Introduction to the course and building foundation of blockchain and privacy

Intro to the course

Introduction to the module and building foundation of blockchain and privacy

Introduction to the module

Introduction to Privacy

Understand the nature of public and permissioned blockchains and how they work

What is a blockchain

Understand the consensus of blockchains and how blocks are linked together using proof of work

What is mining in blockchain?

A look into what privacy means on blockchains and trying to make sense of the data from the block explorers

What is privacy within blockchains

Privacy is awesome but why do we care at all ? why cant we keep the data all public and the dangers of the applications without privacy on blockchains

Why is Privacy important - Bitcoin?

Why is Privacy important - Ethereum?

privacy techniques are based on cryptographic principles, some of which are heavily affected by the advent of quantum computing, in this lesson, we will explore this concept further and see which techniques are affected and what can be done to improve upon them

Will Quantum computing break privacy?

Understanding Blockchains, Mining, and the Problem of Privacy

There are so many privacy techniques, lets take a brief look at how each of them works from a higher level, looking at Zcash, Monero, Dash, Mixers (General)

A brief look at privacy techniques in blockchains

ZCash

Moneoro

Coinjoin

Dash

Payment Channels

Stealth Address

Privacy Techniques in Various Blockchains

Implementing a rock paper scissors game

Set up the environment for using Ethereum Remix IDE

Setting up an environment for smart contract

Implement a simple rock paper scissors contract with no privacy

Writing our first smart contract

Implementing Rock Paper Scissors

Deploying the contract and playing rock paper scissor on blockchain.

Problems with current implementation

Implementing privacy on the smart contract

Implementing A Basic Rock Paper Scissors on Ethereum

A twist in rock paper scissors game

Using Randomness to give privacy to users moves

A Walkthrough of the Solution

Conclusion and wrapping up rock paper scissors game

Implementing Privacy for Rock Paper Scissors on Ethereum

Welcome to the newline guide to privacy on blockchains, In this course we are going to be looking at privacy techniques used in blockchain and implementing really cool games like _Rock, Paper, Scissors_ on Ethereum and using cryptography primitives to help us improve privacy for our own applications.

Interested about building decentralized applications?

Want to learn how to store sensitive data in public chain or database?

Want to learn how privacy focussed cryptocurrencies actually keep transactions private?

Want to know all the tools of cryptography that you can use today?

Privacy is a very important concept in blockchains, writing a smart contract is one thing, but designing the privacy aspects of your application is another, using cryptography as a toolbox can be a way to achieve privacy that can yield very good results. For example, hashes with salt has been used for a long time to store user passwords without actually knowing the user passwords and even if the security gets compromised and they are stolen, no user data can be accessed by using the hash without knowing the preimage of the hash.

Privacy is at the heart of blockchains. Blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are very public by nature, to use them for your applications, you must not put any sensitive data on them, but you have to put something so at a later date, you can prove that a supply chain holds or a product is legitimate, but how do you go about putting data on blockchains without really revealing what the data is?

In this course we'll look at the various privacy technologies and then implement a simple but nuanced game in Solidity: _Rock, Paper, Scissors_. This game will give us a hands-on lesson in creating real-world applications that handle private data on a public blockchain.

Understand Privacy on Ethereum and Build Rock, Paper, Scissors with Solidity

In this course, we'll show you how to implement privacy in your applications and build fun projects like rock paper scissors

newline's Introduction to Privacy on Ethereum

Building rock paper scissors on Ethereum using Solidity

How privacy focussed Blockchains work like ZCash, Monero, and more

How to implement rock paper scissors with complete privacy

Learn about cryptography primitives and how to use them

How to hide data within public Blockchains

When does privacy break and looking into Post-Quantum Cryptography

So far, we have talked about consensus mechanism and little bit about Proof of Work, Now lets see how everything fits together through mining, in a distributed peer to peer network, everyone has the same privileges, so how do we ever confirm that transaction is indeed now confirmed. For example, lets say Alice sends some currency like bitcoin to bob, how does bob know that alice hasnt also been sent this to charlie? this is known as a double spending problem, since there isnt a central entity like a bank to keep track of transactions, people can double spend what they have and this is the problem bitcoin solved in a distributed way.

The idea is very simple. everyone is considered equal and there are special types of nodes which are known as mines, the job of the miner is to create blocks and confirm transactions, miner is incentivised to do this in mainly 2 ways:

Now lets talk about what a miner does? Mining, yes thats correct but there is more to it, essentially they are solving a mathematical puzzle, for example, find 2 prime numbers which multiply to get 15, now finding these numbers is harder than verifying them, since 15 is a small number, we can say its 3 and 5 but its much simpler to multiply 3 and 5 to get 15 then to find 2 prime numbers which multiply to get 15.

---
title: What is mining in blockchain?
slug: what-are-miners
description: Understand the consensus of blockchains and how blocks are linked together using proof of work
role: "LESSON"
privateVideoUrl: https://fullstack.wistia.com/medias/ii1j0fkftv
isPublicLesson: false
---

So far, we have talked about consensus mechanism and little bit about Proof of Work, Now lets see how everything fits together through mining, in a distributed peer to peer network, everyone has the same privileges, so how do we ever confirm that transaction is indeed now confirmed. For example, lets say Alice sends some currency like bitcoin to bob, how does bob know that alice hasnt also been sent this to charlie? this is known as a double spending problem, since there isnt a central entity like a bank to keep track of transactions, people can double spend what they have and this is the problem bitcoin solved in a distributed way.

The idea is very simple. everyone is considered equal and there are special types of nodes which are known as mines, the job of the miner is to create blocks and confirm transactions, miner is incentivised to do this in mainly 2 ways:

1.  Block rewards
    block rewards are the main way miners make money, in bitcoins case, this is hardcoded in the protocol and are halved every 4 years (roughly)
2.  Transaction fees
    Every transaction has a fees associated with it and that goes to the miner who includes this transaction in the block. blocks have limited space so they can be propagated faster to all the peers in the network. The miner is incetivised to only include transactions which pay them the highest amount of fees. This means that transactions with zero fees can still get confirmed but transactions with higher fees will always be picked up first by a rational miner.

Now lets talk about what a miner does? Mining, yes thats correct but there is more to it, essentially they are solving a mathematical puzzle, for example, find 2 prime numbers which multiply to get 15, now finding these numbers is harder than verifying them, since 15 is a small number, we can say its 3 and 5 but its much simpler to multiply 3 and 5 to get 15 then to find 2 prime numbers which multiply to get 15.
