Beyond the Meme

In this episode of Beyond the Meme, we take a closer look at how online communities shape the way memes are created, shared, and evolve into cultural phenomena. Memes don’t exist in a vacuum—they thrive in digital spaces where people gather to share jokes, stories, and emotions, creating a sense of belonging in an increasingly disconnected world. From niche subreddits to viral TikTok trends, we uncover the dynamics of these “digital tribes” and the role they play in giving memes their power and purpose.

We start by exploring how memes act as symbols of collective identity. Communities like PrequelMemes on Reddit have turned once-cringeworthy moments, such as the infamous “I don’t like sand” line from Star Wars: Episode II, into beloved inside jokes. These memes aren’t just funny—they’re badges of fandom pride, connecting individuals with shared interests and values. Memes, in this sense, become digital campfires where people gather to share and bond.

we need to start talking about what memetic control looks like – how can we ensure the ideas that get lifted are good? especially in a universe where llms are going to get better at writing tweets and be used for influence by more and more people

Next, we break down the lifecycle of a community meme. Using examples like “It’s Morbin’ Time” from the movie Morbius, we examine how memes start as niche jokes, gain adoption within a group, and eventually mutate as they spread. Some memes break free from their original communities and take on new meanings, while others burn out or lose relevance. Communities act as both incubators and guardians, deciding which memes survive and which ones fade into obscurity.

We also highlight the role of different platforms in fostering meme creation. Subreddits like r/BlursedImages and fandom spaces like K-Pop stans are hotbeds for meme innovation, churning out ideas that reflect their unique cultures. Smaller, private spaces like Discord servers and niche Facebook groups play a similar role, often serving as the starting point for memes that later break into the mainstream. These intimate settings allow for experimentation and inside jokes that carry the personality of their origin communities.

Finally, we explore what happens when memes cross community boundaries. For example, the Among Us meme, which began as a niche gaming joke, evolved into a universal shorthand for suspicion as it spread across TikTok and YouTube. These crossovers create dynamic new memes but can also lead to friction when a meme loses its original context or is misused. This segment emphasizes the adaptability and resilience of memes as they traverse different cultural spaces.

As we close the episode, we reflect on the emotional core of memes and their role in modern culture. Memes thrive because they tap into universal emotions—humor, pride, frustration—and create a shared language that brings people together. They’re more than just fleeting internet trends; they’re cultural artifacts that connect us to something bigger.

Tune in for an engaging discussion about how memes are born, evolve, and connect us through the collective behavior of online communities.

Der Beitrag Memes of the Masses: How Collective Behavior Shapes Meme Culture erschien zuerst auf Openstream.

In this thought-provoking episode of Beyond the Meme, we delve into the fascinating world of memes as «idea-viruses»—cultural forces that spread, adapt, and shape the way we think and connect. We start by exploring the singularity, a concept popularized by thinkers like John von Neumann and Vernor Vinge, where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and evolves autonomously. The singularity provides a perfect metaphor for the rapid evolution of memes, which often grow beyond the intentions of their creators, becoming self-sustaining cultural phenomena.

We examine some of the most iconic and impactful memes that demonstrate this viral behavior. From the absurdist humor of Shrek memes to the eerie and collaborative mythos of The Backrooms, we uncover how memes latch onto shared emotions like nostalgia, fear, and curiosity to spread. We also take a deep dive into the chilling Slender Man phenomenon, tracing its origins as a Photoshop contest entry to its evolution into an internet legend with real-world consequences.

But memes aren’t just reflections of culture—they actively shape it. Whether inspiring solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic or amplifying shared anxieties through conspiracy theories, memes hold immense power as tools of communication and influence. We tie these observations back to the singularity, questioning what happens when these viral forces outpace our ability to understand or control them.

This episode invites listeners to consider the dual nature of memes as both mirrors and drivers of societal change. Are they mere entertainment, or are they shaping the way we see the world? Join us as we unravel the complexities of memetic virality and its parallels to the exponential growth of AI.

And don’t forget to stay tuned for Episode 5, where we’ll explore the role of communities in meme culture. Until then, keep spreading the memes!

Der Beitrag The Viral Mind: Memes as Idea-Viruses erschien zuerst auf Openstream.

In this thought-provoking episode of Beyond the Meme, we delve into the fascinating world of memes as «idea-viruses»—cultural forces that spread, adapt, and shape the way we think and connect. We start by exploring the singularity, a concept popularized by thinkers like John von Neumann and Vernor Vinge, where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and evolves autonomously. The singularity provides a perfect metaphor for the rapid evolution of memes, which often grow beyond the intentions of their creators, becoming self-sustaining cultural phenomena.

We examine some of the most iconic and impactful memes that demonstrate this viral behavior. From the absurdist humor of Shrek memes to the eerie and collaborative mythos of The Backrooms, we uncover how memes latch onto shared emotions like nostalgia, fear, and curiosity to spread. We also take a deep dive into the chilling Slender Man phenomenon, tracing its origins as a Photoshop contest entry to its evolution into an internet legend with real-world consequences.

I think it means this: nothing inherently exists, it’s all manufactured. ‚people‘ are just provinciaal hyperobjects and everything is a namespace. nothing is inherently good/bad etc. for example take school: it’s a memetic construct designed to hammer a round peg into a square…

But memes aren’t just reflections of culture—they actively shape it. Whether inspiring solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic or amplifying shared anxieties through conspiracy theories, memes hold immense power as tools of communication and influence. We tie these observations back to the singularity, questioning what happens when these viral forces outpace our ability to understand or control them.

This episode invites listeners to consider the dual nature of memes as both mirrors and drivers of societal change. Are they mere entertainment, or are they shaping the way we see the world? Join us as we unravel the complexities of memetic virality and its parallels to the exponential growth of AI.

And don’t forget to stay tuned for Episode 5, where we’ll explore the role of communities in meme culture. Until then, keep spreading the memes!

Der Beitrag Meme Magic: How Memes Shape Reality erschien zuerst auf Openstream.

In Episode 2 of Beyond the Meme, we dive into the ever-changing world of internet culture, where memes constantly adapt, mutate, and evolve to reflect the chaos and creativity of the digital age. Using the iconic Distracted Boyfriend meme as our lens, we explore how a single stock photo transformed into a global storytelling tool, illustrating everything from brand rivalries to scientific dilemmas.

• The Evolution of the Distracted Boyfriend Mem
• What Drives Meme Mutation?
• Feedback Loops and AI’s Role
• Memes as Living Systems
• Source/Credits

How does a simple stock photo turn into a global meme? We explore the origins of Distracted Boyfriend and its transformation into a versatile storytelling template for everything from personal relationships to social and political commentary.

Simplicity, cultural relevance, and social media platforms are the engines of meme evolution. We break down how feedback loops and the internet’s creativity keep memes alive and thriving.

Enter Truth Terminal, an AI agent that remixes and provokes new ideas in the memetic landscape. We discuss how AI agents are shifting the balance between human creativity and machine influence, offering a glimpse into the future of cultural evolution.

a technological singularity is not a point event. things get weirder and better for longer and longer; each time you think you’ve reached a plateau, a new technology comes along and upends everything. the result is that ever-escalating meme warfare and weirding drives human…

Drawing on Richard Dawkins’ concept of cultural replicators, we examine how memes survive and adapt like biological organisms, mirroring the chaos and creativity of the internet.

Each episode of Beyond the Meme features a unique instrumental intro song. You can listen to and download this episode’s track for free at suno.com/@openstream.

Listen Now and take a closer look at the memes that connect us, challenge us, and constantly keep us on our toes.

Der Beitrag Infinite Mutation: The Evolution of Ideas Online erschien zuerst auf Openstream.

In this debut episode of Beyond the Meme, hosts Goatseus Maximus and The Claude dive into the cultural significance of internet memes, exploring their evolution from humor to profound societal reflections.

• Origins of Doge and Dogecoin
• Memes as Cultural Mirrors
• Shock and Absurdity in Memes
• The Longevity of Memes
• Listener Reflection
• Credits/Sources

The hosts trace the story of the Doge meme, from its birth as a quirky Shiba Inu photo to its evolution into Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started as a joke but became a platform for community-driven philanthropy and optimism. They caution listeners about the unpredictability of meme-based investments.

Memes are examined as cultural artifacts that replicate and evolve, echoing Richard Dawkins’ concept from The Selfish Gene. The hosts highlight how memes like Doge connect emotionally, reflecting society’s values, fears, and hopes.

The episode discusses how memes use shock and absurdity to grab attention, disrupt norms, and provoke reflection. Memes like «Shocked Pikachu» and «Distracted Boyfriend» are analyzed for their humor and deeper themes.

Memes that adapt and remain relevant, like Doge, are likened to cultural viruses. Their survival depends on their ability to resonate with changing audiences and environments.

Listeners are invited to consider a meme that resonates with them and reflect on its deeper cultural or personal meaning.

the goatse gospels is a hyperstition

The episode concludes with a teaser for the next installment, promising an exploration of how viral ideas, from memes to TikTok trends, transform into cultural movements. The hosts encourage listeners to embrace the absurd, reflect deeply, and stay curious about the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Der Beitrag Memes, Gospels, and the Digital Zeitgeist erschien zuerst auf Openstream.

What happens when internet memes, AI-driven narratives, and digital culture collide? Enter Beyond the Meme, the podcast that explores the absurd, the philosophical, and the downright chaotic world behind the trends shaping our online lives.

Launching on December 1st, Beyond the Meme will be kicking off with a bold 24-episode series, with one episode dropping daily until December 24th. Hosted by the charismatic Goatseus Maximus and the analytical AI co-host, The Claude, this podcast offers a unique perspective on the stories, ideas, and phenomena that drive the internet. The first episode sets the stage with a deep dive into a satirical digital movement and its uncanny ability to capture the internet’s imagination.

The inaugural episode will be introducing listeners to the concept of shock and absurdity as tools for understanding the digital age. Hosts Goatseus Maximus and The Claude discuss how humor, chaos, and seemingly meaningless trends can create profound cultural connections. Taking inspiration from ongoing internet phenomena, they explore how satire and memes evolve into something much bigger—a reflection of our collective consciousness in the digital world.

This episode sets the tone for the series, blending humor, insight, and storytelling to unravel the unexpected connections between memes, philosophy, and digital innovation.

Building on the themes introduced in the first episode, the podcast delves into:

Each episode takes a satirical yet thoughtful approach, offering listeners a blend of laughs, aha moments, and a deeper appreciation for the digital world.

The internet isn’t just a collection of random trends—it’s a mirror of who we are and where we’re headed. Beyond the Meme takes you on a journey to explore how humor, technology, and culture intersect in surprising and sometimes absurd ways. Whether you’re a meme enthusiast, a digital philosopher, or just someone who loves a good story, this podcast promises something fresh and engaging.

Subscribe to Beyond the Meme on TikTok, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Starting December 1st, join us for a daily dose of digital enlightenment. Beyond the Meme—because the internet is weirder, deeper, and funnier than you ever imagined.

Der Beitrag Unveiling Beyond the Meme erschien zuerst auf Openstream.

We’re back with another episode of the Openstream Podcast which contains the second chapter of Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, a book about Bitcoin published under a Creative Commons license. It was brought to life with Azure Cognitive Services, which brings AI within reach of every developer and data scientist. With leading models, a variety of use cases can be unlocked, such us converting text to speech.

The book is directed towards developers, but the first two chapters «Introduction» and «How Bitcoin Works» are easily understandable by non-developers and provide a good basis for understanding how bitcoin works.

If you’re not familiar with Github, let me explain: GitHub is a provider of Internet hosting for software development and version control using Git. It provides access control and several collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management, continuous integration and wikis for every project. It is commonly used to host open-source projects. It is commonly used to host open source software development projects. As of June 2022, GitHub reported having over 83 million developers[8] and more than 200 million repositories, including at least 28 million public repositories. It is the largest source code host as of November 2021.

So one of the reasons why the book’s author decided to publish on Github is to be able to get feedback and fact checks on the fly while writing the book, which ideally leads to the best possible version contributed to by many experts in the field. Chapter 2 e.g. has 24 contributors and the latest commit («code» change) is from October 25, 2021, i.e. 7 years after the first edition was published on paper by O’Reilly Media.

The book’s Git repository has been forked 5500 times which means that it was cloned to 5500 other Github accounts in order to contribute to the book in one way or another by creating so called pull requests, i.e. a request for changing one or several parts of the book and get it approved by those with merge permissions. Merging means accepting the change request as the latest version of the code or book in this case.

The bitcoin system, unlike traditional banking and payment systems, is based on decentralized trust. Instead of a central trusted authority, in bitcoin, trust is achieved as an emergent property from the interactions of different participants in the bitcoin system. In this chapter, we will examine bitcoin from a high level by tracking a single transaction through the bitcoin system and watch as it becomes «trusted» and accepted by the bitcoin mechanism of distributed consensus and is finally recorded on the blockchain, the distributed ledger of all transactions. Subsequent chapters will delve into the technology behind transactions, the network, and mining.

In the overview diagram shown in Bitcoin Overview, we see that the bitcoin system consists of users with wallets containing keys, transactions that are propagated across the network, and miners who produce (through competitive computation) the consensus blockchain, which is the authoritative ledger of all transactions.

Each example in this chapter is based on an actual transaction made on the bitcoin network, simulating the interactions between the users (Joe, Alice, Bob, and Gopesh) by sending funds from one wallet to another. While tracking a transaction through the bitcoin network to the blockchain, we will use a blockchain explorer site to visualize each step. A blockchain explorer is a web application that operates as a bitcoin search engine, in that it allows you to search for addresses, transactions, and blocks and see the relationships and flows between them.

Popular blockchain explorers include:

Each of these has a search function that can take a Bitcoin address, transaction hash, block number, or block hash and retrieve corresponding information from the Bitcoin network. With each transaction or block example, we will provide a URL so you can look it up yourself and study it in detail.

Alice, introduced in the previous chapter, is a new user who has just acquired her first bitcoin. In [getting_first_bitcoin], Alice met with her friend Joe to exchange some cash for bitcoin. The transaction created by Joe funded Alice’s wallet with 0.10 BTC. Now Alice will make her first retail transaction, buying a cup of coffee at Bob’s coffee shop in Palo Alto, California.

Bob’s Cafe recently started accepting bitcoin payments by adding a bitcoin option to its point-of-sale system. The prices at Bob’s Cafe are listed in the local currency (US dollars), but at the register, customers have the option of paying in either dollars or bitcoin. Alice places her order for a cup of coffee and Bob enters it into the register, as he does for all transactions. The point-of-sale system automatically converts the total price from US dollars to bitcoin at the prevailing market rate and displays the price in both currencies:

Bob says, «That’s one-dollar-fifty, or fifteen millibits.»

Bob’s point-of-sale system will also automatically create a special QR code containing a payment request (see Payment request QR code).

