The Blockchain Network

Due to the issues of centralized money systems mentioned in lesson 1, topic “What Problem Blockchain Tries to Solve“, we want to do away with a central intermediary. Therefore, if we talk about blockchains like Bitcoin, we deal with a decentralized network. In decentralized networks, nodes (users) are connected directly with other nodes. It could look like that:

You can see that node A is connected to nodes B, D, and F but not directly to the rest of the network. This is an important feature of a decentralized network. Nodes do not know every other node (peers) of the network. They typically know only a few of them. Besides, that nodes can also disconnect and reconnect at any time. And they can either behave honestly or dishonestly.