# Introduction Dryly speaking, the "goal" of this part of the book is to establish a theoretical understanding, terminology, and vocabulary that will serve us well in the following parts. That is, I want to have a unified source that could be used to initiate anyone into discussing any of the advanced, disparate topics that I plan to cover in the later parts. However, my *true* goal is to get the reader excited about the theory of decentralized consensus. Why? Because it is *beautiful*. Consensus theory is elementary enough to make it approachable to a relatively broad audience, while deep enough to provide (with *some* effort) rewarding a-ha! moments that will hopefully make the reader finish this book (or whatever parts of it) feeling smarter than they were before reading. While not requiring high proficiency in any particular branch of math, consensus theory provides a nice sightseeing tour through realms of probability, combinatorics, graph theory, game theory, cryptography, algorithmics, and so on. And if all of that isn't enough, the story of this scientific paradigm shift is wrapped in mystery, espionage, and aspirations for a better world. That being said, this is *not* a historical review. While I do point out major milestones, I present the theory in a uniform, modern approach, that consolidates the different works and ideas that diverged from Satoshi et al.'s original work. I am hopeful that *any* reader could better appreciate cryptocurrencies and the struggles they are facing with the tools and thought frameworks in this volume, even if they do not decide to apply this insight to study GHOSTDAG. ## Overview TODO: rewrite to accommodate new structure --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://shai-deshe.gitbook.io/understanding-blockdags-and-ghostdag/part-1-blockchains-and-blockdags/introduction.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.