensus, keys and ownership, smart contracts, tokens and DeFi, the different kinds of chains, the hard problems of security and scale, layer-2 scaling, and where the technology genuinely belongs. It does the rarer thing, too: it tells you honestly where a blockchain shines and where an ordinary database would serve you better. No hype, no price charts, no prerequisites — just a thorough, working understanding you can keep.

This title is part of the ShriIra library, where we gather books and courses worth keeping.

A note on reading it: open the Contents menu at the top of the reader to jump between chapters, use the Aa menu to set a comfortable text size, theme (light, sepia, or night), and single- or two-page layout. Your place is saved automatically, so you can always pick up where you left off.

We hope it serves you well.

— Arjun Khanna

Contents

1. Chapter One — Why Blockchain? The Problem of Trust
2. Chapter Two — A Short History: From Cypherpunks to Consensus
3. Chapter Three — The Distributed Ledger
4. Chapter Four — Blocks, Hashes, and the Unbreakable Chain
5. Chapter Five — Consensus: Agreement Without a Boss
6. Chapter Six — Keys, Wallets, and What It Means to Own
7. Chapter Seven — Smart Contracts and the World Computer
8. Chapter Eight — Tokens, NFTs, and Decentralised Finance
9. Chapter Nine — Public, Private, and Permissioned Chains
10. Chapter Ten — The Hard Problems: Security, Scalability, Energy
11. Chapter Eleven — Scaling the Chain: Layer 2 and the Modular Future
12. Chapter Twelve — Where Blockchain Belongs: Uses, Limits, and the Road Ahead