Casper Concepts

Introduction

This section is intended for the developer or user who has had little or no exposure to Casper and wants to understand the concepts underpinning the platform. Working with the Casper blockchain requires an understanding of some core concepts. These concepts generally apply to blockchain technology, although some are Casper-specific. If you are new to Casper, we recommend you familiarize yourself with these concepts to ensure a proper foundation for your Casper education.

Once you understand the basic concepts underpinning Casper, here are some further learning paths you may wish to pursue:

• If you are just getting started and looking for help building your first Casper-based app, we recommend the beginner tutorials section.
• If you have already started your Casper education and want to continue with more advanced tutorials, try our advanced tutorials section.
• If you already have experience with or know of the Casper platform and are looking for specific information about a development topic, head over to the development area.

Casper Concepts

Intro to dApps

An introduction to developing Distributed Applications on the Casper blockchain.

Accounts and Cryptographic Keys

The Casper programming model is account-based. An understanding of how Casper accounts work, and how they are secured, may be read here.

Hash Types

Hashes are used throughout the Casper ecosystem for keys, addresses, packaging data and more. Find a description of these hash types here.

Global State

Learn about the storage layer for the Casper blockchain. All accounts, contracts, and data are stored in global state.

Call Stacks

This document contains a discussion of how Casper manages the calling of a contract, and some essential concepts to understand when running this kind of code.

Deploys and the Deploy Lifecycle

Deploys are a concept fundamental to the Casper blockchain. Learn about deploys, what they are for, how to create and send them, what happens to them when you do.

Smart Contracts

Learn how to develop Smart Contracts on Casper.

Smart Contracts and Session Code

Read this to understand the different kinds of code executed on the Casper platform, their differences, and why you would use one versus the other.

Dictionaries

Dictionaries are a primary construct for storing and retrieving data on the Casper platform.

Serialization

Learn about how serialization is done in Casper, the Casper Serialization Standard, and how to roll your own custom serialization.

Design

An in-depth look at the high-level design and architecture of the Casper ecosystem can be found here.

Economics

Learn how the on-chain economics of Casper work here.

Glossary

A compendium of all the terms used in Casper, in alphabetical order. We have tried to make these documentation pages as self-explanatory as possible, but if there is a term that isn't explained, or that you don't recognize, you will find a short definition in these pages.