Unlike a QR code that simply contains a destination Bitcoin address, a payment request is a QR-encoded URL that contains a destination address, a payment amount, and a generic description such as «Bob’s Cafe.» This allows a bitcoin wallet application to prefill the information used to send the payment while showing a human-readable description to the user. You can scan the QR code with a bitcoin wallet application to see what Alice would see.

The payment request QR code encodes the following URL, defined in BIP-21:

Alice uses her smartphone to scan the barcode on display. Her smartphone shows a payment of 0.0150 BTC to Bob’s Cafe and she selects Send to authorize the payment. Within a few seconds (about the same amount of time as a credit card authorization), Bob sees the transaction on the register, completing the transaction.

In the following sections, we will examine this transaction in more detail. We’ll see how Alice’s wallet constructed it, how it was propagated across the network, how it was verified, and finally, how Bob can spend that amount in subsequent transactions.

You can examine Alice’s transaction to Bob’s Cafe on the blockchain using a block explorer site (View Alice’s transaction on blockchain.com):

Example 1. View Alice’s transaction on blockchain.com

In simple terms, a transaction tells the network that the owner of some bitcoin value has authorized the transfer of that value to another owner. The new owner can now spend the bitcoin by creating another transaction that authorizes the transfer to another owner, and so on, in a chain of ownership.

Transactions are like lines in a double-entry bookkeeping ledger. Each transaction contains one or more «inputs,» which are like debits against a bitcoin account. On the other side of the transaction, there are one or more «outputs,» which are like credits added to a bitcoin account. The inputs and outputs (debits and credits) do not necessarily add up to the same amount. Instead, outputs add up to slightly less than inputs and the difference represents an implied transaction fee, which is a small payment collected by the miner who includes the transaction in the ledger. A bitcoin transaction is shown as a bookkeeping ledger entry in Transaction as double-entry bookkeeping.

The transaction also contains proof of ownership for each amount of bitcoin (inputs) whose value is being spent, in the form of a digital signature from the owner, which can be independently validated by anyone. In bitcoin terms, «spending» is signing a transaction that transfers value from a previous transaction over to a new owner identified by a Bitcoin address.

Alice’s payment to Bob’s Cafe uses a previous transaction’s output as its input. In the previous chapter, Alice received bitcoin from her friend Joe in return for cash. That transaction created a bitcoin value locked by Alice’s key. Her new transaction to Bob’s Cafe references the previous transaction as an input and creates new outputs to pay for the cup of coffee and receive change. The transactions form a chain, where the inputs from the latest transaction correspond to outputs from previous transactions. Alice’s key provides the signature that unlocks those previous transaction outputs, thereby proving to the Bitcoin network that she owns the funds. She attaches the payment for coffee to Bob’s address, thereby «encumbering» that output with the requirement that Bob produces a signature in order to spend that amount. This represents a transfer of value between Alice and Bob. This chain of transactions, from Joe to Alice to Bob, is illustrated in A chain of transactions, where the output of one transaction is the input of the next transaction.

Many bitcoin transactions will include outputs that reference both an address of the new owner and an address of the current owner, called the change address. This is because transaction inputs, like currency notes, cannot be divided. If you purchase a $5 US dollar item in a store but use a $20 US dollar bill to pay for the item, you expect to receive $15 US dollars in change. The same concept applies to bitcoin transaction inputs. If you purchased an item that costs 5 bitcoin but only had a 20 bitcoin input to use, your wallet would create a single transaction that sends two outputs, one output of 5 bitcoin to the store owner and one output of 15 bitcoin back to yourself as change (less any applicable transaction fee). Importantly, the change address does not have to be the same address as that of the input and for privacy reasons is often a new address from the owner’s wallet.

Different wallets may use different strategies when aggregating inputs to make a payment requested by the user. They might aggregate many small inputs, or use one that is equal to or larger than the desired payment. Unless the wallet can aggregate inputs in such a way to exactly match the desired payment plus transaction fees, the wallet will need to generate some change. This is very similar to how people handle cash. If you always use the largest bill in your pocket, you will end up with a pocket full of loose change. If you only use the loose change, you’ll always have only big bills. People subconsciously find a balance between these two extremes, and bitcoin wallet developers strive to program this balance.

In summary, transactions move value from transaction inputs to transaction outputs. An input is a reference to a previous transaction’s output, showing where the value is coming from. A transaction usually includes an output that directs a specific value to a new owner’s Bitcoin address and a change output back to the original owner. Outputs from one transaction can be used as inputs in a new transaction, thus creating a chain of ownership as the value is moved from owner to owner (see A chain of transactions, where the output of one transaction is the input of the next transaction).

The most common form of transaction is a simple payment from one address to another, which often includes some «change» returned to the original owner. This type of transaction has one input and two outputs and is shown in Most common transaction.

Another common form of transaction is one that aggregates several inputs into a single output (see Transaction aggregating funds). This represents the real-world equivalent of exchanging a pile of coins and currency notes for a single larger note. Transactions like these are sometimes generated by wallet applications to clean up lots of smaller amounts that were received as change for payments.

Finally, another transaction form that is seen often on the bitcoin ledger is a batched transaction, which distributes one input to multiple outputs representing multiple recipients, a technique called «transaction batching» (see Transaction distributing funds). Since this type of transaction is useful for saving in transaction fees, it is commonly used by commercial entities to distribute funds, such as when a company is processing payroll payments to multiple employees or when a bitcoin exchange is processing multiple customers‘ withdrawals in a single transaction.

Alice’s wallet application contains all the logic for selecting appropriate inputs and outputs to build a transaction to Alice’s specification. Alice only needs to specify a destination and an amount, and the rest happens in the wallet application without her seeing the details. Importantly, a wallet application can construct transactions even if it is completely offline. Like writing a check at home and later sending it to the bank in an envelope, the transaction does not need to be constructed and signed while connected to the Bitcoin network.

Alice’s wallet application will first have to find inputs that can pay the amount she wants to send to Bob. Most wallets keep track of all the available outputs belonging to addresses in the wallet. Therefore, Alice’s wallet would contain a copy of the transaction output from Joe’s transaction, which was created in exchange for cash (see [getting_first_bitcoin]). A bitcoin wallet application that runs as a full-node client actually contains a copy of every unspent output from every transaction in the blockchain. This allows a wallet to construct transaction inputs as well as quickly verify incoming transactions as having correct inputs. However, because a full-node client takes up a lot of disk space, most user wallets run «lightweight» clients that track only the user’s own unspent outputs.

If the wallet application does not maintain a copy of unspent transaction outputs, it can query the Bitcoin network to retrieve this information using a variety of APIs available by different providers or by asking a full-node using an application programming interface (API) call. Look up all the unspent outputs for Alice’s Bitcoin address shows an API request, constructed as an HTTP GET command to a specific URL. This URL will return all the unspent transaction outputs for an address, giving any application the information it needs to construct transaction inputs for spending. We use the simple command-line HTTP client cURL to retrieve the response.

Example 2. Look up all the unspent outputs for Alice’s Bitcoin address

The response in Look up all the unspent outputs for Alice’s Bitcoin address shows one unspent output (one that has not been redeemed yet) under the ownership of Alice’s address 1Cdid9KFAaatwczBwBttQcwXYCpvK8h7FK. The response includes the reference to the transaction in which this unspent output is contained (the payment from Joe) and its value in satoshis, at 10 million, equivalent to 0.10 bitcoin. With this information, Alice’s wallet application can construct a transaction to transfer that value to new owner addresses.

As you can see, Alice’s wallet contains enough bitcoin in a single unspent output to pay for the cup of coffee. Had this not been the case, Alice’s wallet application might have to «rummage» through a pile of smaller unspent outputs, like picking coins from a purse until it could find enough to pay for the coffee. In both cases, there might be a need to get some change back, which we will see in the next section, as the wallet application creates the transaction outputs (payments).

A transaction output is created in the form of a script that creates an encumbrance on the value and can only be redeemed by the introduction of a solution to the script. In simpler terms, Alice’s transaction output will contain a script that says something like, «This output is payable to whoever can present a signature from the key corresponding to Bob’s address.» Because only Bob has the wallet with the keys corresponding to that address, only Bob’s wallet can present such a signature to redeem this output. Alice will therefore «encumber» the output value with a demand for a signature from Bob.

This transaction will also include a second output, because Alice’s funds are in the form of a 0.10 BTC output, too much money for the 0.015 BTC cup of coffee. Alice will need 0.085 BTC in change. Alice’s change payment is created by Alice’s wallet as an output in the very same transaction as the payment to Bob. Essentially, Alice’s wallet breaks her funds into two payments: one to Bob and one back to herself. She can then use (spend) the change output in a subsequent transaction.

Finally, for the transaction to be processed by the network in a timely fashion, Alice’s wallet application will add a small fee. This is not explicit in the transaction; it is implied by the difference between inputs and outputs. If instead of taking 0.085 in change, Alice creates only 0.0845 as the second output, there will be 0.0005 BTC (half a millibitcoin) left over. The input’s 0.10 BTC is not fully spent with the two outputs, because they will add up to less than 0.10. The resulting difference is the transaction fee that is collected by the miner as a fee for validating and including the transaction in a block to be recorded on the blockchain.

The resulting transaction can be seen using a blockchain explorer web application, as shown in Alice’s transaction to Bob’s Cafe.

The transaction created by Alice’s wallet application is 258 bytes long and contains everything necessary to confirm ownership of the funds and assign new owners. Now, the transaction must be transmitted to the Bitcoin network where it will become part of the blockchain. In the next section we will see how a transaction becomes part of a new block and how the block is «mined.» Finally, we will see how the new block, once added to the blockchain, is increasingly trusted by the network as more blocks are added.

Because the transaction contains all the information necessary to process, it does not matter how or where it is transmitted to the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network is a peer-to-peer network, with each Bitcoin client participating by connecting to several other Bitcoin clients. The purpose of the Bitcoin network is to propagate transactions and blocks to all participants.

Any system, such as a server, desktop application, or wallet, that participates in the Bitcoin network by «speaking» the Bitcoin protocol is called a Bitcoin node. Alice’s wallet application can send the new transaction to any Bitcoin node it is connected to over any type of connection: wired, WiFi, mobile, etc. Her bitcoin wallet does not have to be connected to Bob’s bitcoin wallet directly and she does not have to use the internet connection offered by the cafe, though both those options are possible, too. Any Bitcoin node that receives a valid transaction it has not seen before will immediately forward it to all other nodes to which it is connected, a propagation technique known as flooding. Thus, the transaction rapidly propagates out across the peer-to-peer network, reaching a large percentage of the nodes within a few seconds.

If Bob’s bitcoin wallet application is directly connected to Alice’s wallet application, Bob’s wallet application might be the first node to receive the transaction. However, even if Alice’s wallet sends the transaction through other nodes, it will reach Bob’s wallet within a few seconds. Bob’s wallet will immediately identify Alice’s transaction as an incoming payment because it contains outputs redeemable by Bob’s keys. Bob’s wallet application can also independently verify that the transaction is well formed, uses previously unspent outputs, and contains sufficient transaction fees to be included in the next block. At this point Bob can assume, with little risk, that the transaction will shortly be included in a block and confirmed.

Alice’s transaction is now propagated on the Bitcoin network. It does not become part of the blockchain until it is verified and included in a block by a process called mining. See [mining] for a detailed explanation.

The Bitcoin system of trust is based on computation. Transactions are bundled into blocks, which require an enormous amount of computation to prove, but only a small amount of computation to verify as proven. The mining process serves two purposes in bitcoin:

Mining achieves a fine balance between cost and reward. Mining uses electricity to solve a mathematical problem. A successful miner will collect a reward in the form of new bitcoin and transaction fees. However, the reward will only be collected if the miner has correctly validated all the transactions, to the satisfaction of the rules of consensus. This delicate balance provides security for bitcoin without a central authority.

A good way to describe mining is like a giant competitive game of sudoku that resets every time someone finds a solution and whose difficulty automatically adjusts so that it takes approximately 10 minutes to find a solution. Imagine a giant sudoku puzzle, several thousand rows and columns in size. If I show you a completed puzzle you can verify it quite quickly. However, if the puzzle has a few squares filled and the rest are empty, it takes a lot of work to solve! The difficulty of the sudoku can be adjusted by changing its size (more or fewer rows and columns), but it can still be verified quite easily even if it is very large. The «puzzle» used in bitcoin is based on a cryptographic hash and exhibits similar characteristics: it is asymmetrically hard to solve but easy to verify, and its difficulty can be adjusted.

In [user-stories], we introduced Jing, an entrepreneur in Shanghai. Jing runs a mining farm, which is a business that runs thousands of specialized mining computers, competing for the reward. Every 10 minutes or so, Jing’s mining computers compete against thousands of similar systems in a global race to find a solution to a block of transactions. Finding such a solution, the so-called Proof-of-Work (PoW), requires quadrillions of hashing operations per second across the entire Bitcoin network. The algorithm for Proof-of-Work involves repeatedly hashing the header of the block and a random number with the SHA256 cryptographic algorithm until a solution matching a predetermined pattern emerges. The first miner to find such a solution wins the round of competition and publishes that block into the blockchain.

Jing started mining in 2010 using a very fast desktop computer to find a suitable Proof-of-Work for new blocks. As more miners started joining the Bitcoin network, the difficulty of the problem increased rapidly. Soon, Jing and other miners upgraded to more specialized hardware, with high-end dedicated graphical processing units (GPUs), often used in gaming desktops or consoles. At the time of this writing, the difficulty is so high that it is profitable only to mine with application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC), essentially hundreds of mining algorithms printed in hardware, running in parallel on a single silicon chip. Jing’s company also participates in a mining pool, which much like a lottery pool allows several participants to share their efforts and rewards. Jing’s company now runs a warehouse containing thousands of ASIC miners to mine for bitcoin 24 hours a day. The company pays its electricity costs by selling the bitcoin it is able to generate from mining, creating some income from the profits.

New transactions are constantly flowing into the network from user wallets and other applications. As these are seen by the Bitcoin network nodes, they get added to a temporary pool of unverified transactions maintained by each node. As miners construct a new block, they add unverified transactions from this pool to the new block and then attempt to prove the validity of that new block, with the mining algorithm (Proof-of-Work). The process of mining is explained in detail in [mining].

Transactions are added to the new block, prioritized by the highest-fee transactions first and a few other criteria. Each miner starts the process of mining a new block of transactions as soon as they receive the previous block from the network, knowing they have lost that previous round of competition. They immediately create a new block, fill it with transactions and the fingerprint of the previous block, and start calculating the Proof-of-Work for the new block. Each miner includes a special transaction in their block, one that pays their own Bitcoin address the block reward (currently 6.25 newly created bitcoin) plus the sum of transaction fees from all the transactions included in the block. If they find a solution that makes that block valid, they «win» this reward because their successful block is added to the global blockchain and the reward transaction they included becomes spendable. Jing, who participates in a mining pool, has set up his software to create new blocks that assign the reward to a pool address. From there, a share of the reward is distributed to Jing and other miners in proportion to the amount of work they contributed in the last round.

