Bitcoin

Pioneering work on digital currencies prior to bitcoin was done by David Chaum, who published on blind signatures as the basis for untraceable electronic cash and mail throughout the 1980’s. Wei Dai proposed B-money in 1998, which contained the idea of generation of money through the solving of computational puzzles as well novel methods for reaching consensus among network participants. Adam Back introduced the Hashcash algorithm. Hal Finney later utilized Back’s hashcash when he introduced a reproducible proof of work (RPOW) token in 2005. Nick Szabo proposed Bit goldBit gold in 2008, a digital currency which utilizes a proof of work puzzle that is securely timestamped and contains links between transactions.

The creation & validation of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, along with the appending of these transactions to the Bitcoin blockchain, is the core feature of the Bitcoin networkBitcoin network and cryptocurrency. Transactions are created by the owner of of the bitcoins, who generate a specific digital signature using the private keys to create a valid transaction. Any transaction broadcast to the network without a valid digital signature will not be validated by the network and will fail to be included in the blockchain.