status: draft

Preface

This is a book I've been wanting to write for so long.

It's been occupying my head for a long time.

Part of me wish this book exists in my Ethereum developer days, so that I have some manuals to refer to instead of searching that hidden blog post in 2016, a secret hackmd note by a college, or an unknown paper on arxiv.

Part of me wish this book exists so I can hand it to the tour guide who genuinely believe a bus of best blockchain developers are scammers. I wish there's a book about Ethereum that people have access to, is not about number goes up then suddenly goes down, not too technical that only IT professionals can appreciate in a IT shelf, and not about just Vitalik and his 100 crazy tales.

I hesitated to write this book. I had many execuses.

• Ethereum is ever evolving. Once I finished the book, most of the architecture and behaviors changed.
• If I can write a book, why not write code or contribute to something more important?
• Definitely someone more qualified than me can write this book.
• What if AI is good enough that we no longer need books? Maybe the next year AI can write a better one than I do.

But what are we going to achieve here?

• I want something sane. Trim the technicality but keep the big idea.
• We want to treat the readers smart. We don't ELI5 like you are a 5 year toddler or 5 year in crypto. I want to assume the reader is a voter in civil society. They are professional at what they are good at. They don't need to know quantum physics if they don't want to. But if quantum physics get abused or penetrate through our lifes too deep, we should know something about it, efficiently.
• It should be lightweight.

How would I approach this book?

• To prevent further procrastination, I'll braindump as much as possible. No fact check and editing until the next version. Expect lots of misinformation.