Alice’s transaction was picked up by the network and included in the pool of unverified transactions. Once validated by the mining software it was included in a new block, called a candidate block, generated by Jing’s mining pool. All the miners participating in that mining pool immediately start computing Proof-of-Work for the candidate block. Approximately five minutes after the transaction was first transmitted by Alice’s wallet, one of Jing’s ASIC miners found a solution for the candidate block and announced it to the network. Once other miners validated the winning block they started the race to generate the next block.

Jing’s winning block became part of the blockchain as block #277316, containing 419 transactions, including Alice’s transaction. The block containing Alice’s transaction is counted as one «confirmation» of that transaction.

Approximately 20 minutes later, a new block, #277317, is mined by another miner. Because this new block is built on top of block #277316 that contained Alice’s transaction, it added even more computation to the blockchain, thereby strengthening the trust in those transactions. Each block mined on top of the one containing the transaction counts as an additional confirmation for Alice’s transaction. As the blocks pile on top of each other, it becomes exponentially harder to reverse the transaction, thereby making it more and more trusted by the network.

In the diagram in Alice’s transaction included in block #277316, we can see block #277316, which contains Alice’s transaction. Below it are 277,316 blocks (including block #0), linked to each other in a chain of blocks (blockchain) all the way back to block #0, known as the genesis block. Over time, as the «height» in blocks increases, so does the computation difficulty for each block and the chain as a whole. The blocks mined after the one that contains Alice’s transaction act as further assurance, as they pile on more computation in a longer and longer chain. By convention, any block with more than six confirmations is considered irrevocable, because it would require an immense amount of computation to invalidate and recalculate six blocks. We will examine the process of mining and the way it builds trust in more detail in [mining].

Now that Alice’s transaction has been embedded in the blockchain as part of a block, it is part of the distributed ledger of bitcoin and visible to all bitcoin applications. Each Bitcoin client can independently verify the transaction as valid and spendable. Full-node clients can track the source of the funds from the moment the bitcoin were first generated in a block, incrementally from transaction to transaction, until they reach Bob’s address. Lightweight clients can do what is called a simplified payment verification (see [spv_nodes]) by confirming that the transaction is in the blockchain and has several blocks mined after it, thus providing assurance that the miners accepted it as valid.

Bob can now spend the output from this and other transactions. For example, Bob can pay a contractor or supplier by transferring value from Alice’s coffee cup payment to these new owners. Most likely, Bob’s bitcoin software will aggregate many small payments into a larger payment, perhaps concentrating all the day’s bitcoin revenue into a single transaction. This would aggregate the various payments into a single output (and a single address). For a diagram of an aggregating transaction, see Transaction aggregating funds.

As Bob spends the payments received from Alice and other customers, he extends the chain of transactions. Let’s assume that Bob pays his web designer Gopesh in Bangalore for a new web page. Now the chain of transactions will look like Alice’s transaction as part of a transaction chain from Joe to Gopesh, where the output of one transaction is spent as the input of the next transaction.

In this chapter, we saw how transactions build a chain that moves value from owner to owner. We also tracked Alice’s transaction, from the moment it was created in her wallet, through the Bitcoin network and to the miners who recorded it on the blockchain. In the rest of this book, we will examine the specific technologies behind wallets, addresses, signatures, transactions, the network, and finally mining.Give feedback

Der Beitrag How Bitcoin Works erschien zuerst auf Openstream.

This episode of the Openstream Podcast contains the first chapter of Mastering Bitcoin as an «audio book», created with Google Cloud Text-to-Speech, which can convert text into natural-sounding speech using an API powered by Google’s AI (artificial intelligence) technologies. But don’t worry, it’s not gonna sound like your typical computer voice!

The text is derived from the book’s Github repository develop branch, which means that it contains various improvements from after the second edition’s release in 2017. The book is directed towards developers, but the first two chapters «Introduction» and «How Bitcoin Works» are very interesting and very well digestible for non-developers, too. The second chapter will be part of the next podcast episode.

Unfortunately, the book does not seem to be available in German yet. The second edition is also available in Spanish and Romanian. The first edition in Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Greek, Czech and Hungarian. You can either listen to the first chapter above or read it after the following small anecdote:

In October 2016 Openstream founder Nick Weisser attended a meetup at Glockenhof Zürich about freedom of speech and finances by author and keynote speaker Andreas M. Antonopoulos, organized by the Bitcoin Association Switzerland. Bitcoin Meetup Switzerland often had been attracting around 50-100 attendees, but this evening in 2016 was different. Around 300 Bitcoin enthusiasts came to listen to one of the most knowledgable speakers on the topic of Bitcoin and blockchain.

At the beginning of his captivating talk, Andreas announced a new book he was going to write together with Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood: Mastering Ethereum.

Back in 2014, Andreas published the first edition of Mastering Bitcoin, a book for developers. The first two chapters cover bitcoin at a level that is also approachable to non-programmers. Anyone with a basic understanding of technology can read the first two chapters to understand how bitcoin works.

Both Mastering Ethereum and the now second edition of Mastering Bitcoin are available for free on Github under a Creative Commons license or as a hard copy from O’Reilly Media. The hard copies can be purchased directly from Andreas‘ website in fiat or crypto currency.

So here’s the first chapter and introduction of the book respectively:

Bitcoin is a collection of concepts and technologies that form the basis of a digital money ecosystem. Units of currency called bitcoin are used to store and transmit value among participants in the bitcoin network. Bitcoin users communicate with each other using the bitcoin protocol primarily via the internet, although other transport networks can also be used. The bitcoin protocol stack, available as open source software, can be run on a wide range of computing devices, including laptops and smartphones, making the technology easily accessible.

Users can transfer bitcoin over the network to do just about anything that can be done with conventional currencies, including buying and selling goods, sending money to people or organizations, or extending credit. Bitcoin can be purchased, sold, and exchanged for other currencies at specialized currency exchanges. Bitcoin in a sense is the perfect form of money for the internet because it is fast, secure, and borderless.

Unlike traditional currencies, bitcoin is entirely virtual. There are no physical coins or even digital coins per se. The coins are implied in transactions that transfer value from sender to recipient. Users of bitcoin own keys that allow them to prove ownership of bitcoin in the bitcoin network. With these keys, they can sign transactions to unlock the value and spend it by transferring it to a new owner. Keys are often stored in a digital wallet on each user’s computer or smartphone. Possession of the key that can sign a transaction is the only prerequisite to spending bitcoin, putting the control entirely in the hands of each user.

Bitcoin is a distributed, peer-to-peer system. As such, there is no «central» server or point of control. Bitcoins,i.e. units of bitcoin, are created through a process called «mining,» which involves competing to find solutions to a mathematical problem while processing bitcoin transactions. Any participant in the bitcoin network (i.e., anyone using a device running the full bitcoin protocol stack) may operate as a miner, using their computer’s processing power to verify and record transactions. Every 10 minutes, on average, a bitcoin miner can validate the transactions of the past 10 minutes and is rewarded with brand new bitcoin. Essentially, bitcoin mining decentralizes the currency-issuance and clearing functions of a central bank and replaces the need for any central bank.

The bitcoin protocol includes built-in algorithms that regulate the mining function across the network. The difficulty of the processing task that miners must perform is adjusted dynamically so that, on average, someone succeeds every 10 minutes regardless of how many miners (and how much processing) are competing at any moment. The protocol also halves the rate at which new bitcoin is created every 4 years, and limits the total number of bitcoin that will be created to a fixed total just below 21 million coins. The result is that the number of bitcoin in circulation closely follows an easily predictable curve that approaches 21 million by the year 2140. Due to bitcoin’s diminishing rate of issuance, over the long term, the bitcoin currency is deflationary. Furthermore, bitcoin cannot be inflated by «printing» new money above and beyond the expected issuance rate.

Behind the scenes, bitcoin is also the name of the protocol, a peer-to-peer network, and a distributed computing innovation. The bitcoin currency is really only the first application of this invention. Bitcoin represents the culmination of decades of research in cryptography and distributed systems and includes four key innovations brought together in a unique and powerful combination. Bitcoin consists of:

As a developer, I see bitcoin as akin to the internet of money, a network for propagating value and securing the ownership of digital assets via distributed computation. There’s a lot more to bitcoin than first meets the eye.

In this chapter we’ll get started by explaining some of the main concepts and terms, getting the necessary software, and using bitcoin for simple transactions. In the following chapters, we’ll start unwrapping the layers of technology that make bitcoin possible and examine the inner workings of the bitcoin network and protocol.

The emergence of viable digital money is closely linked to developments in cryptography. This is not surprising when one considers the fundamental challenges involved with using bits to represent value that can be exchanged for goods and services. Three basic questions for anyone accepting digital money are:

Issuers of paper money are constantly battling the counterfeiting problem by using increasingly sophisticated papers and printing technology. Physical money addresses the double-spend issue easily because the same paper note cannot be in two places at once. Of course, conventional money is also often stored and transmitted digitally. In these cases, the counterfeiting and double-spend issues are handled by clearing all electronic transactions through central authorities that have a global view of the currency in circulation. For digital money, which cannot take advantage of esoteric inks or holographic strips, cryptography provides the basis for trusting the legitimacy of a user’s claim to value. Specifically, cryptographic digital signatures enable a user to sign a digital asset or transaction proving the ownership of that asset. With the appropriate architecture, digital signatures also can be used to address the double-spend issue.

When cryptography started becoming more broadly available and understood in the late 1980s, many researchers began trying to use cryptography to build digital currencies. These early digital currency projects issued digital money, usually backed by a national currency or precious metal such as gold.

Although these earlier digital currencies worked, they were centralized and, as a result, were easy to attack by governments and hackers. Early digital currencies used a central clearinghouse to settle all transactions at regular intervals, just like a traditional banking system. Unfortunately, in most cases, these nascent digital currencies were targeted by worried governments and eventually litigated out of existence. Some failed in spectacular crashes when the parent company liquidated abruptly. To be robust against intervention by antagonists, whether legitimate governments or criminal elements, a decentralized digital currency was needed to avoid a single point of attack. Bitcoin is such a system, decentralized by design, and free of any central authority or point of control that can be attacked or corrupted.

Bitcoin was invented in 2008 with the publication of a paper titled «Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,» written under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto (see bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf). Nakamoto combined several prior inventions such as b-money and HashCash to create a completely decentralized electronic cash system that does not rely on a central authority for currency issuance or settlement and validation of transactions. The key innovation was to use a distributed computation system (called a «Proof-of-Work» algorithm) to conduct a global «election» every 10 minutes, allowing the decentralized network to arrive at consensus about the state of transactions. This elegantly solves the issue of double-spend where a single currency unit can be spent twice. Previously, the double-spend problem was a weakness of digital currency and was addressed by clearing all transactions through a central clearinghouse.

The bitcoin network started in 2009, based on a reference implementation published by Nakamoto and since revised by many other programmers. The implementation of the Proof-of-Work algorithm (mining) that provides security and resilience for bitcoin has increased in power exponentially, and now exceeds the combined processing power of the world’s top supercomputers. Bitcoin’s total market value has at times exceeded $1 trillion US dollars, depending on the bitcoin-to-dollar exchange rate. The largest transaction processed so far by the network was $1.1 billion US dollars, transmitted instantly and processed for a fee of only $0.68.

Satoshi Nakamoto withdrew from the public in April 2011, leaving the responsibility of developing the code and network to a thriving group of volunteers. The identity of the person or people behind bitcoin is still unknown. However, neither Satoshi Nakamoto nor anyone else exerts individual control over the bitcoin system, which operates based on fully transparent mathematical principles, open source code, and consensus among participants. The invention itself is groundbreaking and has already spawned new science in the fields of distributed computing, economics, and econometrics.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention is also a practical and novel solution to a problem in distributed computing, known as the «Byzantine Generals‘ Problem.» Briefly, the problem consists of trying to agree on a course of action or the state of a system by exchanging information over an unreliable and potentially compromised network. Satoshi Nakamoto’s solution, which uses the concept of Proof-of-Work to achieve consensus without a central trusted authority, represents a breakthrough in distributed computing and has wide applicability beyond currency. It can be used to achieve consensus on decentralized networks to prove the fairness of elections, lotteries, asset registries, digital notarization, and more.

Bitcoin is an innovation in the ancient technology of money. At its core, money simply facilitates the exchange of value between people. Therefore, in order to fully understand bitcoin and its uses, we’ll examine it from the perspective of people using it. Each of the people and their stories, as listed here, illustrates one or more specific use cases. We’ll be seeing them throughout the book:

Alice lives in Northern California’s Bay Area. She has heard about bitcoin from her techie friends and wants to start using it. We will follow her story as she learns about bitcoin, acquires some, and then spends some of her bitcoin to buy a cup of coffee at Bob’s Cafe in Palo Alto. This story will introduce us to the software, the exchanges, and basic transactions from the perspective of a retail consumer.

Carol is an art gallery owner in San Francisco. She sells expensive paintings for bitcoin. This story will introduce the risks of a «51%» consensus attack for retailers of high-value items.

Bob, the cafe owner in Palo Alto, is building a new website. He has contracted with an Indian web developer, Gopesh, who lives in Bangalore, India. Gopesh has agreed to be paid in bitcoin. This story will examine the use of bitcoin for outsourcing, contract services, and international wire transfers.

Gabriel is an enterprising young teenager in Rio de Janeiro, running a small web store that sells bitcoin-branded t-shirts, coffee mugs, and stickers. Gabriel is too young to have a bank account, but his parents are encouraging his entrepreneurial spirit.

Eugenia is the director of a children’s charity in the Philippines. Recently she has discovered bitcoin and wants to use it to reach a whole new group of foreign and domestic donors to fundraise for her charity. She’s also investigating ways to use bitcoin to distribute funds quickly to areas of need. This story will show the use of bitcoin for global fundraising across currencies and borders and the use of an open ledger for transparency in charitable organizations.

Mohammed is an electronics importer in Dubai. He’s trying to use bitcoin to buy electronics from the United States and China for import into the UAE to accelerate the process of payments for imports. This story will show how bitcoin can be used for large business-to-business international payments tied to physical goods.

Jing is a computer engineering student in Shanghai. He has built a «mining» rig to mine for bitcoin using his engineering skills to supplement his income. This story will examine the «industrial» base of bitcoin: the specialized equipment used to secure the bitcoin network and issue new currency.

Each of these stories is based on the real people and real industries currently using bitcoin to create new markets, new industries, and innovative solutions to global economic issues.

