Transactions and Blocks
13 posts
- 1Intermediate
UTXO Model (Unspent Transaction Output)
Bitcoin manages balances not as account totals but as sums of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). The coin model's principles and its privacy and security advantages.
- 2Advanced
Bitcoin Actually Runs on a Tiny Programming Language
A deep technical guide to Bitcoin Script - the stack-based programming language that defines how bitcoin can be spent. Covers opcodes, standard script types (P2PKH, P2SH, P2WPKH, P2TR), execution traces, timelocks, multisig, and Tapscript.
- 3Beginner
Mempool - Bitcoin Transaction Waiting Room
The mempool is where unconfirmed transactions wait before being included in a block. How fees, eviction, and miner selection work.
- 4Intermediate
Bumping a Sent Bitcoin Transaction Past the Mempool Queue
A technical deep-dive into Bitcoin's Replace-By-Fee mechanism - BIP-125 opt-in RBF, full RBF, wallet usage, mempool dynamics, and merchant implications.
- 5Intermediate
Child Pays for Parent (CPFP)
How Child-Pays-for-Parent (CPFP) works in Bitcoin - package relay mechanics, fee calculation, use cases for recipients and senders, comparison with RBF, and practical wallet examples.
- 6Advanced
Merkle Tree - Efficient Data Verification
A Merkle tree is a binary hash tree structure that efficiently verifies data integrity by summarizing large amounts of data into a single hash value.
- 7Advanced
Cracking a Bitcoin Block Open and Looking Inside
A detailed technical breakdown of Bitcoin's block structure - from the 80-byte header to the coinbase transaction, SegWit witness data, and block weight. Includes hex analysis of a real block header.
- 8Advanced
SegWit (Segregated Witness) - Scaling Through Signature Separation
SegWit (Segregated Witness) is a Bitcoin protocol upgrade activated in 2017 that increases the practical capacity of blocks by separating signature data from transactions.
- 9Advanced
Taproot - Privacy and Efficiency Through Schnorr Signatures
Taproot is the 2021 Bitcoin upgrade that makes transactions with complex spending conditions look identical to ordinary single-signature payments, improving privacy and efficiency through Schnorr signatures, MAST, and Tapscript.
- 10Advanced
Node - Bitcoin's Sovereign Verification
A Node is software that stores a complete copy of the Bitcoin blockchain and independently verifies the validity of all transactions and blocks.
- 11Intermediate
Soft Fork & Hard Fork - Two Ways to Change the Rules
Bitcoin has no update button. How narrowing the rules differs from widening them, and why Bitcoin insists on soft forks.
- 12Intermediate
51% Attack
What happens when one entity controls majority hashrate - theoretically possible, practically impossible on Bitcoin.
- 13Advanced
Lightning Network - Bitcoin's Layer 2
The Lightning Network is a layer 2 payment network built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, enabling small instant payments.