# Background

This book is meant for, but by no means restricted to, the course *Introduction to Blockchain*
taught by the Blockchain club at Cornell. The course was first
offered in Fall 2021 and has been offered every semester since. 
Each time we, the teaching staff, try to improve the course and
this textbook is one such improvement, first introduced in 
Spring 2022.

We want to thank everyone in the Cornell Blockchain for their
contribution to the course and the textbook. 

:::{note}
One of the reasons for this textbook is that 
information on the Blockchain is often scattered and 
hard to verify. At the end of each chapter we will have a list
of sources we deem reputable and ones we base the text on.
:::

The formatting and structure is inspired by Cornell professor 
Michael Clarkson and his [CS3110 textbook](https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html). 

The only exception to the above is the use of italics and single-quotes.
When we use *italics* we are using a formal definition that is
commonly used for Blockchain while 'single-quotes' are our own
definitions to help explanation. Using *definitions* outside
this course means others in the Blockchain community understand them but
'definitions' might leave some confused. The only exemption
to this rule is for blockchain-as-a-data-structure, our own definition, which is too wordy to 
constantly repeat, so we often use its italicized acronym, *BADS*.

**Copyright 2022 Cornell Blockchain & Daniel Mistrik.**