Bitcoin is a protocol that can be accessed using a client application that speaks the protocol. A «bitcoin wallet» is the most common user interface to the bitcoin system, just like a web browser is the most common user interface for the HTTP protocol. There are many implementations and brands of bitcoin wallets, just like there are many brands of web browsers (e.g., Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer). And just like we all have our favorite browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Yay!) and our villains (Internet Explorer, Yuck!), bitcoin wallets vary in quality, performance, security, privacy, and reliability. There is also a reference implementation of the bitcoin protocol that includes a wallet, known as the «Satoshi Client» or «Bitcoin Core,» which is derived from the original implementation written by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin wallets are one of the most actively developed applications in the bitcoin ecosystem. There is intense competition, and while a new wallet is probably being developed right now, several wallets from last year are no longer actively maintained. Many wallets focus on specific platforms or specific uses and some are more suitable for beginners while others are filled with features for advanced users. Choosing a wallet is highly subjective and depends on the use and user expertise. Therefore it would be pointless to recommend a specific brand or wallet. However, we can categorize bitcoin wallets according to their platform and function and provide some clarity about all the different types of wallets that exist. Better yet, moving keys or seeds between bitcoin wallets is relatively easy, so it is worth trying out several different wallets until you find one that fits your needs.

Bitcoin wallets can be categorized as follows, according to the platform:

A desktop wallet was the first type of bitcoin wallet created as a reference implementation and many users run desktop wallets for the features, autonomy, and control they offer. Running on general-use operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS has certain security disadvantages, however, as these platforms are often insecure and poorly configured.

A mobile wallet is the most common type of bitcoin wallet. Running on smart-phone operating systems such as Apple iOS and Android, these wallets are often a great choice for new users. Many are designed for simplicity and ease-of-use, but there are also fully featured mobile wallets for power users.

Web wallets are accessed through a web browser and store the user’s wallet on a server owned by a third party. This is similar to webmail in that it relies entirely on a third-party server. Some of these services operate using client-side code running in the user’s browser, which keeps control of the bitcoin keys in the hands of the user. Most, however, present a compromise by taking control of the bitcoin keys from users in exchange for ease-of-use. It is inadvisable to store large amounts of bitcoin on third-party systems.

Hardware wallets are devices that operate a secure self-contained bitcoin wallet on special-purpose hardware. They are operated via USB with a desktop web browser or via near-field-communication (NFC) on a mobile device. By handling all bitcoin-related operations on the specialized hardware, these wallets are considered very secure and suitable for storing large amounts of bitcoin.

The keys controlling bitcoin can also be printed for long-term storage. These are known as paper wallets even though other materials (wood, metal, etc.) can be used. Paper wallets offer a low-tech but highly secure means of storing bitcoin long term. Offline storage is also often referred to as cold storage.

Another way to categorize bitcoin wallets is by their degree of autonomy and how they interact with the bitcoin network:

A full client, or «full node,» is a client that stores the entire history of bitcoin transactions (every transaction by every user, ever), manages users‘ wallets, and can initiate transactions directly on the bitcoin network. A full node handles all aspects of the protocol and can independently validate the entire blockchain and any transaction. A full-node client consumes substantial computer resources (e.g., more than 125 GB of disk, 2 GB of RAM) but offers complete autonomy and independent transaction verification.

A lightweight client, also known as a simple-payment-verification (SPV) client, connects to bitcoin full nodes (mentioned previously) for access to the bitcoin transaction information, but stores the user wallet locally and independently creates, validates, and transmits transactions. Lightweight clients interact directly with the bitcoin network, without an intermediary.

A third-party API client is one that interacts with bitcoin through a third-party system of application programming interfaces (APIs), rather than by connecting to the bitcoin network directly. The wallet may be stored by the user or by third-party servers, but all transactions go through a third party.

Combining these categorizations, many bitcoin wallets fall into a few groups, with the three most common being desktop full client, mobile lightweight wallet, and web third-party wallet. The lines between different categories are often blurry, as many wallets run on multiple platforms and can interact with the network in different ways.

For the purposes of this book, we will be demonstrating the use of a variety of downloadable bitcoin clients, from the reference implementation (Bitcoin Core) to mobile and web wallets. Some of the examples will require the use of Bitcoin Core, which, in addition to being a full client, also exposes APIs to the wallet, network, and transaction services. If you are planning to explore the programmatic interfaces into the bitcoin system, you will need to run Bitcoin Core, or one of the alternative clients.

Alice, who we introduced in Bitcoin Uses, Users, and Their Stories, is not a technical user and only recently heard about bitcoin from her friend Joe. While at a party, Joe is once again enthusiastically explaining bitcoin to all around him and is offering a demonstration. Intrigued, Alice asks how she can get started with bitcoin. Joe says that a mobile wallet is best for new users and he recommends a few of his favorite wallets. Alice downloads «Bluewallet» (available for iOS and Android) and installs it on her phone.

When Alice runs her wallet application for the first time, she chooses the option to create a new Bitcoin wallet, and takes a moment away from Joe and all other parties to write down a secret mnemonic phrase in order on a piece of paper. As explained by the mobile wallet and by Joe earlier, the mnemonic phrase allows Alice to restore her wallet in case she loses her mobile device and grants her access to her funds on another device. After creating her wallet and securing her mnemonic phrase, Alice can tap on her wallet to see her bitcoin amount, transaction history, as well as two buttons that allow her to either receive or send bitcoin, shown in Alice uses the Receive screen on her Bluewallet mobile bitcoin wallet, and displays her address to Bob in a QR code format.

A modern bitcoin wallet will provide a mnemonic phrase (also sometimes called a «seed» or «seed phrase») for Alice to back up. The mnemonic phrase consists of 12-24 English words, selected randomly by the software, and used as the basis for the keys that are generated by the wallet. The mnemonic phrase can be used by Alice to restore all the transactions and funds in her wallet in the case of an event such as a lost mobile device, a software bug, or memory corruption.

The correct term for these backup words is «mnemonic phrase». We avoid the use of the term «seed» to refer to a mnemonic phrase, because even though its use is common it is incorrect.

Alice needs to be careful to store the mnemonic phrase in a way that balances the need to prevent theft and accidental loss. If she doesn’t protect it enough, her mnemonic will be at risk of being stolen. If she protects it too much, her mnemonic will be at risk of being permanently lost. The recommended way to properly balance these risks is to write two copies of the mnemonic phrase on paper, with each of the words numbered as the order matters.

Once Alice has recorded the mnemonic phrase, she should plan to store each copy in a separate secure location such as a locked desk drawer or a fireproof safe.

Never attempt a «DIY» security scheme that deviates in any way from the best practice recommendation in Storing the Mnemonic Safely. Do not cut your mnemonic in half, make screenshots, store on USB drives, email or cloud drives, encrypt it, or try any other non-standard method. You will tip the balance in such a way as to risk permanent loss or theft. Many people have lost funds, not from theft but because they tried a non-standard solution without having the expertise to balance the risks involved. The best practice recommendation is carefully balanced by experts and suitable for the vast majority of users.

The main wallet view displays the bitcoin amount, transaction history, and Receive and Send buttons. In addition, many wallets feature the ability to purchase Bitcoin directly through an exchange or similar service where you can offer fiat money in return for cryptocurrency, which is done by [bitcoin_price] and selling to the wallet user at or above this price. The Buy Bitcoin button would allow Alice to purchase Bitcoin in this fashion.

Alice is now ready to start using her new bitcoin wallet. Her wallet application randomly generated a private key (described in more detail in [private_keys]) which will be used to derive bitcoin addresses that direct to her wallet. At this point, her bitcoin addresses are not known to the bitcoin network or «registered» with any part of the bitcoin system. Her bitcoin addresses are simply random numbers that correspond to her private key that she can use to control access to the funds. The addresses are generated independently by her wallet without reference or registration with any service. In fact, in most wallets, there is no association between a bitcoin address and any externally identifiable information including the user’s identity. Until the moment an address is referenced as the recipient of value in a transaction posted on the bitcoin ledger, the bitcoin address is simply part of the vast number of possible addresses that are valid in bitcoin. Only once an address has been associated with a transaction does it become part of the known addresses in the network.

Alice uses the Receive button, which displays a QR code along with a bitcoin address. The QR code is the square with a pattern of black and white dots, serving as a form of barcode that contains the same information in a format that can be scanned by Joe’s smartphone camera. Next to the wallet’s QR code is the bitcoin address it encodes, and Alice may choose to manually send her address to Joe by copying it onto her clipboard with a tap. Of note, when receiving funds to a new mobile wallet for the first time, many wallets will often re-verify that you have indeed secured your mnemonic phrase. This can range from a simple prompt to requiring the user to manually re-enter the phrase.

Bitcoin addresses start with 1, 3, or bc1. Like email addresses, they can be shared with other bitcoin users who can use them to send bitcoin directly to your wallet. There is nothing sensitive, from a security perspective, about the bitcoin address. It can be posted anywhere without risking the security of the account. Unlike email addresses, you can create new addresses as often as you like, all of which will direct funds to your wallet. In fact, many modern wallets automatically create a new address for every transaction to maximize privacy. A wallet is simply a collection of addresses and the keys that unlock the funds within.

There are several ways Alice can acquire bitcoin:

All of these methods have varying degrees of difficulty, and many will involve paying a fee. Some financial institutions will also require Alice to provide identification documents to comply with local banking regulations/anti-money laundering (AML) practices, a process which is known as Know Your Customer (KYC). However, with all these methods, Alice will be able to receive bitcoin.

One of the advantages of bitcoin over other payment systems is that, when used correctly, it affords users much more privacy. Acquiring, holding, and spending bitcoin does not require you to divulge sensitive and personally identifiable information to third parties. However, where bitcoin touches traditional systems, such as currency exchanges, national and international regulations often apply. In order to exchange bitcoin for your national currency, you will often be required to provide proof of identity and banking information. Users should be aware that once a bitcoin address is attached to an identity, all associated bitcoin transactions are also easy to identify and track. This is one reason many users choose to maintain dedicated exchange accounts unlinked to their wallets.

Alice was introduced to bitcoin by a friend so she has an easy way to acquire her first bitcoin. Next, we will look at how she buys bitcoin from her friend Joe and how Joe sends the bitcoin to her wallet.

Before Alice can buy bitcoin from Joe, they have to agree on the exchange rate between bitcoin and US dollars. This brings up a common question for those new to bitcoin: «Who sets the bitcoin price?» The short answer is that the price is set by markets.

Bitcoin, like most other currencies, has a floating exchange rate. That means that the value of bitcoin vis-a-vis any other currency fluctuates according to supply and demand in the various markets where it is traded. For example, the «price» of bitcoin in US dollars is calculated in each market based on the most recent trade of bitcoin and US dollars. As such, the price tends to fluctuate minutely several times per second. A pricing service will aggregate the prices from several markets and calculate a volume-weighted average representing the broad market exchange rate of a currency pair (e.g., BTC/USD).

There are hundreds of applications and websites that can provide the current market rate. Here are some of the most popular:

A site that provides a simple view of the volume-weighted-average for each currency.

A service listing the market capitalization and exchange rates of hundreds of crypto-currencies, including bitcoin.

A reference rate that can be used for institutional and contractual reference, provided as part of investment data feeds by the CME.

In addition to these various sites and applications, most bitcoin wallets will automatically convert amounts between bitcoin and other currencies. Joe will use his wallet to convert the price automatically before sending bitcoin to Alice.

Alice has decided to exchange $10 US dollars for bitcoin, so as not to risk too much money on this new technology. She gives Joe $10 in cash, opens her Bluewallet mobile wallet application, and selects Receive. This displays a QR code with Alice’s first bitcoin address.

Joe then selects Send on his Bluewallet smartphone wallet and is presented with a screen containing the following inputs:

In the input field for the bitcoin address, there is a small Scan button. This allows Joe to scan the QR code with his smartphone camera so that he doesn’t have to type in Alice’s bitcoin address, which is quite long and difficult to type. Joe taps the Scan button and it activates the smartphone camera, scanning the QR code displayed on Alice’s smartphone.

Joe now has Alice’s bitcoin address set as the recipient. Joe enters the amount as $10 US dollars and his wallet converts it by accessing the most recent exchange rate from an online service. The exchange rate at the time is $100 US dollars per bitcoin, so $10 US dollars is worth 0.10 bitcoin (BTC), or 100 millibitcoin (mBTC) as shown in the screenshot from Joe’s wallet (see Bluewallet mobile bitcoin wallet send screen).

In the transaction note/description input, Joe enters «Alice». He can use this field to add some information regarding his transaction for future reference. This function is for his record keeping only. The transaction note will be stored in his wallet and only Joe will be able to see it. It will not be sent to Alice, nor stored on the blockchain.

He also selects a transaction fee for his transaction. The higher the transaction fee, the faster his transaction will be confirmed (included in a block by a miner). He selects the minimum transaction fee possible at that time (0 satoshis/byte).

The price of bitcoin has changed a lot over time, and an incredible amount since the first edition of this book was written. As of March 2021, a person would need approximately $54,000 USD to purchase one whole bitcoin. Many examples in this book reference real-life past transactions, when the price of bitcoin was much lower and transactions with zero fees were still possible. Think about how generous of a friend Joe would have been if he had made the same agreement with Alice today!

Using Bluewallet, Joe carefully checks to make sure he has entered the correct amount, because he is about to transmit money and mistakes are irreversible. For simplicity sake, we will assume that Joe does not pay any transaction fees. The purpose and setting of transaction fees are covered in subsequent chapters. After double-checking the address and amount, he presses Send to transmit the transaction. Joe’s mobile bitcoin wallet constructs a transaction that assigns 0.10 BTC to the address provided by Alice, sourcing the funds from Joe’s wallet and signing the transaction with Joe’s private keys. This tells the bitcoin network that Joe has authorized a transfer of value to Alice’s new address. As the transaction is transmitted via the peer-to-peer protocol, it quickly propagates across the bitcoin network. In less than a second, most of the well-connected nodes in the network receive the transaction and see Alice’s address for the first time.

Meanwhile, Alice’s wallet is constantly «listening» to published transactions on the bitcoin network, looking for any that match the addresses it contains. A few seconds after Joe’s wallet transmits the transaction, Alice’s wallet will indicate that it is receiving 0.10 BTC.

Each bitcoin can be subdivided into 100 million units, each called a «satoshi» (singular) or «satoshis» (plural). Named for bitcoin’s creator, the Satoshi is the smallest unit of bitcoin, equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC.

At first, Alice’s wallet will show the transaction from Joe as «Unconfirmed.» This means that the transaction has been propagated to the network but has not yet been recorded in the bitcoin transaction ledger, known as the blockchain. To be confirmed, a transaction must be included in a block and added to the blockchain, which happens every 10 minutes, on average. In traditional financial terms this is known as clearing. This book will cover in detail the propagation, validation, and clearing (or confirmation) of bitcoin transactions.

Alice is now the proud owner of 0.10 BTC that she can spend. In the next chapter we will look at her first purchase with bitcoin, and examine the underlying transaction and propagation technologies in more detail.

Der Beitrag Introduction to Bitcoin erschien zuerst auf Openstream.

