P2P network

How Bitcoin actually works: a visual glossary from coins to consensus

Beginner's visual guide to Bitcoin — 30 terms across 8 chapters, each with a diagram. Coins as UTXOs, transactions as flows, blocks chained by hashes, mining, mempool, longest-chain consensus.

Was Adam Back Satoshi? Examining the Hashcash inventor hypothesis

The hypothesis that Adam Back (Hashcash inventor, first Satoshi contact) was Satoshi. Frame: April 2026 NYT stylometric investigation by Carreyrou. Counter: Back's 2024 COPA v Wright sworn testimony.

Was Hal Finney Satoshi? Examining the RPOW author and first-recipient hypothesis

The hypothesis that Hal Finney — RPOW author and Dorian Nakamoto's Temple City neighbor — was Satoshi. Frame: Greenberg 2014 Forbes "Nakamoto's Neighbor." Counter: April 18, 2009 race-day alibi.

Was Nick Szabo Satoshi? Examining the Bit Gold lineage and stylometric arguments

The hypothesis that Nick Szabo (Bit Gold creator, "smart contracts" coiner) was Satoshi. Frame: Skye Grey 2013 stylometric article. Counter: Szabo's 2008 Bit Gold help request and self-denials.

Bitcoin architecture evolution — Satoshi era v0.1 vs modern v27+ baseline

Cross-cutting architecture comparison across every subsystem: Satoshi's v0.1 (January 2009) side by side with modern Bitcoin Core v27+, with split diagrams and domain tables.

Bitcoin block and chain design — headers, Merkle trees, and chain selection

How Bitcoin blocks are structured, how Merkle trees commit transactions to block headers, and how the most-work chain selection rule resolves forks.

Bitcoin ecosystem design — Lightning Network, sidechains, and L1 extensions

How the Bitcoin ecosystem layers above and around the base chain: Lightning payment channels, federated sidechains, L1 envelope extensions, and mining pool architectures.

Bitcoin consensus design — proof of work, difficulty adjustment, and fork handling

How Bitcoin nodes agree on a single chain: SHA-256d proof of work, the difficulty adjustment algorithm, block validation rules, fork resolution, and probabilistic finality.

Bitcoin transaction design — UTXO model, Script, and signature schemes

Deep-dive into Bitcoin's transaction layer: UTXO lifecycle, transaction structure, Script evaluation, ECDSA and Schnorr signatures, SegWit, and Taproot.

Bitcoin system design overview — architecture, data flow, and design-document index

High-level system overview of Bitcoin's architecture, layer model, and data flow. Entry point to a 12-page design-document series covering every major subsystem.

Bitcoin security model — attack surfaces, trust assumptions, and defense layers

Bitcoin's threat model mapped end-to-end: what the protocol trusts, what it defends against, how each attack is countered, and where open risks remain.

Bitcoin did not appear from nowhere — inheritance and invention

Bitcoin v0.1 reuses one cypherpunk primitive (PoW from Hashcash), borrows general CS components (Merkle trees, linked timestamping), and synthesizes the rest (UTXO, mining, 21M cap, P2P, ECDSA).