help with technical text...

[hitchhiker]

I'm trying to summarise in a generic form, the underlying processes within any blockchain... ie: Explain it to people without technical backgrounds. I've ended up merging a few of the ideas, and coming at it from a weird perspective.. how does this seem?

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Part of its process (I’m merging and simplifying here) involves having many people’s computers store a copy of the information. When something needs to happen theses computers do a series of computations. The process only completes when these computers reach ‘consensus’ — many computers agree that the final result, the output of the work, is valid. If someone is acting up, they are  identified by their inability to concede.

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[1715603776]

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[seoincorporation]

I'm trying to summarise in a generic form, the underlying processes within any blockchain... ie: Explain it to people without technical backgrounds. I've ended up merging a few of the ideas, and coming at it from a weird perspective.. how does this seem?

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Part of its process (I’m merging and simplifying here) involves having many people’s computers store a copy of the information. When something needs to happen theses computers do a series of computations. The process only completes when these computers reach ‘consensus’ — many computers agree that the final result, the output of the work, is valid. If someone is acting up, they are  identified by their inability to concede.

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Explain it for simple humans isn't easy, but you go with parts... First you can explain why it's like a DataBase because it goal is to save a lot of information relevant to the system, then you can explain how is like a P2P network, at end each block get updated in each core and that way everyone has the same information, and after that you can explain about the blocks and the confirmations, explain that would be the hard part but with some imagination will be possible.

[aliashraf]

I've used analogy with traditional bookkeeping practices that many of my audiences were already familiar with:

Imagine as a bank we decide to outsource our bookkeeping to volunteers in public domain (let's call them accountants) by giving them a copy of the ledger and a protocol that insures some important rules to be applied:
1- We ask customers to 'announce' their transactions publicly (say in social media).
2- We need our public volunteer bookkeepers, the accountants,  to add pages constantly and one after another to the ledger after a majority of them have reached to a consensus about each of the pages.
3- For the new page to be added:

• It should be produced and announced by an accountant and then being verified and agreed upon by public
• Accountants don't start producing a page unless they are sure about its page number and aware of the state of the balances of all customers, this way
• The new page may contain any number of the announced (not registered) customer transactions.
  
• We guarantee a right for the accountant who generated the page to add a special transaction by which he pays himself a specific amount of reward(increases his balance without decreasing anyone else's).
• All of the included transactions have to be valid (enough balances, properly signed, ...).
• Besides other qualitative indexes, the new page should yield a special quality that is not achievable unless by doing hard work and in a probabilistic fashion.
• Accountants have no incentive  to 'insist' on their own page-in-progress because once they are presented by a new valid page they could simply start generating a page on top of it.

As of my experience spending some time with audience to consolidate this model even more, they would be ready to understand more complex problems like genesis and pseudo anonymous wallet addresses by following the same analogy.

[odolvlobo]

Part of its process (I’m merging and simplifying here) involves having many people’s computers store a copy of the information. When something needs to happen theses computers do a series of computations. The process only completes when these computers reach ‘consensus’ — many computers agree that the final result, the output of the work, is valid. If someone is acting up, they are  identified by their inability to concede.

I think it can be even simpler.

When the information is updated, the updating computer must spend money before the others will consider accepting the update. If the update is valid, then the update is accepted and the updating computer is paid for its work. If it is not valid, then the update is rejected and the updating computer is not paid. This process ensures that computers are motivated to submit only valid updates. When there are competing updates, then the update that costs the most is accepted. This ensures that undoing an update is very costly.

BTW, I don't think that consensus needs to be explained since it is implied, and more importantly, because it is actually more a result of the process than a part of it.

[hitchhiker]

This is now becoming more complicated, the urge seems to be that we eventually include all information.. I don't want to describe POW or POS, but I do need to explain the mechanism of consensus (it's the main element of trust - not the algos, those provide a mechanism that can be trusted, the consensus establishes the real world trust) without really getting technical... ie:

Computers do stuff, they then agree that the stuff was done properly. Anybody who doesn't agree, ie fails validity in the face of consensus, is considered 'bad'.

[aliashraf]

You want to brief  people about what cryptocurrency is or you don't?
If yes, use the analogy I described above or something close enough and go on sooner or later you will be able to explain more and more sophisticated problems like forks and consensus and heaviest chain rule, ... everything, stick with analogy, my advise.

[odolvlobo]

This is now becoming more complicated, the urge seems to be that we eventually include all information.. I don't want to describe POW or POS, but I do need to explain the mechanism of consensus (it's the main element of trust - not the algos, those provide a mechanism that can be trusted, the consensus establishes the real world trust) without really getting technical... ie:

Computers do stuff, they then agree that the stuff was done properly. Anybody who doesn't agree, ie fails validity in the face of consensus, is considered 'bad'.

If one group of nodes disagrees with another group of nodes about the validity of a block, then there is a fork, and each node must decide for itself. Nodes that agree with you are "good" and nodes that disagree with you are "bad". That is not a consensus.

Consensus is not the main element of trust, PoW is. It is PoW that prevents a node from changing the information in the block chain. It is PoW (along with the network effect) that prevents a node from accepting an invalid block.

[bob123]

Computers do stuff, they then agree that the stuff was done properly. Anybody who doesn't agree, ie fails validity in the face of consensus, is considered 'bad'.

There is quite a difference between an explanation without too much technical terms and an explanation for 7 year old kids...

I'd say your approach is more suitable for young kids, than adults.


You should at least mention the key elements:
- Work is being done (PoW, Mining)
- Each node verifies each transaction/block (trustless)
- Works without middlemen (P2P)
- Each user is the only owner of his money (noone else has access)
- Uses Public-Key-Cryptography (Information (private key) = Money)

If the person you try to explain it doesn't understand these simple terms, they most probably also won't be capable of keeping their BTC secured.
So, these people shouldn't own any BTC at all.

Consensus is not the main element of trust, PoW is.

The good thing with bitcoin is, that no trust is required at all.

The combination of technologies (PoW, merkle tree, blockchain, ..) has created a decentralized and trustless system.

People need to trust mathematics, in order to trust bitcoin.