BITCOIN DECODED / LEARNING LIBRARY
Bitcoin Core. The verification layer.
What is Bitcoin Core? Understand full nodes, consensus validation, wallets and open-source development.
What is Bitcoin Core?
Bitcoin Core is open-source software that validates Bitcoin blocks and transactions. It includes full-node and wallet functionality. It is not a separate token or a company controlling the Bitcoin network.
Bitcoin Core project source ↗What does a full node do?
A full node checks consensus rules independently. It rejects invalid blocks even if a miner produced them. A node can verify transaction history; it does not prove the identity or reliability of a trading counterparty.
How do changes happen?
Developers propose and review changes publicly. Participants decide which software to run. Development, mining and economic participation have different roles; no one role can simply replace the rules every other participant accepts.
Inspect the public repository ↗Core, BTC and forks.
BTC is the native Bitcoin asset. Core is software. A project that copies Core’s source code can have a separate chain and different issuance. See the forks guide and Bitcoin Genesis 1 research note.