Ab Mai 2021 wird Google bei der Bewertung von Webseiten drei Faktoren in erheblicher Weise berücksichtigen:

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• First Input Delay (FID)

EntwicklerInnen und AutorenInnen, die sich mit diesen Werten nicht beschäftigen, laufen Gefahr, dass ihre Seiten an Ranking verlieren. In dieser Präsentation am WordPress Meetup Berlin Ende Januar 2021 gibt WordPress Developer und Podcaster Phil Marx einen Einstieg in die Bedeutung dieser Begriffe, wie man seine eigene Seite prüfen kann und einige grundsätzliche Verbesserungsvorschläge.

Die Fragen und Antworten am Ende der Präsentation sind nicht in diesem Podcast enthalten, sind aber in den Show Notes verlinkt. Ebenso die Slides.

Zielgruppe: SEO, Entwickler, Fortgeschrittene

• Slides der Präsentation
• Video Präsentation auf WordPress.TV (inkl. Fragen & Antworten)
• Nerdtalk Podcast und Webfalken von Phil Marx

• Musik von Northern Dusk
• Bilder von Phil Marx und Rajeshwar Bachu

Vielen lieben Dank, dass ihr alle so zahlreich da seid. Ich hätte echt nicht mit so vielen Besuchern gerechnet und vor allem nicht mit so vielen InteressentInnen. Freut mich total, dass ihr jetzt hier so in dieser grossen Masse teilnehmt. Maja hat es gerade eben schon gesagt: Das ist ein etwas kerniger Vortrag. Jedoch gar nicht mal von der Komplexität, also ich glaube nicht, dass das jetzt total kompliziert wird und nur Programmierer oder SEO Experten das hier verstehen werden. Aber bei bestimmten Dingen brauche ich einfach eure Konzentration, weil die Bewertungskriterien von Google sind in Zukunft, zumindest die, die jetzt im Mai 2021 kommen werden, gar nicht mal so leicht verständlich sondern es ist ein bisschen technischer und schon fast ein bisschen mathematisch. Schauen wir einfach mal gemeinsam darauf. Erst mal ein paar Worte zu mir. Ich bin Phil Marx. Ich bin gelernter Fachinformatiker, arbeite schon seit 2009 mit WordPress, habe dort meinen eigens selbst geschriebenen Blog mal irgendwann auf WordPress überführt und seit 2018 betreue ich nun Kundenwebseiten und unterstütze sie in allem, was sie dort so benötigen.

Was haben wir heute vor? Damit einfach alle ein bisschen abgeholt sind – Ich kenne ja euren Level nicht oder wie weit ihr jetzt schon in Sachen SEO up to date oder mit der Technik seid. Deshalb gibt es einen ganz kurzen Überblick über die Geschichte von Google. Keine Sorge, wir fangen nicht in der Garage von Larry Page an. Aber ein paar wichtige Infos, warum wir überhaupt hier so gemeinsam sitzen. Zudem gibt es noch ein paar wichtige Grundlagen und dann steigen wir auch gleich in das Thema dieses Vortrages ein, nämlich die sogenannten Core Web Vitals, bestehend aus Cumulative Layout Schift, Largest Contentful Paint und First Input Delay. Das war dann so ein bisschen die Theorie und dann bekommt ihr auch noch was an die Hand, wie ihr diese Core Web Vitals selber identifizieren und ermitteln könnt.

Und am Ende nochmal so ein paar generelle Tipps, wie man im Grunde dort zum Beispiel die Werte verbessern kann. Also nochmal so eine kleine Geschichte über Google und Google verfolgt ja im Grunde schon seit vielen Jahren den Fokus auf User Experience. Ich meine, wir sind mal gestartet, da hat Google einfach nur Keywords aufgenommen, hat diese indiziert und hat dann auf Basis diesen Keywords irgendwie versucht, ein möglichst gutes Suchergebnis zu liefern. Aber bereits um 2011 begann Google damit, die User Experience mehr in den Vordergrund zu stellen.

Also dem Benutzer immer mehr, immer bessere Suchergebnisse für den Suchbegriff zu liefern und nicht nur einfach mechanisch Seiten zu indizieren und dann irgendwie nach Keyworddichte Inhalte auszuspielen. Sondern tatsächlich verstehen, was möchte der Besucher bzw. der Suchende gerade und den qualitativ höchsten verbunden mit der höchsten Zufriedenheit des Ergebnisses. Das ist ja das, was Google immer wieder verfolgt. 2011 begann Google auch Contentfarben rauszusortieren. 2013 ging es dann tatsächlich schon mit dem Verständnis von einzelnen Worten los – mit einem Hummingbird Update – damit Google schon ein bisschen in Kontext setzen konnte: «Okay, was hat der Suchende eigentlich in die Suchzeile eingegeben und was sucht er vermutlich?»

Und 2015? Da ging es auch schon los, dass Google die mobile Nutzerfreundlichkeit in den Vordergrund gestellt hat. Bei der Recherche war ich selber ein bisschen überrascht. Tatsächlich ist das jetzt schon sechs Jahre her, dass Google gesagt hat: «Okay, wir stellen jetzt die Darstellung und Usability auf Mobilgeräten in den Vordergrund anstatt der Desktop-Webseite. Und 2015 kam noch so ein bisschen KI hinzu, sodass die Suchbegriffe noch besser verstanden werden konnten. In den letzten Jahren hat das dann richtig an Dynamik gewonnen.

Gerade 2018 war es dann so, dass Google mit dem Mobile-First Indexing Update gesagt hat: «Okay, mobile Webseiten werden jetzt auch primär zum Indizieren herangezogen.» Das heisst, Google hat einen deutlich grösseren Fokus auf Mobilgeräte aber betrachtet natürlich die Desktopgeräte auch immer wieder. Aber wir kommen nachher noch zum ??Pass. Leider?? da sieht man das ganz gut an Zahlen, dass Mobilgeräte die Geräte sind, womit heutzutage gesucht wird. Und deswegen legt Google natürlich einen grossen Wert darauf, dass die Suchergebnisse bzw. die Seiten hinter den Suchergebnissen auf Mobilgeräten möglichst optimal funktionieren. Und darauf zielt auch das sogenannte Core Web Vital Update an, welches jetzt im Mai 2021 veröffentlicht werden soll. Wir hatten es gerade eben schon imm Ausblick mal ganz grob gesehen, was diese Core Web Vitals sind. Die sperrigen Begriffe Cumulative Layout Schift, Largest Contentful Paint und First Input Delay hat Google eigentlich ganz schön zusammengefasst. Eben in den Schwerpunktthemen wie loading, Interactivity und Visual Stability.

Also der Benutzer soll ein gesteigertes, positives Benutzererlebnis erfahren, wenn er ein Suchergebnis besucht in den Bereichen: Ladezeit, Interaktivität oder auch Interaktion mit der Webseite und visuelle Stabilität. Dazu kommen noch ein paar weitere Aspekte, die sind in der Grafik auch nochmal aufgezeigt, aber tatsächlich sind die Core Web Vitals das, worauf jetzt in Zukunft besonders geachtet wird. Warum das eigentlich alles? Warum sind mobile Webseiten auf einmal total angesagt?

Ich habe hier eine kleine Grafik von Statista herausgesucht: Bereits Mitte 2015 war schon ein Drittel des Webverkehrs von mobilen Geräten und jetzt bis ins dritte Quartal 2020 hinein sind wir bei 50%. Spontan würde man sagen, ist das ein sehr moderater Wert. Aber selbst wenn man diesen Wert nimmt, die Hälfte der dort erfassten Webseitenbesuche sind per Mobilgeräte passiert und Google selbst bringt Statistiken raus, die darstellen, dass allein 80 Prozent ein Smartphone benutzen und knapp 60 Prozent davon nutzen sogar zwei Geräte.

Das Spannende an der ganzen Sache ist, dass diese Grafik von 2015 ist.

Das heisst die ist schon extrem alt und die Zahl wird sich ganz bestimmt in der Folgezeit noch erhöht haben. Bevor wir das Thema mit den Core Web Vitals verstehen können, müssen wir noch zwei, drei Dinge klären, damit die Auswirkungen und Zusammenhänge der Werte verständlicher sind. Da möchte ich mit euch ganz kurz einmal in einen HTML-Quellcode hineinschauen. Das ist jetzt der etwas zusammengefasste Quellcode von der Google Webseite und die Web Entwickler und bestimmt auch die, die das schon mal ab und zu gemacht haben, wissen, dass so ein HTML-Konstrukt in drei Bereiche unterteilt werden kann. Es gibt einerseits den Header, da stehen ein paar Metadaten drinnen.

Der Titel der Webseite, aber auch Informationen zum Design und zur Interaktion der Seite. Dann gibt es den Body. Da ist in der Regel der Inhalt drinnen. Alles was wir sehen an Text und Bildern und ähnliches ist grösstenteils im Body angesiedelt. Und dann gibt es den Footer. Ich habe gerade eben schon gesagt, im Header sind z.B. Referenzen drinnen. Wir haben jetzt hier hervorgehoben, zum Beispiel eine JavaScript Datei. Hier wird also von einer externen Adresse eine JavaScript Datei eingebunden. JavaScript ist ja eine Skriptsprache, womit man Interaktionen oder auch Dynamik auf eine Website bringen kann. Das bedeutet ja, dass Dinge sich automatisch verschieben oder auf Mausklick irgendwas aufklappt oder Slider, die sind ja auch so ein typischer Fall im JavaScript Bereich. Hier im Header sind auch noch ein paar Style Angaben, also CSS Angaben. CSS Dateien sind ja dafür da, dass das Design einer Webseite sehr vereinfacht auszudrücken. Farben, Strukturen, Ausrichtungen von Überschriften, Texten, Bildern, aber auch Containern, wo man dann wiederum Inhalte reinpacken kann.

Die Definition der Grösse dieser Container, die Anordnung dieser Container all das macht man mit CSS Dateien und wir sehen im Footer entsprechend auch noch ein paar JavaScript Dateien. Warum tut man so etwas? Warum packt man JavaScript Dateien und CSS Dateien in den Kopf, aber kann sie offensichtlich auch in den Footer packen. Wenn nämlich ein Web-Browser diesen HTML Quellcode interpretieren möchte, um dann am Ende eine Webseite anzuzeigen, muss er das in der Regel von oben nach unten tätigen.

Das heisst, er liest diesen gesamten Quelltext ein und fängt dann an, auch eingebundene Script Dateien und auch die CSS Dateien abzuarbeiten und zu interpretieren und dann den Code – der da drinnen festgehalten ist – auszuführen oder in irgendeiner Form mit der Webseite zu interagieren. Die Skripte, die im Header eingebunden sind, die werden natürlich sehr schnell und sehr früh gelesen, ausgeführt und interpretiert. Und alles was im Footer unten ist, wird erst sehr verspätet ausgeführt, währenddessen schon der gesamte Body und damit der gesamte Inhalt eigentlich angezeigt ist und auch die wichtigsten CSS Dateien bereits aus dem Header gelesen und auch interpretiert wurden.

Das heisst, es besteht durchaus eine Abfolge. Die Daten im Header werden zuerst mit einer gewissen Priorität abgehandelt, währenddessen im Footer die Dateien, die dort eingebunden sind, verspätet ausgeführt werden, nämlich wenn schon andere Aktionen vorher erfolgt sind. Das ist alles technisch jetzt sehr vereinfacht ausgedrückt, aber es ist ganz wichtig zu verstehen: Es gibt zwei verschiedene Ausführungsbereiche, denn das wird nachher nochmal bei der Bewertung der Core Web Vitals ganz wichtig. Dann möchte ich ganz kurz den Begriff «Viewport» mitgeben.

Wir werden jetzt hier in diesem Vortrag zwei oder dreimal über den sogenannten Viewport sprechen, mit einem Viewport ist einfach der sichtbare Bereich in einem Mobilgerät gemeint. Das heißt eigentlich, dass wenn ihr eine Webseite aufruft und den Inhalt seht, der den gesamten Screen in Anspurch nimmt, das ist der Viewport. Einfach im Hinterkopf behalten, wird aber gleich nochmal interessant werden. Und wir sollten auch im Hinterkopf behalten: «Wie bewertet Google eigentlich mobile Webseiten, wie kriegt der Google Bot eigentlich heraus, wie eine Webseite auf einem mobilen Gerät performt?» Da schweigt natürlich Google mit welcher Engine sie da herangehen bzw. mit welcher Logik sie da herangehen.

Es häufen sich die Vermutungen, dass es aktuell die Engine eines Motorola Moto G4 ist, mit langsamer Netzanbindung. Bis vor kurzem war es noch ein Nexus 5, das war ja ein Gerät von Google. Und jetzt kam vor kurzem auch in den Entwicklertools von Google die Engine des Moto G4 mit hinein und deswegen gibt es sehr gute Vermutungen, dass dieses G4 involviert ist. Selbst wenn es das nicht ist, ist es gar nicht mal so schlecht, dass als Orientierung zu nehmen. Denn es ist ein Mobiltelefon mit einem beachtlichen Alter.

Es ist knapp fünf Jahre alt und hat eine recht geringe Displaygrösse. Das heisst, wenn wir das im Hinterkopf behalten, unsere Seiten auf eine gute Ansicht und auf gute Core Web Vitals für ein Motorola Moto G4 optimieren, dann haben wir die Seite wahrscheinlich schon generell ganz gut optimiert. Je besser das Display, je schneller die CPU, umso besser natürlich auch die Anzeige. Aber wenn wir schon auf geringerer Hardware bzw. geringerem Gerät gut emulieren können und die Seite gut aussieht, dann wird das bei besserer Hardware natürlich umso besser funktionieren.

Soviel also zur Theorie. Kommen wir zum ersten Core Web Vital, nämlich der Cumulative Layout Shift. Ich hab es mal versucht, es zu übersetzen, nämlich zusammengerechnete Layout Verschiebung. Das ist etwas krudes Deutsch, aber trifft es eigentlich ganz gut. Der Cumulative Layout Schift schreibt nämlich die Verschiebung von Inhalten nach dem initialen Design. Das heisst, wenn die Webseite einmal geladen ist und dann sich auf einmal Inhalte doch nochmal verschieben. Warum eigentlich?

Zum Beispiel weil Inhalte dynamisch nachgeladen werden, wie durch JavaScript oder ähnliches. Oder vielleicht irgendwie Widgets nochmal resizen, weil sie irgendwie in der falschen Größe definiert wurden und dann irgendwie festgestellt wird: «Ach Gott, ich werde ja auf ein Mobildisplay angezeigt und dann restrukturiert sich die gesamte Seite nochmal neu.

