Let’s take a step back and think about the design and architecture of what we’re

trying
to achieve with blockchain.
What exactly are we trying to build, and how do we go about designing such a
system?
With blockchain, we want to deploy it across a network, where users who potentially
are
located on different sides of the world can interact with one another.
So, we want this system to be distributed – a distributed system!
We want such a system to be able to agree on a common truth without trusting a
single
machine or authority.
In other words, we need the network to be able to reach consensus.
Instead of trusting the execution of individual processes or reliability of any
individuals,
we trust the general protocol and the math behind it.
It’s trust – without trust.
Luckily for us, distributed systems and the consensus problem have been studied for
decades
by mathematicians and computer scientists.
It’s by studying this traditional literature and design formalisms that we can
start designing
blockchain systems from the ground up.