Part II: Blockchain Core Concepts and Terminology

Chapter 3, Blockchain 101 - Assets, Transactions, and Hashes, covers the concepts of hashing, blocks, (distributed) blockchains, and the mining process.

Chapter 4, Blockchain 101 - Blocks, Chains, and Consensus, builds on the previous chapter and continues exposing the technical details of different kind of assets, how transactions work, and how consensus is reached among entities in a blockchain.

Chapter 5, Blockchain 101 - Security, Privacy, and Smart Contracts, shows that with blockchain, trust is everything. It also talks about how to know that your assets in a blockchain are secure. In addition to security, it covers how blockchain protects your privacy. Finally, this chapter covers smart contracts for conditional transactions.

Chapter 6, Understanding the Blockchain Data Flow, takes a look at how the discussed technical aspects of blockchain come together. Running through the flow of a few transactions helps to make sense off it all.

Chapter 7, Public Versus Private Blockchains and their Providers, discusses the exact differences between public and private/consortium blockchains. It is important to know that you don't have to build the blockchain yourself—there are plenty of providers.