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CBF · Course

Certified Blockchain Foundations

How the machine actually works -- Bitcoin and Ethereum, end to end

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Course contents

  1. Lesson 1Origins and the Problem Being Solved

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    Where Bitcoin and Ethereum came from, what problem each was built to solve, and why the pieces existed for decades before anyone assembled them.

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  2. Lesson 2Cryptography, Keys and Wallets

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    What cryptography actually does on a blockchain, why nothing on-chain is encrypted, how a wallet is derived, and why no registry of keys is needed.

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  3. Lesson 3The Ledger: UTXOs, Accounts, Blocks and Merkle Roots

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    The two ways a blockchain can record who owns what, what a block actually contains, and how one hash commits to every transaction inside it.

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  4. Lesson 4Consensus and Finality

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    How an open network with no leader agrees on one history — the assumption it rests on, why forks are normal, and what "final" actually means.

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  5. Lesson 5The Transaction Journey

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    What actually happens between pressing send and being confirmed — nine steps, each with a different set of participants and a different risk.

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  6. Lesson 6Economics: Issuance, Fees and Price

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    Where new coins come from on each chain, how fees are set, and how an asset with no issuer acquired a price in the first place.

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  7. Lesson 7The Ethereum Machine

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    The three layers, what a contract actually is, why a token standard is not a safety standard, and how an automated market maker prices a trade.

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  8. Lesson 8Boundaries: Scaling and the Quantum Horizon

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    Three structures that all get called "blockchain" and are not the same shape, and an honest account of what quantum computing does and does not break.

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