Here you will find a list of subjects One should learn or grasp to navigate, if not safely, at least not blindly in this ocean called the blockchain. Steemit has attracted a wide variety of people but did not provide the A B C for users to know what they are dealing with. Add in the picture that Steemit documentation is, when present, very sparse and that there is money, arguably a lot, involved in this environment.

So I am making a list, feel free to add anything in the comments if I missed something, of subjects I would like to see more general understanding. I am planning on doing articles around that, as blockchain tend to be black magic to the neophytes, because of the different aspects mixed here.

Note : I might make a more detailed post with starting links but I will not do it right now.

Without further due, the subjects you should know study:

Security and cryptography

Asymmetric cryptography

advanced subject: elliptic curve cryptography and secp256k1

Hashing function

advanced subject: birthday paradox

How to secure securely your private key

software wallet
paper wallet
brainwallet
hardware wallet (Trezor, ledger nano S ...)

Reaching consensus (i.e chaining the blocks)

Proof-of-Work(PoW), Proof-of-Stake(PoS), Delegated Proof-of-Stake(DPOS), Proof-of-...
Fork, hardfork, softfork.

Attacks on the blockchain

What is the so-called 51% attack?
How can one censor Steemit?

client side vs server side security

What is your root of trust i.e where are all the secrets (keys, passphrase) generated/stored?

Economics of the blockchain

Traditional ways:

Mining rewards

What does a miner mine? gold? lead?

Supply and demand

Buy and hold

The earlier you are in the bigger the benefits ... Or nah.

Buy and trade

Buy when everyone sells and sells when everyone buys.
Or is it the inverse?

New ways (to participate)

Blog and get paid

Steemit, obviously, Synero (upcoming), Akasha(upcoming and very promising)

Play and get paid

Digibyte rewards your gaming skills. You might need to slash a lot of players to get decent rewards.

Help science and get paid

Gridcoin is my favorite. I can cite Golem(although they don't have a real thing out yet).

Computer environment

Open source project

How do Open Source Project works?
What guarantees does it provide to the end user?
Is everything Open?

Access to the blockchain

Do download the blockchain? What does it actually mean?
Do you trust a website and only use what the website shows you?

Hoping it helps as a starting point

@cryptohazard