Blocks, transactions, keys and fees, explained from the ground up. Read these first and every other topic on TokenTrail gets easier to follow.
A blockchain is a record book that many computers keep at the same time, with each page sealed to the one before it. Here is how the pieces fit, using Bitcoin and Ethereum as examples.
Your private key signs, your public key lets others check the signature, and your address is a shorter, safer label built from the public key. Here is how the three connect and which one you may share.
A Bitcoin payment is not a balance moving between accounts. It spends earlier outputs and creates new ones. Here is the anatomy of a transaction, a worked example with change, and the checks every node runs.
A confirmation is a block stacked on top of your transaction. Here is what bitcoin.org recommends, the probability maths from the whitepaper behind the famous “six confirmations”, and why the right number depends on the amount at stake.
Before a transaction is confirmed, it sits in the memory pool of the nodes that have heard about it. Here is how that waiting room works, why your payment can get stuck in it, and what you can do about it.
Every on-chain transaction pays for space in a block. Bitcoin charges by size, Ethereum by computation. Here is how each fee is calculated, with worked examples, and what makes fees jump.
A crypto address is the destination you hand out to get paid — a shortened, error-checked form of your public key.
Block height is a block’s place in line: how many blocks came before it, starting from zero.
A confirmation tells you how deeply a transaction is buried in the blockchain — and so how hard it would be to undo.
A hash is a short, fixed-length fingerprint of data. Blockchains use hashes to link blocks, name transactions and prove work.
The mempool is the waiting room for transactions: valid, broadcast, but not yet in a block.
A node is any computer taking part in a blockchain network. Full nodes check every block for themselves.
Your private key is the secret that lets you spend. Whoever knows it controls the funds.
Supply schedule, mining, difficulty, Lightning and spot ETFs.
Accounts, gas, staking, the fee burn and layer-2 rollups.
Stablecoins, exchanges without order books, liquidity pools and on-chain lending.
How analysts turn public ledger data into cost-basis, holder and flow signals — and where that breaks.
Spot versus derivatives, funding rates, open interest, liquidations and order books.
Risk, volatility, diversification, position sizing and market cycles for crypto beginners.
Custody choices, seed phrases, hardware wallets and the scams that target new users.
A blockchain is a shared record that many computers keep at the same time. Everything else on this site — Bitcoin’s supply rules, Ethereum’s gas, DeFi pools, on-chain metrics — sits on top of a handful of moving parts: keys that prove who controls funds, transactions that move value, blocks that bundle transactions in order, and fees that pay for space in those blocks. This section explains each part in plain English, uses Bitcoin and Ethereum as running examples, and points out where the two networks do things differently.
The guides are written to be read in order. Each one assumes only what the earlier ones have already explained.
Once these basics are clear, the UTXO, mempool and confirmation glossary entries make quick refreshers, and the node entry explains who actually keeps copies of the ledger. From here, On-Chain Analysis shows how analysts turn the same public records into numbers, and Security & Scams explains what keys mean for keeping your own coins safe.
It is not required, but it helps a great deal. Knowing what a private key, a transaction and a confirmation are is what lets you spot a scam, avoid sending funds to the wrong place and understand what a custodian holds for you. The security guides build directly on these basics.
No. Bitcoin tracks unspent outputs, while Ethereum tracks account balances, and the two charge fees in different ways. The guides point out these differences as they come up, and UTXO vs account model compares them directly.