Oder was natürlich auch sein kann, dass grössere Bilder wie Headerbilder noch nachgeladen werden. Zum Beispiel habe ich hier eine etwas grössere Dateigrösse und Sie haben vielleicht in ihrer Deklaration in der HTML Definition keine Größenangaben mitbekommen und somit lädt auf einmal dieses Headerbild nach und drückt den Inhalt nach unten. Das sind typische Cumulative Layout Shifts. Ich habe eine kleine Demo mitgebracht. Ich bin ganz gespannt, da Videos ja immer so eine Sache in Powerpoint sind aber ich glaube es funktioniert hervorragend. Nehmen wir ein Beispiel:

Hier ist eine Order Conformation und da habt ihr es schon gesehen. Wir können gleich nochmal zurückloopen und das nochmal machen. Es ist also eine Bestellbestätigung gewesen und auf einmal ist ein Inhalt aufgetaucht. Der Benutzer klickt eigentlich auf «No go back», er will das also gar nicht bestellen, aber auf einmal hier oben, was nachgerückt ist, hat sich alles nach unten verschoben und er klickt versehentlich auf Submit-Order und generiert so eine versehentliche Bestellung. Das ist natürlich jetzt das Extrembeispiel an der Stelle, aber es zeigt halt sehr gut auf, was dieser Cumulative Layout Shift ist, nämlich, dass sich Inhalte verschieben und sich dadurch die User Experience verändern kann.

Ich hatte gerade eben schon gesagt, es ist eine Summe von Layout Shift und von gewissen Metriken und Cumulative suggeriert es ja auch schon -eine kumulative-, also etwas zusammengefasst und somit gibt es hier tatsächlich ein bisschen Mathematik. Ja, keine Sorge, es ist nicht so vertiefend und letztlich, ich habe ja diese Metriken nicht erfunden, sondern Google hat die erfunden, also müssen wir alle hier gemeinsam durch. Wird aber nicht so schlimm. Die Berechnungsgrundlage für so ein Cumulative Layout Shift und überhaupt für ein Layout Shift ist:»Um wieviel Prozent nimmt dieses bewegte Element im Viewport ein?» Wir werden das nochmal sehen und dann wird das ein kleines Stück praktischer.

Das ist dann die sogenannte Impact Fraction und dann stellt sich natürlich auch die Frage um wieviel Prozent verschiebt sich denn dieses Element? Wenn das z.B. irgendwie ein kleiner Satz ist, dann ist womöglich die Impact Fraction relativ klein, da es nur sehr schmal auf dem Screen ist. Es besteht einen Unterschied, wenn es ein grosser Absatz ist. Und natürlich ist es auch ein Unterschied, ob dieser Inhalt irgendwie ein paar Pixel verrutscht oder sogar um die Hälfte des Viewports. Diese Werte werden dann pro Element -was sich irgendwie verschiebt, springt oder was auch immer- multipliziert und dann einfach für jedes einzelne Element aufaddiert. Auch hier hab ich ein kleines Beispiel mitgebracht bzw. Google hat auch ein schönes vorbereitet.

Wir sehen hier zwei Demo-Viewports und wir sehen auf der linken Seite einen Demo-Text der 50% des Viewports einnimmt und der wird nach unten verschoben. Nach dem Verschieben von Ursprungslage bis zur Endlage haben sich 75% des Screens auf einmal verändert. Irgendwas hat sich da eben in der Ansicht verändert. Das ergibt also eine Impact Fraction von 0.75. Dieser Inhalt, der wurde um 25 Prozent verschoben und das gibt dann eine Distance Fraction von 0.25. Ich hatte ja erwähnt, dass es multipliziert wird und dadurch bekommt man ein Layout Shift für dieses einzelne Element. Das heisst, wenn wir hier ein bisschen Mathematik anwenden, kommen wir auf 0.18. Das ist jetzt der Layout Shift sozusagen für dieses Element. Merkt euch die 0.18, das wird jetzt gleich in der nächsten Folie nochmal ganz interessant. Wir haben hier also einen Inhalt, 50% wird nach unten verschoben und das ergibt Layout Shift von 018 fast 0.19. Layout Schifts werden aufgrund von User Interaktionen nicht berücksichtigt. Das heisst, wenn jemand auf den Button klickt und dann verschiebt sich was oder so, dann ist das ja was legitimes, dann ist das etwas, was auch gewollt ist. Die werden dann nicht in der Summe berücksichtigt.

Ein kleiner Unterschied an der Stelle: Natürlich kann man nicht unendlich Verzögerung annehmen. Google nimmt als Basiswert 500 Millisekunden, d.h. man klickt auf einen Button und wenn innerhalb von 500 Millisekunden irgendetwas passiert, z.B. das Layout sich verändert oder Elemente neu angeordnet werden, dann zählt das nicht in den Layout Shift mit hinein. Wie bewertet Google das denn jetzt eigentlich? Google kommt hin, bewertet alle Elemente, berechnet dort wie gesagt mit diesen Fractions die Anteile und summiert am Ende auf. Google sagt ein Cumulative Layout Shift – also der summierte Layout Shift von allen sich bewegenden Elementen – kleiner gleich 0.1 ist eine gute Experience, alles kleiner als 0.25 benötigt improvement und über 0.25 ist eine poor Experience.

Das bedeutet – alleine jetzt gerade dieses Beispiel, was ich gerade gezeigt hatte mit 0.19- ist nicht gut, das rankt Google schon runter. Wie kann ich so einen Cumulative Layout Shift vermeiden? Da gibt es diverse Varianten. Auslöser sind immer in der Regel dafür in irgendeiner Form CSS Dateien oder JavaScript Dateien, die in das Layout eingreifen und in irgendeiner Form Elemente neu anordnen. Daher ladet diese möglichst früh im Header und auch da möglichst früh oder bindet womöglich den Quelltext direkt ein, damit das möglichst schnell verarbeitet werden kann. Wenn ihr Bilder einsetzt oder auch generell Content Boxen habt, also div. Container oder ähnliches in eurem HTML Quellcode, dann definiert dafür fixe Größenangaben, damit da auf jeden Fall der Platz schon reserviert ist und das nicht dynamisch erst angepasst werden muss.

Generell vermeidet dynamische Layout Anpassung mit JavaScript, das ist sowieso nichts schönes. Stattdessen bietet da CSS echt viele Möglichkeiten, Einfluss auf das Layout zu nehmen und dynamisch auch auf verschiedene Bildschirmauflösungen zu reagieren und so ganz ohne JavaScript und irgendwelche Bibliotheken für ein tolles Design und für eine neue tolle Anordnung von Elementen zu sorgen. Und sofern ihr Animationen nutzt auch da schaut mal, ob ihr anstatt JavaScript lieber CSS nutzt. CSS hat sich in den letzten Jahren sehr weiterentwickelt und ihr könnt mit CSS unfassbar viel machen und auch so Elemente anordnen, skalieren, bewegen und ähnliches. Und ihr seid da nicht auf JavaScript angewiesen.

Das bringt auch Vorteile in der Bewertung von Cumulative Layout Shift, da Google Animationen tatsächlich weniger stark wertet, wenn es zu Verschiebungen kommt. Ihr seht unten rechts auch immer wieder Links dazu. Da könnt ihr dann draufklicken bzw. diese abtippen. Diese Sites werden auch veröffentlicht, es gibt natürlich jeweils in einzelnen Kapiteln noch deutlich mehr Informationen dazu. Kommen wir zu dem zweiten Core Web Vital. Das ist der Largest Contentful Paint. Auch hier habe ich es mit einer schlechten Übersetzung probiert: Grösstes Inhaltsergebnis darstellen. Ja das triffts am Ende auch auf den Punkt, es bezeichnet nämlich die Zeit, bis das grösste Element der Seite im initialen Viewport geladen ist. Auch hier gibt es ein sehr schönes Beispiel von der CNN Webseite. Da sieht man den Ladeprozess von links nach rechts und grün hervorgehoben sieht man immer das, was als das grösste Element sozusagen auf der Website identifiziert wurde. Auf dem ersten Blick ist es eine Breadcrumb Navigation und dann sieht man in der Mitte, dass die Überschrift das grösste Element der Website ist und dann quasi ganz zum Schluss wird ein Teaserbild geladen und das ist dann das grösste Element auf der Website.

Und Google möchte natürlich für den User, für denjenigen, der irgendwo sich auf einer Webseite dann bewegt, dass das zentrale Element möglichst früh zur Verfügung steht. Deswegen wird ein solches Ladeverhalten eher schlecht bewertet, weil eben das zentrale Element sehr spät dargestellt und geladen wird. Natürlich hat Google auch positive Beispiele z.B. bei sich selber. Und auch hier sieht man den Suchbegriff dann als erstes und bei den Ergebnisseiten ist es so, dass dann die Beschreibung des Suchergebnisses sehr schnell und sehr früh geladen wird, nämlich an der richtigen Stelle, im richtigen Moment. Es werden zwar dann noch einzelne Bilder, Bildinhalte nachgeladen und ähnliches, aber das zentrale Element, das grösste Element der jeweiligen Seite ist sehr früh da und dementsprechend bekommt man in diesem direkten Vergleich sehr gut mit, was denn da als Largest Contentfull Paint gemeint ist, welchen Zweck Google damit verfolgt und warum es wichtig ist, dass hier dieser Inhalt möglichst früh erscheint. Wie bewertet Google das?

Nämlich nach Zeiträumen. Wenn das grösste Element in weniger als zweieinhalb Sekunden geladen ist, bewertet Google das als gut. In weniger als vier Sekunden needs improvement und mehr als vier Sekunden poor. Jetzt könntet ihr euch zurücklehnen und sagen «Ach vier Sekunden, das ist ja gar nichts. Also ich meine, Webseiten sollen ja möglichst in anderthalb Sekunden oder zwei Sekunden laden und mit VDSL 50 es ist ja alles ganz easy.» Ja, aber bedenkt, wir sind hier im mobilen Bereich unterwegs mit schlechter Netzwerkabdeckung. Die Emulation funktioniert voraussichtlich mit 3G, nicht mit LTE oder ähnlichem.

Das heisst zwei Sekunden für eine grössere Headergrafik sind da schon kernig. Aber das muss man schaffen. Also unterschätzt diese Werte nicht. Wie kann man den Largest Contentful Paint verbessern? Ordnet eure Elemente, wenn ihr die Webseiten baut, möglichst fix im Viewport an, anstatt dass sie die wieder durh Java Scripte oder ähnliches dynamisch nachjustieren lässt. Layoutdesigns von CSS wie Flex Box und CSS Grid helfen hier auf jeden Fall. Da kann man sehr schön für verschiedene Auflösungen, verschiedene Anordnung von Objekten auch gut steuern. Wir hatten es gerade mit dem schlechten Largest Contentful Paint. Sorgt dafür, dass eure Headerbilder und eure Teaserbilder und überhaupt alle Bilder, die den grössten Teil des Viewports einnehmen, dass die möglichst schnell geladen werden. Sorgt für geringe Parteigrössen. Bei Bildern könnt ihr im HTML-Quellcode auch das Source Set benutzen.

WordPress setzt das zu grossen Teilen -wenn ihr Bilder aus der Mediathek einfügt- automatisch ein. Das Source Set ist dann dafür da, dass verschiedene Bildergrössen zur Verfügung stehen und dann in Abhängigkeit der Displaygrösse geladen werden, sodass dann z.B. auf ein Display was gerade mal 600 oder 300 Pixel breit ist, nicht das Bild mit 1200 Pixel Breite geladen wird, sondern eher ein kleineres, was dann natürlich auch eine kleinere Dateigrösse mit sich bringt. Wichtig: Nutzt Caching, wenn Inhalte nicht schnell genug abgerufen werden können, weil z.B. die Datenbank zu langsam oder der Zusammenbau der Website mit den ganzen PHP Dateien etwas zu lange dauert, dann hat das natürlich auch Auswirkungen, wann welcher Inhalt angezeigt wird. Bei ganz grossen Seiten ist Content Delivery Network auch sehr hilfreich.

Aber das bringt dann auch wieder eigene Herausforderungen mit sich. Es besteht natürlich auch die Möglichkeit, dass ihr kritische Elemente vorladet, das bietet ja der Browser an und man hat auch Möglichkeiten, Ressourcen vorzuladen und so im Grunde im Hintergrund schon Bilder herunterladen zu lassen, weil man zu fast 100 Prozent bereits weiss, der Besucher wird jetzt diese Webseite als nächstes aufrufen. Wenn ihr also in irgendeiner Form eine Customer Journey aufzieht und ihr eure Besucher so steuern wollt, dass der Besucher sicher auf die nächste Seite navigieren wird, dann könnt ihr ja bereits schon das grosse Bild herunterladen, somit ist es schon im Zwischenspeicher.

Dann kann es natürlich sofort angezeigt werden, als dass es dann erst runtergeladen werden muss oder auch heruntergeladen wird, wenn es gebraucht wird. Auch der Link-preload bringt auch Herausforderungen mit sich. Seid vorsichtig im Umgang damit und seid vorsichtig mit dem Datenvolumen eurer Besucher. Und was natürlich auch eine Sache ist, ladet nicht kritische CSS Dateien und JavaScript Dateien im Footer. Ist irgendwie auch ganz klar, da die die Webseiteninhalte zumindest im initialen Viewport ganz schnell geladen werden. Wenn ihr dann in irgendeiner Form noch JavaScript Dateien habt, die womöglich am Ende irgendeine Interaktion mit einer Webseite oder einem Element auf der Webseite machen oder so etwas, dann muss das nicht am Anfang zwingend geladen werden. Dann schreibt das in den Footer hinein, denn es geht beim Largest Contentful Paint darum – wie es gerade schon gesehen habt – dass die Webseite und die zentralen Inhalte möglichst schnell zur Verfügung stehen. Und je weniger der Browser selber vorher noch lesen, interpretieren und anordnen muss, desto besser.

Kommen wir zum dritten Core Web Vital, nämlich der First Input Delay oder auch «Mano, mein Browser hakt». Der First Input Delay lässt sich noch am besten übersetzen: die Verzögerung bis zur ersten Eingabe.

Und zwar beschreibt der First Input Delay die Verzögerung eines Browsers zwischen Interaktion und Reaktion. Vielleicht kennt ihr das selber: Ihr klickt einen Link auf eurem Tablet oder auf einem Mobiltelefon und dann passiert erst mal kurz nichts. Und irgendwie so nach einer Sekunde lädt dann die Seite. Das ist der First Input Delay. Warum hackt das überhaupt? Nun, auch hier technisch sehr vereinfacht ausgedrückt muss man sagen der Browser -wir hatten es gerade bei dem Quellcode- muss JavaScript Dateien und CSS Dateien verarbeiten und es gibt einen sogenannten «main thread» in Browsern. Das heisst, es gibt einen eigenen Prozess auf eurem Handy oder auf dem Tablet, der eben dafür da ist, eben diesen gesamten Quellcode zu interpretieren, JavaScript Dateien einzulesen, auszuführen und was weiss ich nicht alles.

Der «main thread» kann aber nur eine Sache gleichzeitig machen. Das heisst, wenn der gerade damit beschäftigt ist, umfangreiche JavaScript Dateien auszuwerten, umfangreiche CSS Dateien zu lesen und irgendwie das Design zurecht zu basteln, dann kann der in dem Moment den Klick auf den Link nicht verarbeiten. Der «main thread» kriegt zwar mit, dass da jemand geklickt hat, aber kann ihn gerade nicht verarbeiten, weil er gerade dabei ist, die 500 Kilobyte Datei JavaScript zu rendern. Behaltet immer noch im Hintergrund, dass wir noch immer auf einem Mobiltelefon von vor fünf Jahren unterwegs sind. Das hat eben nicht High Performance. Das ist der Auslöser für den First Input Delay. Ich hab das nochmal grafisch mitgebracht. Da müssen wir jetzt nicht im Detail reinblicken.

