ALIF Syllabus

Introduction to blockchain
(by Arif Naseem)
1. What is Blockchain?

a. Intro to club - why it’s important to learn and interact, ex.

b. Disruption/News
i. Price Rise
ii. Distinction between Blockchain vs Cryptocurrency vs Token
c. Definition - diagram
i. Pillars of Blockchain
ii. Industry Applications of Blockchain
iii. Government, Healthcare
d. History of Centralized Services, trusted third party
i. Shift from gold standard to flat currency to Hashcash/digital currency (look at BEM) / Bitcoin
ii. Trustless system
e. Immutability, Security, Privacy, Anti-fragility, etc.
f. Why Blockchain MATTERS
2. Cryptocurrency and Markets

a. Cryptocurrencies - talk about Bitcoin / Ethereum

b. Where is the value - what are people investing in?
c. How to Buy Bitcoin/Ethereum - How to Set up a Wallet (Tutorial)
d. Security
i. Why holding money on exchange.
ii. Wallet Options/ why is a wallet important
e. Tokens and ICO
f. How to find a transaction in the blockchain

3. How Blockchain (and Bitcoin) Work

a. Peer to Peer network

b. What is a block?
c. Video of a transaction going through
 d. What was the “revolutionary” technology that actually drove towards
the blockchain - Proof of Work, Byzantine Generals
e. Distributed consensus
f. Cryptography - mention what proof of work is.
i. Hashing
ii. Data Integrity, Merkle Trees
iii. Public v Private Key Cryptography
iv. Bitcoin and block sizes
g. Implications of the Cryptography and Decentralization

4. Mining and Cryptocurrencies - how to use and interact

a. Mining
i. Proof of Work v Stake
ii. What this does, how miners make money
iii. What this meant as an impact to the world
iv. Motivations, incentives, strategy
 b. Pools
c. CPUS and GPUs, and what the impact is
d. What miners do - business model, overview, the purpose
e. Revenue at a Protocol Level - Block Rewards/Fees/ETC

5. Types of Blockchain and Enterprise

a. Public and Private Blockchains

b. JP Morgan Quorum, IBM’s stuff
c. How people are using blockchain - Numerai, DAO, etc.
d. Lightning networks and plasma
e. Sidechains f. Use Cases
i. Digital Rights - ownership and accessibility, education
ii. Industry - healthcare, identity, finance
iii. Paradigm shift/future/big picture
iv. Elections and Voting: Auto execution of contracts, escrow, etc.
6. Consensus Building

a. Proof of Work
i. What is it
ii. Security Implications
iii. 1 PC 1 vote
iv. Environmental
b. Proof of Stake
i. Why this is better - or worse?
c. Segwit and Forks
d. Smart Contracts
i. What is a smart contract
ii. Why is this revolutionary
iii. Comparison to legal
iv. Gas
7. Regulation and Anonymity

a. ICO and SEC ruling

b. Why people use blockchain and bitcoin in the first place - its anonymity
c. Governments (not just US) regulating bitcoin, ETFs
d. NY Bitlicense - and Post Obama Regulation
e. Anti Money Laundering
f. Political Implications on blockchain
i. Government’s current position and how this affects blockchain.
g. Anonymity - Zcash, Monero

8. Problems with Blockchain

a. Security and Safeguards

b. Protection from attackers
c. Hacks on exchanges
 d. What is stopping adoption?
e. Scalability problems
f. Network attacks to destroy bitcoin
g. Case Study: Failed currencies & blockchains

9. Bitcoin and Ethereum

a. Bitcoin creation and economy,
b. Limited Supply and Deflation
c. Hacks
d. Ethereum concept and Ethereum classic
e. Hacks
f. Why it is so revolutionary - both
10. Altcoins
a. Major Altcoins - Alfalah, Ripple, NEO
b. Major Tokens and companies - more on ICOs, Qtum, OMG, etc.
c. What this means - more on ICOs vs VC
11. Blockchain applications - Building on the Blockchain - TECHNICAL

a. Technical workshop of blockchain development

i. Pros and cons of different implementations
ii. Use cases of the different types.
b. Ethereum Interaction - Smart Contract and Token
c. Languages
d. How you would go about creating your own blockchain
i. The necessary steps needed to code Other Topics Will Be Discussed and Taught
as Per Discretion and News