Primer

What is Blockchain Technology? A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

Ameer Rosic

Blockgeeks

Blockgeeks’ Guide provides an overview of the central characteristics and defining principles of blockchain technology.

What is Blockchain Technology?

Nolan Bauerle

CoinDesk

CoinDesk’s introduction to blockchain technology includes an index of FAQs related to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies.

CIO Explainer: What Is Blockchain?

Steven Norton

The Wall Street Journal

This Wall Street Journal article gives a holistic overview of blockchain – how it works, how it started, how it can be used, the challenges it faces, and the contemporary ecosystem (as of 2016).

A Complete Beginner's Guide To Blockchain

Bernard Marr

Forbes

This short article from Forbes explains the basics of what blockchain is, how it works, and why is it important.

Blockchain 101: An introduction

Jedidiah Bracy

IAPP

An introduction to blockchain that includes videos on the history of double-spending in finance and how hashing works within cryptocurrencies.

HBR Whiteboard Session: How Does Blockchain Work?

Karim Lakhani

Harvard Business School Digital Initiative

In this brief video, Professor Lakhani explains the fundamentals of blockchain and why they are important across industries.

A simple guide to Bitcoin

Olivia Solon

Wired

This piece from Wired focuses especially on key bitcoin fundamentals such as mining, how to buy bitcoin, exchange security, volatility, and 51 percent attacks.

What is Ethereum? A Step-by-Step Beginners Guide

Ameer Rosic

Blockgeeks

Blockgeeks’ Guide explains what Ethereum is, how it works and what it can be used for.

A Beginner’s Guide to Smart Contracts

Ameer Rosic

Blockgeeks

Blockgeeks’ Guide explains what a smart contract is, how it can be created using blockchain, and examples of how smart contracts could benefit various industries.

Are you ready for blockchain?

Thomson Reuters

This Thomson Reuters report details a number of blockchain projects, provides insights from blockchain applications across different industries, and considers which blockchain use cases will become mainstream.

Blockchain basics

Sloane Brakeville & Bhargav Perepa

IBM

IBM’s guide provides basics on distributed ledgers and blockchain with a particular focus on Hyperledger. Hyperledger is an open-source project to support the development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers for business use.

How blockchain will radically transform the economy

Bettina Warburg

TEDSummit

A TED talk on how blockchain technology can be applied in the real world and create changes in the economy.

How the blockchain is changing money and business

Don Tapscott

TEDSummit

A TED talk that aims to demystify blockchain and explain how it holds the potential to transform money, business, government, and society.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

Satoshi Nakamoto

www.bitcoin.org

The original bitcoin whitepaper from Satoshi Nakamoto describes the digital currency as a solution to the double-spending problem by creating a peer-to-peer network. Interestingly, there is no specific mention of “blockchain” throughout the entire paper.

Learn Blockchains by Building One

Daniel van Flymen

Hacker Noon

This article from Hacker Noon takes readers through the step-by-step process of building a blockchain.

An Introduction to Ethereum and Smart Contracts: Bitcoin and the Blockchain

Sebastián Peyrott

DZone

This piece from DZone explains (in a technical manner) how Bitcoin, Ethereum, and smart contracts mitigate the problem of double-spending.

Open Matters: Why Permissionless Blockchains are Essential to the Future of the Internet

Peter Van Valkenburgh

Coin Center

This article from Coin Center explains the difference between permissioned and permissionless blockchain and how they manage consensus mechanisms in different situations.

Hedera Hashgraph Thinks It Can One-Up Bitcoin And Ethereum With Faster Transactions

Jeff Kauflin

Forbes

This Forbes article examines Hedera and IOTA – two DLTs that do not use a traditional blockchain; both the IOTA Tangle and Hedera Hashgraph are based on the mathematical approach called a directed acyclic graph (DAG).

Comparison of Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric and Corda

Martin Valenta & Philipp Sandner

Frankfurt School Blockchain Center

This working paper compares the most notable differences between Hyperledger Fabric, R3 Corda, and Ethereum, toward providing decision-makers with insight on what use cases are most suitable for each DLT.