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Blockchain & Money: Session 6: Smart Contracts & DApps by M.I.T. Sloan School of Management with Professor Gary Gensler
Session 6: Smart Contracts and DApps Session 6 Study Questions: What are smart contracts? How do they compare to traditional contracts? What are tokens? What are smart contract platforms such as Ethereum? What generally distinguishes them from Bitcoin? What are decentralized application (DApps)? What has been the usage and why haven’t any DApps yet received wide consumer adoption? Session 6 Readings: Required: “Smart Contracts: 12 Use cases for Business & Beyond”, Chamber of Digital Commerce. “State of the DApps: 5 Observations from Usage Data”, McCann. “Ethereum Competitors: Guide to the Alternative Smart Contract Platforms”, Blockonomi. Optional: “Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets”, Szabo. “A Next-Generation Smart Contract & Decentralized…
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Blockchain & Money: Session 5: Blockchain Basics & Transactions, UTXO, & Script Code by M.I.T. Sloan School of Management with Professor Gary Gensler
Session 5: Blockchain Basics & Transactions, UTXO, & Script Code Session 5 Study Questions: How does Bitcoin record transactions? What is Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO)? What is script code embedded in each Bitcoin transaction and how flexible a programming language is it? As many design features (public key cryptography, hash functions, append-only timestamped logs, digital cash, & proof-of-work) pre-date Bitcoin, what was the novel innovation of Satoshi Nakamoto? Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? (Only kidding a bit.) Session 5 Readings: ‘Bitcoin’s Academic Pedigree’ Narayanan and Clark ‘Making Sense of Cryptoeconomics’ CoinDesk Narayanan & Clark’s Chronology of Ideas in Bitcoin Overview: Transaction Inputs & Outputs; Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO); Scripting Language; Blockchain…
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Blockchain & Money: Session 4: Blockchain Basics & Consensus by M.I.T. Sloan School of Management with Professor Gary Gensler
Session 4: Blockchain Basics and Consensus Session 4 Study Questions: What is the Byzantine General’s problem? How does proof-of-work and mining in Bitcoin address it? More generally, how does blockchain technology address it? What other consensus protocols are there? What are some of the tradeoffs of alternative consensus algorithms–proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, etc.? How do economic incentives work within blockchain technology to maintain decentralized ledgers and avoid double spending? What are the incentives of consensus protocols & mining? Session 4 Readings: ‘Geneva Report’ Chapter 1 (pages 1-7); Casey, Crane, Gensler, Johnson & Narula. ‘Blockchain Technology Review’ NIST (pages 23-32, section 3 & 4). ‘The Byzantine Generals Problem’; Lamport, Shostak & Pease (382-387).…
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Blockchain & Money: Session 3: Blockchain Basics & Cryptography by M.I.T. Sloan School of Management with Professor Gary Gensler
Session 3: Blockchain Basics & Cryptography Session 3 Study Questions: What are the design features–cryptography, append-only, time-stamped blocks, distributed consensus algorithms, and networking– of Bitcoin, the first use case for blockchain technology? What are cryptographic hash functions, asymmetric cryptography and digital signatures? How are they utilized to help make blockchain technology verifiable and immutable? What is the double spending problem and how it is addressed by blockchain technology? Session 3 Readings: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System; Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper. ‘Blockchain Technology Overview’ NIST (pages 9-23, sections 1 & 2) ‘Blockchain 101-A Visual Demo’ Brownworth; Youtube video. Bitcoin is just the first use-case of blockchain technology. We’re going to look…
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Blockchain & Money: Sessions 1 & 2: Introduction and Money, Ledgers & Bitcoin by M.I.T. Sloan School of Management with Professor Gary Gensler
There’s a great course available for free about Blockchain & Money. The semester long course is taught by Professor Gary Gensler (yes, the S.E.C. Gary Gensler), offered by M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, and, freely available via video-lecture. I pored over the videos and studiously took notes as I watched. The course is for students wishing to explore blockchain technology’s potential use–by entrepreneurs & incumbents–to change the world of money and finance. The course goes through a review of the technology’s initial application, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and then lays an understanding of the commercial, technical and public policy fundamentals of blockchain technology, distributed ledgers and smart contracts in both open…
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Post-Quantum Cryptography: The Race Is On
Quantum computers and quantum cryptography have become hot industry buzzwords that are popping up more in the press. With that, the question becomes what happens to the security of our data covered by today’s pre-quantum cryptography technology? This Forbes article helps highlight solutions on the way in the race to post-quantum cryptography: The good news is that solutions are on the way. Recognizing the urgency of the task and the time needed to formulate, choose, standardize and deploy new systems, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) standardization process in 2016. In July 2020, NIST announced seven third-round candidates, covering both public-key encryption (PKE) and digital…
