The worry explorer
Name a worry. Read the reply.
Every design choice was made against some worry. Pick the one that troubles you, read how the design answers it, then read what the answer does not promise. Each reply raises its own worries, so the path branches as you go, and the page deepens with it.
Which worry is yours?
Choose the worry that bothers you most. You will get the design’s response, an honest note on what it does not promise, and the worries that response raises in turn. Every answer leads to another question, and you can follow as many as you like.
How to use the explorer
Begin with a worry from the list of six. The reply has two halves on purpose. The design’s response says what the mechanism does and why it was chosen. What it does not promise names the limit, so that no answer reads as a slogan. Beneath them you will find three follow-on worries. Choosing one adds it to your path, and the page darkens one step. Choose a step in the path to return to it and take a different branch, or use Back one step and Start over.
The explorer is a small graph, not a script. Worries link to one another in loops: a question about rewriting history leads to proof of work, which leads to fees, which leads to supply, which leads back to rules. A worry you have already visited is marked Already on your path rather than being hidden, so you can see when you have gone round a circle. That is often where the understanding is.
Assumptions and edge cases
The replies describe long-established design facts: the 21 million cap, a block target of about ten minutes, a halving every 210,000 blocks, SHA-256 proof of work, and the unspent-output model. They contain no prices, no predictions and no adoption figures. Where something is genuinely unknown, such as how fees will behave decades from now, the reply says so. Nothing here is financial, legal or security advice, and no part of it is a recommendation to buy, hold or sell anything.
If you reach a worry that your own situation turns on, such as protecting keys or choosing software, treat this page as background reading only. The explorer is independent and unaffiliated with any software project or company, and it keeps your path only for as long as the page is open.