2 How Bitcoin Achieves Decentralization

Lecture 2 in the series

1. Centralization vs. Decentralization:

1. Who maintains the ledger?
2. Who has authority over which transactions are valid?
3. who creates new bitcoins?
4. who determines how the rules of the system change?
5. how do bitcoins acquire exchange value?

2. Distributed consensus

3. Consensus without identity: the block chain

4. Incentives and proof of work

1. How to pick a random node?
2. How to avoid a free-for-all due to rewards?
3. How to prevent sybil attacks?

5. Putting it all together

1. What can 51% attacker do?

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