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@ -15,18 +15,19 @@ This book is mostly intended for coders. If you can use a programming language,
The early release version of the book is a *raw and rough draft* and will change regularly. New chapters will be added as they are drafted and there will be plenty of changes to the content, examples and diagrams. There will be factual and technical errors in the early release and some of the examples may not work or refer to obsolete versions of the code. Nevertheless, I hope you will enjoy the content and find it useful. I also hope that you will take the opportunity to "fork" the source code of the book and provide feedback by creating a pull request or submitting a patch. I present this work in the spirit of Cunningham's Law, named after the inventor of the wiki, Ward Cunningham:
.Cunningham's Law
====
_The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer_
====
I hope you can help me find and publish the "right answer" by the time this book is ready to print.
=== Why Are There Bugs On The Cover?
The Leafcutter Ant is a species that exhibits highly complex behavior in a colony super-organism, but each individual ant operates on a set of simple rules driven by social interaction and the exchange of chemical scents (pheromones). Per Wikipedia: "Next to humans, leafcutter ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth". Leafcutter ants don't actually eat leaves, but rather use them to farm a fungus, which is the central food source for the colony. While ants form a caste-based society and have a queen, there is no central authority or central planning in an ant colony. The highly intelligent and sohpisticated behavior exhibited by a multi-million member colony is an emergent property from the interaction fo the individuals in a social network.
The Leafcutter Ant is a species that exhibits highly complex behavior in a colony super-organism, but each individual ant operates on a set of simple rules driven by social interaction and the exchange of chemical scents (pheromones). Per Wikipedia: "Next to humans, leafcutter ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth". Leafcutter ants don't actually eat leaves, but rather use them to farm a fungus, which is the central food source for the colony. Get that? These ants are farming!
Bitcoin, by comparison, is a highly sophisticated de-centralized trust network that can support a myriad of financial processes. Yet, each node in the bitcoin network follows a few simple mathematical rules. The interaction between many nodes is what leads to the emergence of the sophisticated behavior, not any inherent complexity or trust in any single node. Like an ant colony, the bitcoin network is a resilient network of simple nodes and can do amazing things without any central coordination.
While ants form a caste-based society and have a queen for producing offspring, there is no central authority or leader in an ant colony. The highly intelligent and sohpisticated behavior exhibited by a multi-million member colony is an emergent property from the interaction of the individuals in a social network.
Nature demonstrates that de-centralized systems can be resilient and can produce emergent complexity and sophistication without the need for a central authority, hierarchy or complex parts.
Bitcoin is a highly sophisticated de-centralized trust network that can support a myriad of financial processes. Yet, each node in the bitcoin network follows a few simple mathematical rules. The interaction between many nodes is what leads to the emergence of the sophisticated behavior, not any inherent complexity or trust in any single node. Like an ant colony, the bitcoin network is a resilient network of simple nodes following simple rules that together can do amazing things without any central coordination.
=== Conventions Used in This Book