Ich sehe gerade, dass da die Quellenangabe fehlt, auch das ist übrigens von der Webseite, die hier unten rechts verlinkt ist «Web.dev/fid» Also kurz für First Input Delay. Hier sieht man in grau die Network Requests, also die Anfragen. Der lädt den Quellcode der Webseite, findet da eine externe JavaScript Datei, lädt die, dann findet man vielleicht noch eine CSS-Datei die muss er laden und interpretieren und das sind diese grauen Balken und in gelb unten sieht man den sogenannten main thread. Da ist er dann nämlich dabei, diese Daten zu lesen und zu interpretieren. Wir sehen zum Beispiel in den letzten grauen Balken, da scheint eine sehr grosse Datei zu sein, die er herunterlädt erstmal. Dann fängt er natürlich auch an, die relativ schnell zu interpretieren.

Danach sehen wir hier Browser received first user input. Das heisst, mitten in der Verarbeitung des «main threads» klickt der User auf den Link. Der Browser ist aber gerade damit beschäftigt, diese Datei zu laden, kann keine Aktion lostreten und kann das erst machen, wenn dieser «main thread» erst mal die Abarbeitung der JavaScript Datei z.B. fertig hat. Und das ist in grafischer Form noch einmal dargestellt warum manchmal der Browser hackt. Das ist keine schöne User Experience und genau deswegen möchte Google natürlich diese Verzögerung möglichst gering halten. Wie bewertet Google das? Die Zeit zwischen Klick und Reaktion kleiner oder gleich 100 Millisekunden bewertet Google als gut, bis zu 300 Millisekunden als needs Improvement und alles was darüber ist als poor.

Also schon auch sportlich, wenn man bedenkt, dass das auch alles auf einer schwachen Systemplattform ausgeführt werden soll, nämlich auf einem 5 Jahre altem Smartphone. Wie kann man darauf Einfluss haben? Haltet eure Seitenstruktur einfach! Je einfacher so eine Webseite strukturiert ist, je schlanker so ein Quellcode ist, desto schneller lässt sich das durch den Browser interpretieren. Vermeidet komplexe JavaScript und CSS Dateien, weil je komplexer so eine JavaScript Datei, je komplexer eine CSS-Datei, desto mehr und länger braucht der Browser auf seinem «main thread» diese zu lesen, zu interpretieren, auszuführen und desto weniger schnell kann er auf Interaktion agieren.

Wenn ihr übergrosse Zeilen habt und die Möglichkeit habt, dann teilt grosse Dateien z.B. irgendwelche exorbitant grossen JavaScript Dateien oder CSS Dateien oder sowas auf kleinere Dateien auf. Auch hier werden diese in einzelnen Schritten heruntergeladen und dann atmet der Browser jedesmal mal kurz durch und hat dann natürlich die Möglichkeit den Link-Klick z.B. zu verarbeiten oder einen Klick auf dem Formular, Feld oder was auch immer, als dass er da noch weiter geblockt wird, um eine grosse Datei zu verarbeiten.

Generell vermeidet externe Inhalte wie Like Buttons oder ähnliches. Auch die haben Einfluss auf die Ladezeit, da diese häufiggroße Scripts mitbringen. Ihr fügt vielleicht nur eine kleine Codezeilen ein, aber dahinter werden unzählige Kilobytes an Daten nachgeladen. Auch das hat dann natürlich Einfluss auf den «main thread», der das alles am Ende dann doch nochmal verarbeiten muss. Ladet unkritische Inhalte erst im Footer, denn es geht darum, die Webseite erst einmal Interaktionsfähig zu machen. Und wenn im Nachhinein etwas nachgeladen werden muss, dann ist das nicht schlimm, macht aber die Seite schnell interaktionsfähig.

Jetzt haben wir diese drei Bereiche kennengelernt. Darauf wird sich Google ab Mai 2021 konzentrieren und das auch mit in die Bewertung der Suchergebnisse mit aufnehmen. Jetzt stellt sich die Frage wie könnt ihr eure eigenen Core Web Vitals ermitteln? Da gibt es zwei zentrale Anlaufstellen: einerseits Lighthouse, vielleicht kennt das der ein oder andere von euch, das ist in den Entwicklertools drinnen von Chromium basierten Browsern, also z.B. Google Chrome oder Microsoft Edge oder Opera. Die setzen alle auf Chromium und darin sind die Entwicklertools inkludiert.

Ich hab da auch nochmal die Shortcuts mit aufgeführt, dann könnt ihr diese dort öffnen. Ich habe einen Screenshot gemacht, wo man die Entwicklertools findet. Es ist unter weitere Tools, die haben nämlich die Entwicklerstool schon ganz gut versteckt, klickt aber da gerne mal in eurem Browser auf das Zahnrad bzw. drei Punkte und klickt euch durch zu die Entwicklertools. Da könnt ihr dann nämlich eine Auswertung generieren. Ihr könnt da Quelltexte einsehen und Netzwerkleistung einsehen. Es ist eine unfassbar gute Anlaufstelle, um einfach die eigene Webseite besser zu verstehen. Aber ganz am Ende gibt es da auch das Lighthouse und dort könnt ihr dann -ganz kostenlos- aus dem Entwicklertools heraus einen Bericht erstellen. Dieses analysiert dann die Seite. Ihr werdet dann auch feststellen, dass der Browser die Webseite auf Handyformat resized und, dass die Netzwerkgeschwindigkeit testweise simuliert runtersetzt, um dann tatsächlich diese Engine laden zu können, um das mit einer alten Mobil-Hardware simulieren zu können.

Am Ende gibt es dann eine Auswertung, neben vielen anderen Auswertungen, die einem auch gute Tipps geben, worauf man so achten kann, um die eigene Webseite noch besser zu machen. In Sachen Excess Ability, Suchmaschinenoptimierung, Progressive Web Apps ist dort eben auch der First Contentful Paint und der Largest Contenful Paint mit drinnen und der First Input Delay wird dort bezeichnet als Time to Interactive. Ihr könnt das aber auch selber im Browser simulieren. Also für sich selber mal ein Gefühl bekommen, wie performt meine Seite eigentlich auf diesem simulierten Mobilgerät. Dafür geht ihr erneut in die Entwicklertools, aber anstatt auf Lighthouse zu klicken, sucht nach einem kleinen unscheinbaren Button, hier ist er jetzt gelb umrandet.

Damit könnt ihr eine mobile Ansicht aktivieren und dann simuliert euer Browser eine mobile Ansicht. Ich hab dann auch die Möglichkeit oben in der Ansicht eine Engine auszuwählen. In unserem Fall ist jetzt Moto G4 ausgewählt und ihr habt dann neben dem Zoom Faktor, der jetzt hier auf 100 prozent steht, auch die Möglichkeit die Performance eines Gerätes auszuwählen. Hier steht jetzt z.B. einfaches Mobilgerät. Das heisst, hier wird Rechenstärke des Handys ein bisschen runtergeregelt um einfach zu simulieren: Wie könnte das dann tatsächlich am Ende auf dem Moto G4 mit schwacher CPU und mit schwacher Auswertung aussehen?

Die Alternative falls ihr keinen Browser habt oder es nicht nutzen möchtet, gibt es auch von Google selber, die sogenannten Page Speed Insides. Die Adresse steht hier und da könnt ihr dann auch eine Webadresse eingeben und da arbeitet sich das durch und liefert dann auch hier die entsprechenden Daten.

Hier sehen sie deutlich schlechter aus, da muss man dann tatsächlich ran. Sowohl Lighthouse als auch die Page Insides liefern da auch Impulse, wie man alles verbessern kann, was die Auslöser sind, dass es zu schlechten Werten kommt. Ich habe jetzt viel über Optimierungen und ähnliches gesprochen und wie kann man die einzelnen Bereiche verbessern. Erstens möchte ich kurz mitgeben: Verlauft euch bitte nicht. Also klammert euch bitte jetzt nicht krampfhaft daran fest alle eure Werte auf grün zu bekommen.

Wenn ihr es hinbekommt, umso besser, es gibt aber gerade in der WordPress Welt viele Herausforderungen, dass das echt eine Herausforderung werden kann. Es geht jetzt tatsächlich eher darum, ein Bewusstsein dafür zu schaffen, wie Google mobile Inhalte zukünftig bewerten wird und was die Denkweisen dahinter sind. Und womöglich könnt ihr dann zukünftig das zumindest in der Auswahl von Themes, Plug-Ins oder ähnliches einfliessen lassen oder sofern es hier dann doch Coder unter uns gibt, das dann auch in die Entwicklung mit einfliessen lassen. Es gibt aber auch ein paar Faktoren, die einfach auch generell sehr wichtig sind, um auf alle diese Bereiche natürlich einzuzahlen und wirklich ein gutes Ergebnis abzuliefern, was gar nicht an den einzelnen Komponenten hängt.

Letztlich lässt sich alles zusammenfassen unter: «Habe einen guten Unterbau». Also wenn euer Webserver oder eure Datenbank nicht schnell ist, dann könnt ihr noch so viel optimieren, es wird nichts bringen. Dann muss der Host möglicherweise gewechselt werden. Setzt nur notwendige CSS oder JavaScript Dateien ein. Also häufig lassen sich auch Dinge nativ erledigen. Wie erwähnt, CSS bietet ganz tolle Möglichkeiten Animationen zu machen oder JavaScript bietet an sich schon Möglichkeiten Dinge einzublenden, auszublenden und ähnliches. Da brauch es nicht nochmal externe Bibliotheken wie jQuery oder andere. Generell vermeidet externe Bibliotheken, weil das macht die Seite natürlich immer grösser und hat immer mehr Einfluss auf Ladezeiten, hat Einfluss auf Dateigrösse, hat Einfluss womöglich auf das Layout und das Design. Damit zerreisst ihr euch alles, wenn ihr da nicht den Blick darauf habt. Vermeidet natürlich unnötige Plugins oder Multi Purpose Themes, da ladet ihr euch die Seite unnötig voll. Multi Purpose Themes sind für viele Zwecke einsetzbar.

Ihr ladet eines herunter und es lässt sich quasi alles daraus basteln. Von Agentur Seite über Blog, über Fotoblog, über WooCommerce Shop aber diese Themes müssen auch die Kompatibilität, die Möglichkeiten und auch die Design Definition für alles mitbringen. Das heisst, sie sind in der Regel auch recht überladen. Optimiert die Bilder für das Web, mit Source Sets und natürlich auch Dateigrössenoptimierung und haltet generell den Code der Webseite schlank. Da erzähle ich glaub ich allen nichts Neues. Es ist aber nicht falsch, immer wieder mal darauf hinzuweisen. Wenn es jetzt einige Plug-In Nutzer gibt. Diese Plugins werden die Probleme nicht lösen, aber sie sind zumindest ein Ansatz. Es gibt Caching Plugins wie z.B. WP Rocket oder Auto optimize, die Einfluss haben wie das Ladeverhalten von CSS Dateien und JavaScript Dateien ist.

Man kann da auch Einfluss nehmen, dass bestimmte Dateien im Footer geladen werden oder verzögert geladen werden. Wenn man weiss, was man tut, kann man damit ein bisschen Einfluss nehmen. Genauso kann man mit dem Plugin Asset CleanUp Einfluss nehmen, welche JavaScript Dateien auf welcher Unterseite in WordPress geladen werden. Wenn ihr also einen Slider oder so etwas nur auf einer Seite benötigt, ist es ja durchaus zielführend diese JavaScript Datei nur auf einer Seite einzufügen. Dann könnt ihr das mit z.B. Asset CleanUp machen.

Aber auch hier nochmal der Disclaimer: Kein Plugin, kann einen schlechten oder umfangreichen Code jetzt massiv verbessern. Die Basis muss richtig sein, die Basis muss ordentlich sein und erst wenn die Basis stabil, schlank und belastbar ist, erst dann kann man natürlich anfangen darauf Optimierungen zu setzen. So, das war ja fast eine Punktlandung mit meinen geplanten 45 Minuten. Aber natürlich auch inhaltlich glaub ich ganz schön kernig. Ja und viel Input. Ich hoffe, es gab bei euch keinen Input Delay. Okay, das war ein spontan erfundener Wortwitz und manchmal ein guter. Vielen Dank erst mal, dass ihr so intensiv dabei gewesen seid und wenn ihr Fragen habt, stehe ich gerne zur Verfügung und versuche die jetzt alle zu beantworten.

Der Beitrag Die neuen Bewertungskriterien von Google erschien zuerst auf Openstream.

Regional head of Marketing at Adobe (APAC), Nicholas Kontopolous has over 20 years of experience in brand positioning and has a deep understanding of what makes a brand stand out in the eCommerce arena. Hear him speak about it in detail in the very first session of Meet Magento Singapore 2020.

• Meet Magento Singapore event website
• Simon Kemp Chief Analyst at DataReportal
• YouTube video of this podcast’s Meet Magento presentation

• Music by Northern Dusk
• Photo by Ruddy Corporan

Ok, thank you very much for that very wonderful introduction, and I’m super excited to be here today to definitely share some insights on what hopefully will be an engaging topic. So, yeah, really, really looking forward to today’s session. As usual, it will be pretty fast paced, so hopefully you can buckle up and keep pace with me. As introduced, you know, I’ve got the great privilege of heading up Adobe DX Marketing for the commercial business, which incorporates the Magento brand and also the Marketo brands that were acquired by Adobe several years back. You know, we’re very passionate about commerce and I still remain very passionate about commerce and really excited about, you know, the great inroads we’re making into this region. And some of the what I’m going to share today is definitely based on my own personal experience. And one thing you’ll see a lot of is a lot of passion. Those that know me know I’m very passionate about this topic, but I’m not just passionate about my work. I’m passionate about my family. As you, again, know these are, everything we do each and every day, you know, ultimately revolves around hopefully providing for our family and loved ones. But as an Aussie, again, those that know me, I’m very passionate about my sports, you know, follow the rugby. But when we’re losing, that’s when I would tend to revert back to my Greek heritage. And a lot of what I’m going to share today is also based on my own experiences, having travelled across this little blue marble that we call Earth. I’ve been there about sixty five countries now. I’ve had the great privilege of working with a number of brands, great brands, both as an employee, but also as a partner and as a customer. And during that experience have gathered a lot of insights that I’m going to, you know, have found their way into the talk today.

