Snakes Into Snake Oil - What Blockchains Are And Why They’re Terrible
summary
Explains blockchains as a hash‑pointer chain plus Merkle trees and signed transactions, secured by a proof-of-work nonce lottery that yields 10‑minute Bitcoin and ~15‑second Ethereum blocks; shows Solidity smart contracts, gas costs and how CryptoKitties clogged Ethereum. Cites concrete failures: MtGox and Quadriga exchange losses, the DAO reorg, roughly 7% of bitcoins stolen, mining pools that control ~75% of hashpower enabling 51% rewrite attacks. Demonstrates why custody, throughput (≈7 TPS vs Visa ≈17k TPS) and irrevocability break many real uses.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Introduction
- 6:30The Blockchain
- 9:08Provenance
- 10:40Blockchain
- 11:55Data Structure
- 14:36Hash chain
- 15:24Merkle tree
- 18:52Bitcoin coffee
- 19:35The peertopeer network
- 22:54The true chain
- 26:19Can transactions change
- 27:13How do I know when Ive created a new block
- 29:51Why do people build secret mining rigs
- 31:59Block reward and transaction fees
- 40:32Bitcoin Transactions
- 43:46Smart Contracts
- 47:43Lets Take A Moment
- 53:01Banks Arent A Modern Invention
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