Using section overview topic (#501)

* First draft of Using overview topic

* Remove link to opentezos

Co-authored-by: NicNomadic <[email protected]>

* What else can I do with Tezos?

Co-authored-by: NicNomadic <[email protected]>

* This section presents Tezos for end users...

Co-authored-by: NicNomadic <[email protected]>

* Move this section up

* Clarify "application platform"

* Move features of blockchains down

* All users

---------

Co-authored-by: NicNomadic <[email protected]>

docs/using.md

@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+title: Using Tezos
+authors: Tim McMackin
+last_update:
+  date: 13 January 2025
+---
+
+This section presents Tezos for end users who need to access applications that use Tezos as part of their platform.
+Thus, no technical expertise is assumed, such as designing or developing new applications.
+
+Tezos is a blockchain, which is a network of computers that allows a group of users to run computer tasks in an open, transparent, and secure way.
+As a Tezos user, you may have come to the platform for many reasons, including:
+
+- Paying or accepting payments in the Tezos cryptocurrency (known as tez and occasionally by the symbol ꜩ or the ticker symbol XTZ)
+- Authenticating to web applications, like you might log in to a web site with a user name or email address
+- Creating your own cryptocurrencies or other exchangeable digital assets, known as [tokens](/architecture/tokens)
+- Running smart contracts to perform computation tasks in a transparent, censorship-proof way
+
+## What else can I do with Tezos?
+
+Blockchains like Tezos have these general properties:
+
+- Any user has access to all of the stored data
+- Any user can make changes to the data, as long they follow a set of rules
+- No small subset of users can control the system
+
+You can take advantage of these features to do many different things with a blockchain, but the common tasks fall into these categories:
+
+- Decentralized storage: Users can store data in such a way that the data is available to all users forever, or at least as long as the blockchain system is running
+- Decentralized currency: Users agree on a currency and its behavior and use decentralized storage to record which accounts have what amount of currency
+- Decentralized computing: Users put programs known as _smart contracts_ in the decentralized storage and allow other users to run those programs
+
+## How do I get started?
+
+The first thing you need to work with Tezos is a wallet application; see [Wallets](/using/wallets).
+Then you can use the wallet to generate a Tezos account; see [Accounts](/using/user-accounts).
+
+Most things that you do with Tezos require a small amount of tez as a transaction fee.
+You can get tez by buying it or exchanging another cryptocurrency for it on the cryptocurrency exchanges listed at https://tezos.com/tez/#exchanges.
+
+Then you can use the wallet to connect to and use applications that use Tezos, like the [Staking](/using/staking) application or Tezos-powered games, listed at https://tezos.com/gaming/players.

sidebars.js

@@ -17,10 +17,10 @@ const sidebars = {
     {
       type: 'category',
       label: 'Using Tezos',
-      // link: {
-      //   id: 'using',
-      //   type: 'doc',
-      // },
+      link: {
+        id: 'using',
+        type: 'doc',
+      },
       items: [
         'using/user-accounts',
         'using/wallets',