Chapters

This textbook is organized into 20 chapters covering 200 concepts.

Chapter Overview

  1. Trust and Digital Networks - Introduces the fundamental problem of trust in digital networks, network architecture models, and the distinction between centralized and decentralized trust.
  2. Cryptographic Foundations - Covers hash functions, encryption, hash chains, Merkle trees, and the cryptographic building blocks that underpin all trust technologies.
  3. Keys, Signatures, and Identity - Explores public-private key pairs, digital signatures, authentication, authorization, and identity verification.
  4. Certificate Authorities and PKI - Examines the centralized trust model built on certificate authorities, X.509 certificates, and public key infrastructure.
  5. Distributed Systems and Ledgers - Introduces distributed systems, distributed ledgers, immutability, blockchain definition, block structure, and transactions.
  6. Nodes, Throughput, and Network Performance - Covers blockchain nodes, transaction throughput, network latency, and infrastructure cost fundamentals.
  7. Consensus Mechanisms - Explores how distributed networks achieve agreement through proof of work, proof of stake, Byzantine fault tolerance, and fork management.
  8. Mining and Computational Economics - Covers the mining process, rewards, difficulty adjustment, computational costs, energy consumption, and transaction fees.
  9. Smart Contracts and Tokens - Examines programmable blockchain logic, token types, tokenization, wallets, and smart contract risks.
  10. Blockchain Types and Platforms - Covers permissioned, permissionless, public, private, and consortium blockchains, plus Ethereum, Bitcoin, and interoperability.
  11. Governance and Scalability - Explores governance models, scalability challenges, the scalability trilemma, and Layer 1/Layer 2 solutions.
  12. Cost Analysis and Total Cost of Ownership - Covers network cost analysis, operating and capital expenses, total cost of ownership, cost simulation, and break-even analysis.
  13. Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method - Introduces the ATAM methodology, quality attributes, utility trees, sensitivity points, and scenario generation.
  14. Risk Analysis and Quality Attributes - Covers architecture risk identification, risk themes, mitigation strategies, and quality attributes for trust architectures.
  15. Cognitive Bias in Technology Decisions - Examines cognitive biases that distort technology evaluation, with debiasing techniques and the hype cycle.
  16. Evidence-Based Evaluation - Covers evidence-based evaluation frameworks, decision frameworks, change management, and stakeholder buy-in.
  17. Industry Case Studies - Examines real-world blockchain deployments across industries, analyzing success factors, failures, and limitations.
  18. Emerging Trust Technologies - Covers zero-knowledge proofs, verifiable credentials, decentralized identifiers, self-sovereign identity, and regulatory considerations.
  19. Alternative Architectures and Decision Frameworks - Explores alternative technologies, hybrid architectures, technology evaluation methods, and recommendation writing.
  20. Implementation and Capstone - Covers proof of concept, pilot programs, implementation roadmaps, architecture reports, and the capstone project.

How to Use This Textbook

Chapters are arranged to respect concept dependencies — each chapter builds on knowledge from earlier chapters. Foundational readers should follow the sequence from Chapter 1 forward. Experienced professionals familiar with cryptography and networking may skip to Chapter 5 (Distributed Systems) or Chapter 13 (ATAM) depending on their background.

Note: Each chapter includes a list of concepts covered. Make sure to complete prerequisites before moving to advanced chapters.