How Blockchains Work by Hand: Ledgers, Toy Hashes & Chained Blocks, Merkle Trees, Proof-of-Work Targets, Difficulty Adjustment, Unspent Outputs & Fee Markets
Rebuild the mechanics of a blockchain in a spreadsheet. You will keep a shared ledger and catch double spends, chain blocks with a toy hash and detect tampering, build a Merkle tree and a proof path, search a given nonce table for a hash below the target, adjust difficulty from block times, track unspent outputs and change, pack a block by fee rate and model a halving issuance schedule, all with toy numbers and every cell checked as you go.
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About this course
This course rebuilds the mechanics of a blockchain in a spreadsheet, with toy numbers and no code. You derive balances from a transaction log with SUMIFS and catch a double spend by replaying the log in order, chain blocks with a toy MOD hash and find a tampered block with MINIFS, and build a Merkle tree with a root and a proof path. You test a given nonce table against a proof-of-work target, work out expected tries, clamp a difficulty adjustment with MIN and MAX, track unspent outputs, change and implied fees, rank a waiting pool by fee rate and model a halving reward schedule with POWER and INT.
Lessons
- A Shared Ledger: Balances from a Transaction Log, Running Balances in Order and Double Spends Pro
- Toy Hashes & Chained Blocks: MOD Hashes, Previous-Hash Links and Spotting a Tampered Block Pro
- Merkle Trees: Pairing Hashes Level by Level, the Odd Leaf, the Root and a Proof Path Pro
- Proof-of-Work: Targets, a Given Nonce Table, the First Valid Nonce and Expected Tries Pro
- Difficulty Adjustment: Actual vs Target Block Times over a Window and a Clamped New Difficulty Pro
- Unspent Outputs: Wallet Balances, Spending Whole Outputs, Change and the Implied Fee Pro
- Fee Markets: Fee Rates, Ranking the Waiting Pool, Packing a Block and Waiting Blocks Pro
- Capstone – Issuance & Costs: Halving Rewards, Cumulative Supply, Reward Value vs Energy Cost and a Chart Pro