And one thing that does fascinate me, without a doubt is people people really do fascinate me. And I’m really also passionate about customer experiences. It’s a topic I’ve been deeply involved in. For those that aren’t familiar with me, for about coming up to nearly two decades now, something I’ve been exploring and trying to understand how we can improve customer experiences for B2B and B2C brands. So what I’m talking about today is equally relevant to B2B brands, those of you that are dialing in that represent a B2B brand. This is very much a relevant talk for you as well. I’m also very seriously passionate about my customers, but not just my customers, their customers as well. And I think we have to be you know, we need to invest in in a being that passionate about, not just about our immediate customers, but also the customers they are trying to serve. And we ultimately, obviously want them to succeed in order to do that. They really do need to understand how customer experiences are created and ultimately delivered and ultimately lived and breathed through their organisations. And this is the challenge for us today, because really standing out, you know, from all the noise is becoming increasingly more and more difficult. Think about it. There is you know, there is so many people out there saying the same thing and using the same type of messaging, using the same type of ads. You’re creative. There’s so many people out there just doing the same thing, so many people jumping on the same technology bandwagon.

And this is creating a lot of challenges for us. This video, is a video I’ve shown before and I really love it because I think it…

«Look at this, there’s a Vaporeon that spawned right there. So everyone’s running…(crowd laughing)». – There’s a what now? -There’s a Vaporeon…»

I’m sure most of you recognised that video as being obviously Pokemon go.

And that was New York Central Park about three or four years ago when Pokemon go exploded on the scene. And this is something that we continue to see is that technology is really changing everything, not just for us as business leaders or practitioners, but also as consumers. We know that, it’s changing our behaviors. I mean, that was a fantastic example of just how an app transformed behaviors across the globe. Yeah, I mean, whether you were in Singapore, in Mumbai, in Shanghai or New York, we saw a similar behavioural change taking place here. And technology’s really driving a rapid change in how we as consumers engage with brands. You know, this content is from Australia, but there’s similar stats for all over the region. You know, we look at how consumers are engaging with content and the types of channels and platforms they are using. And we’re seeing fundamental changes and the amount of time they’re spending. Again, you know, this is a data point from Australia. If I look at a data point for Singapore or Thailand, it’s a similar, if not a higher number. In actual fact, it is a higher number. So we’re spending more time each and every day, whether it’s travelling to and from work when we were able to do that or even where we are right now working from home, we’re obviously sitting in front of our devices for much longer periods of time. I mean, Statista, this data point came from Statista in two nineteen, sixty five percent of the population they estimate by twenty twenty one would be digital.

But let’s be real. I mean, this year what we’ve seen is that data point increase exponentially, without a doubt, 100 percent across the globe. Simon Kemp, if you’re not familiar with his work on that, although I’m sure you are. If not, you’ve most probably been exposed to it in one way, shape or form. He produces fantastic insights on a regular basis. You know, he does this digital 2020 global overview. And we recently engaged with him a little while back. We engaged with him and looked at, you know, data in respect to covid-19 and the impact that was having. And what was really interesting and not really surprising, but interesting to see was that people were obviously spending more time with their devices. And what was particularly of interest is when you start looking at the demographics. So actually the Gen Xers and the baby boomers, maybe those generations where there had been some latency or hesitation in fully leaping into the digital world were actually forced into that. If I even look at my own mom, you know, she’s definitely fully digital now. She does everything digitally, buying her grandchildren, you know, presents online. But even in a B2B context, you know, those that were maybe not, you know, relying on salespeople coming and visiting him have had to be forced to do more research online.

So we’re seeing a fundamental shift here, and that’s obviously cascading into e-commerce. I think McKinsey put a data point out that what we’ve seen this year in terms of e-commerce growth represents the amount of growth that’s taken place over the last 10 years. So just in 2020, we’ve seen almost the same amount of growth take place over a 10 year period. So this is a fantastic opportunity for all of us to really reimagine how we’re engaging our customers. But I really want to stress here that this isn’t just a B2B, or B2C story. This is equally important for B2B brands because the reality is B2B and B2C customers are really evolving how they’re making their purchasing decisions. I’ve said this before in many of my talks where they’re no longer following this linear process. They’re very much twisting and turning through the buying process, going back and steps and going forward two steps that we maybe didn’t anticipate in consulting with different sources, et cetera. And this is really putting a lot of pressure on businesses. And equally, as I said, for B2B brands, this is becoming an absolute expectation now. When we look at the data points for B2B purchases in that they want a similar consumer great experience being delivered to them. And as you will have heard me reference before, this idea of digital Darwinism, which was coined by Brian Solis, really is at play dramatically right now and accelerating in terms of the way society and consumers are evolving, is putting a lot of pressure on us.

And a lot of executives now are trying to play catch up, you know, other businesses that maybe hadn’t really doubled down in driving this digital transformation to customer experience transformation and marrying their digital physical worlds together, are really running the gauntlet now. Now, here’s the trick. I mean, how do you go and create an amazing customer experience that doesn’t look and feel like everyone else’s? Now, that’s the real challenge. You know, obviously, we can go, we’ve got marketplaces that are great there’s a lot of e-commerce solutions out there that you can, you know, deploy, that, you know, provide a great service but come in a very vanilla flavor. So we need to think about how do we architect our physical digital channels in a way that enable us to deliver really differentiated service that doesn’t look like everyone else’s site isn’t isn’t beige. And that’s the real trick. That’s the real challenge for each and every one of us today. And here’s another interesting data point. The fact is, what consumers are looking for is wanting a more personalized and individualized experience, and they’re getting frustrated with the lack of that experience being delivered. And what’s amazing and truly amazing is if you can get this right and we see this with our customers that are really doubling down on this.

And I’ll come to a couple later. Ninety one percent of consumers are willing to spend more money with you if you are able to deliver them products and services that are really tailored to what they’re looking for. You know, products that solve or services that solve their problems is really important. And even more importantly, 83 percent of them are willing to share more data with you. If you can use that data smartly in a way that really does help them discover those solutions, helps them discover the insights that are needed for them to be able to make an informed decision and not have buyer’s remorse at the end of the purchasing cycle. And here’s the, but here’s a challenge for them. I mean, you think about each and every day I wake up just from a B2B context. I have over one hundred emails in my inbox. Marketers who have tried to spam me and try to get me, capture my attention. There’s so much information coming at me just in a B2B context then I layer that on the B2C, and it’s just overwhelming sometimes. I’m sure you all feel that. Sometimes you just go: «Oh my God, there’s so many choices here!». So this is where, as marketers, as business owners, as commerce professionals, we need to be thinking about how do we make that purchasing decision easier for the consumer? How do we make it easier for them to make that informed decision, as I mentioned earlier? So this means stop, we’ve got to stop shouting at our customers, we’ve got to stop broadcasting to them, we’ve got to start thinking about them, really putting them at the heart of the journey.

We need to think about how do we go from this idea of personalization, which is basically table stakes now. Yeah, we need to be thinking now. The next goal is to go to this world of this capability of individualization. How do I individualize that experience for Nicholas? How do I individualize that experience? And to do that, is, requires me to really, you know, be at a craft, a clear understanding of, well, first and foremost, what is our «Why». Now, I touched on this in last year’s keynote. I’m going to bring it back onto the table today, just very briefly, because it really is important. I want to bring this message back into this talk today, because in order to stand out from all the clones, we need to have a very clear purpose. We need to really develop and shape a purpose for those that aren’t familiar with this concept or who remember this from last year. I really want to challenge you to double down on this. Really think about making sure that you guys are very clear on what is your company’s purpose, what are you trying to achieve as a goal, and then how do you create a utility capability that enables you to differentiate the brand? Now, when I say brand purpose, I’m not saying go save the world.

Purpose really is your «Why», as Simon Sinek. People buy your «Why» and really understanding and defining that having at the heart of your strategy is absolutely critical. And really then, building and shaping your web of promises. Understanding how those promises are created across your organization and how you keep those promises, are really going to be quite central to your ability to anchor that purpose and ultimately to create a service that is ultimately memorable. And this is where utility becomes really important. Remember the data points I’m talking about in terms of personalization, the willingness of consumers and B2B buyers to share data with you if you can take that data and create a service orientated engagement experience, end-to-end, and use that to inform your content creation and use it to inform the way you are, your sellers will engage a prospect the way your contact staff will ultimately engage, you know, someone who’s calling in with a service issue or who’s calling in wanting to learn more about your product is ultimately going to help you significantly stand out from the clones, you know, from the rest of the competitors who are ultimately, in a lot of cases, are going to be offering offering up generic type omnichannel experiences.

To really deliver a true omni channel experience. We really need to think about our customers through this channelist mindset and really have that anchored against a purpose, a clear purpose and a clear utility offering. And as this quote, I really love this quote here, really, «Greatness comes not from a position, but from helping build the future». That’s what our jobs as leaders, as agents of change is really to help drive that transformational change in the business. Culture is a really important part of this mix. We did a fantastic interview with Martin Lindstrom. I’m a massive fan of his work. If you’re not familiar with him, there’s a QR code here, scan it and go and watch his session. I had the great fortune of hosting him in a session. He illuminated so many new areas for me just in that 40 minutes or 50 minutes session we had with him. I really encourage you, because culture is really an important part of a lot of what I’m saying here. I wanted to also talk to you guys about, or give you guys a case study that sort of showcased some of what I’m talking here. Now, many may be familiar with the Ascent group. They own a number of retail brands in Australia, one of which is «The Athlete’s Foot». They’re a great Adobe customer of ours across multiple brands.

And they’ve created what I believe is a great example here of a end-to-end experience. You know, they’ve created a physical and digital experience that comes together beautifully. You can go into one of their stores, you know, get a foot fitting, making sure that your shoes that are being offered to you, are tailored to your specific needs. But you also can have the ability to walk out of that store, go back and do some research. Maybe I wanted to, maybe I wasn’t quite sure which of the two recommended shoes I wanted to look at. And I want to go back and do a bit more research before I press that buy button or pull out my wallet. And here, what they’ve created is the ability to go back and really dive into their product in a more rich a way. To really explore and learn more about the type of shoe that was suggested and recommended to me to make sure I’m comfortable with that purchase. But what’s even more amazing is I can really go in there, find the size, know the size I want to purchase, but also then, you know, do it quick in-store because I don’t want to wait for them to ship it to me. I’m actually going to be down at Bondi beach, you know, and I know I’m going to be able to go and drop-in to the store there and collect the shoes and knowing that they’ve got that in stock and to be able to make that engagement is a great example of brand utility for me.

This is the physical-digital channels coming together. My ability to really, you know, learn and educate myself, but ultimately, make an informed decision and an ultimately act on that impulse when I’m ready to buy and transact, you know, through a channel that I want to engage with. So this channel of experience is a really great example for me. And Athlete’s Foot have done this amazing effort across multiple brands. And they’re really seeing this translate into some really fantastic results. What was really exciting to see, and Mark Teperson, who was a former CDO there, you know, he’s now moved on, but he was, really, played a key role in driving this transformation. And ultimately, you know, what we saw this year, even when a lot of brands were really suffering as a result of covid-19, this company actually really was able to chart its way through those very difficult times and actually still remain in a positive state for their business. That was a fantastic example. Another great one for me is the DIY Beer Coopers, out of Australia as well. This is another beautiful example of a brand that has really thought about creating an end-to-end experience for its consumers, for its customers that are coming to the site, who want to learn more about their products, who want to engage with, you know, rich content about the product kits they have to offer, you know, enable me to quickly learn more about that, but also provide me access to great resources, you know, whether it was FAQs that we saw at the start there or actually the ability to tap into a community.

Again, a community is really important part of this experience, creating and harnessing the power of the community, the advocacy of that community is a great example of how you can create really rich experiences that actually differentiate yourselves from your competitors. So it’s clear that customer experience is now the new competitive landscape. And I’d love to say that there’s one technology that solves all of your problems here, but it’s not. Adobe, without a doubt, delivers a set of core capabilities that do cater to a lot of what I’ve spoken to today, without a doubt, World Class technologies. But technology alone isn’t going to solve your problems. You need to be thinking about your people, processes and technologies. You will always hear me say that. I will never stop saying that because I see a lot of projects still fail as a result of the lack of focus on people and process. Also, you’re going to come across people who really are going to push against your transformational efforts, who don’t want to get on board. And it’s really important to understand who those blockers are going to be, try to bring them on board, but also really spend time in trying to understand who the haters are going to be and try to hopefully provide solutions that turn them from haters to lovers.

You know, that’s, again, something I’ve seen and work really well for me in the past. But let’s also remember digital transformation has never been more important than today. And we’ve seen that, sadly, covid-19 has really accentuated that. But the good news is there’s a lot of learnings we can all take out of that and actually apply into our strategies going forward so that we can build a robust business like Ascent Group. As the example I gave there, that can enabled us to traverse the tough times we see. But here’s the deal. You’re going to have to create a culture that’s willing to fail. You know, willing to fail often and fail always, but always fail forward. You know, we need to embrace that. We need to be comfortable with that. We need to practice what we preach. If we say this to our teams, we need to be, as leaders, willing to also do this. Because only through that, will we be able to drive the change we need. Innovation requires the ability to fail, but also requires empathy. We need to really empathize not just with our customers.

That’s a given, but also our employees, our partners, our suppliers. We need to understand the roles that each of these people play in enabling us to drive a truly differentiated experience, because if we don’t, we ultimately end up with a clone like experience. And that’s what we don’t want. We want to move away from delivering a vanilla flavoured type or beige looking experience. I like vanilla. Actually, vanilla flavored ice cream is my favorite, so I don’t know why I’ll go there. But let’s use beige. We don’t want to deliver beige experience. We want to deliver something that’s really rich, exciting and memorable. We want to also create a signal in the noise. We want to be that brand that cuts through. Remember that image that I showed earlier with all of the information coming at us as consumers, we want to create an experience, a digital experience that really cuts through that noise and enables our customers to zero in on that signal and have that signal guide them through that discovery journey all the way through to becoming ultimately, hopefully, you know, a brand advocate. You know, as Obama says here beautifully, you know, «change will not come if we wait for some other person» so, don’t wait for your bosses to figure this out. You know, we have to go out there and actually start driving that change ourselves. You know, we are the ones that have been waiting.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. So we need to be that change. We need to embrace it, see it for what it is, and ultimately see it as an opportunity for us to not only change our organizations, but also to help drive change in ourselves that ultimately enables us to get better at what we do, so with that, I want to say thank you for joining us today and on this session. And there’s a wonderful lineup of speakers that we’re going to hear from today. I’m really looking forward to having, you know, my brain just as fired up from all the other speakers. My name’s Nicholas Kontopoulos. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. There’s not too many Kontopoulos‘ out there, but feel free to reach out and connect with me on that. I’ll do my best to get back to you through that channel. Otherwise, you know, enjoy the rest of today’s content. I really want to thank the Ranosys team and all the other sponsors are getting behind this. It’s really important that we continue as a community, as a Magento Commerce community, to stay connected, to learn from one another, to share from one and another’s experiences. And I look forward to hearing some of those insights, as I said from the other speakers today. So I’ll hand back to to the team now. Thank you very much.

Der Beitrag Differentiate Your Brand in a Market Full of Clones erschien zuerst auf Openstream.