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University at Buffalo

Blockchain Basics

This first course of the Blockchain specialization provides a broad overview of the essential concepts of blockchain technology – by initially exploring the Bitcoin protocol followed by the Ethereum protocol – to lay the foundation necessary for developing applications and programming. You will be equipped with the knowledge needed to create nodes on your personal Ethereum blockchain, create accounts, unlock accounts, mine, transact, transfer Ethers, and check balances. You will learn about the decentralized peer-to-peer network, an immutable distributed ledger and the trust model that defines a blockchain. This course enables you to explain basic components of a blockchain (transaction, block, block header, and the chain) its operations (verification, validation, and consensus model) underlying algorithms, and essentials of trust (hard fork and soft fork). Content includes the hashing and cryptography foundations indispensable to blockchain programming, which is the focus of two subsequent specialization courses, Smart Contracts and Decentralized Applications (Dapps). You will work on a virtual machine image, specifically created for this course, to build an Ethereum test chain and operate on the chain. This hands-on activity will help you understand the workings of a blockchain, its transactions, blocks and mining. Main concepts are delivered through videos, demos and hands-on exercises.

Status: Cryptography
Status: Cryptographic Protocols
BeginnerCourse15 hours

Featured reviews

RH

5.0Reviewed May 5, 2019

The course is well designed to give you an overview of Blockchain and the basic concepts. What is Smart Contract and other various terminologies and how they play a role in the blockchain. Thanks

MK

4.0Reviewed Mar 16, 2019

Very nicely arranged course and very informative. Learned a lot in no time. Only hurdle is The Ethereum Virtual machine takes hell lot of time in the Miner step. rest all fine. thanks a lot.

SJ

5.0Reviewed Apr 7, 2022

very good course it starts from basics and provides a amazing learning path , they focus on your self study rasher than spoon feeding like other courses ,which is the best thing of this course .

DL

5.0Reviewed Jul 31, 2020

This course gave me a lot of knowledge about BlockChain. Before this course, I didn't have any knowledge about BlockChain. I learned BitCoin and Ehereum. I knew, how they work, how to apply?

SJ

5.0Reviewed Feb 5, 2022

Really l​earned a lot about the fundamentals of blockchain, being a software engineer looking into blockchain. It just got me up to speed with the underlying workflow of blockchain and more. loved it.

VG

5.0Reviewed Jul 24, 2020

excellent course regarding blockchain and amazing practicals work included. thank you very much. I wish you create a complete practical course, and make us more eager to do that. Thank you.

KA

4.0Reviewed Sep 24, 2020

Some of the course links don't work. The instruction for installation of virtual machine needs updating. I'm hoping the other courses in the specialisation go into more depth, as this is very basic.

NN

5.0Reviewed Nov 7, 2019

The course was at a right pace for me and it introduced concepts at the right level of detail. Also provided lot of reading and watching material that was useful for such a evolving subject.

SS

5.0Reviewed Jul 28, 2018

I find this course helpful to absolute beginner and for one who wants to grasp the basic concepts of Blockchain . The tutor tried to explain most part with simplicity and good and sufficient details.

ES

4.0Reviewed Dec 31, 2019

Out of date: the content is from 2017 I believe, and this is a field that is evolving so fast. It was hard to follow along on the programming exercises, but it was a good introduction to the concepts.

LR

5.0Reviewed Jul 30, 2019

Comprehensive and clear course that summarize the basic concepts to understand the blockchain technology. Also the resources and contents included are very valuables. I totally recommend this course.

TT

5.0Reviewed Nov 19, 2018

This is an introductory course to Blockchain. The supplemented material (in other words self-study) is excellent and in my opinion is the only way to master the concepts and details of this discipline

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