A curated list for getting up to speed on crypto and decentralized networks

Overview

crypto reading list

A curated list for getting up to speed on crypto and decentralized networks.

The content on the toplevel page contains what we consider essential reading. Child pages contain deeper, topic-specific information to review afterward.

The lists here are a work in progress. We welcome any feedback or criticism! Please open a PR/issue here or reach out to [email protected] with any suggestions, or to report any errors.

Nothing in this repo constitutes financial or legal advice.

Contents

Why is crypto important?

We'd recommend starting your exploration by trying to understand what problems crypto is trying to solve.

In a few words, we'd say it is:

  • enabling a decentralized ledger-based currency system
    • decentralized means, extremely difficult for bad actors to forge transactions taking your holdings
  • enabling a decentralized network of computation / decentralized state transition machine
    • decentralized means, extremely difficult for bad actors for enact state changes not defined in sourcecode
  • enabling an open network of APIs that can be leveraged to build increasingly advanced apps
  • enabling an incentive model for these open networks to grow via crypto tokens

Here's the list:

More: see in-depth page: Why

Blockchain mechanics & innovations

We think it's essential reading to understand how bitcoin works, and how smart contracts (pioneered by Ethereum) work.

DeFi primitives

In-depth page: DeFi

Next, let's try to understand the major kinds of financial dApps on the blockchain. Although there are many types, we'd say the two most common are:

  1. Lending protocol (a decentralized bank, i.e. a smart contract where you can loan your assets for yield, or do borrow while paying interest). Example: Aave
  2. Decentralized exchange (most commonly an Automated Market Maker (AMM), a smart contract with two pools of assets that allows swapping from one asset to the other). Example: Uniswap

A third, which can be thought of as a competitor to (1) of sorts, is:

  1. Decentralized stablecoin issuer (a protocol allowing you to deposit assets (e.g. Eth) and borrow a decentralized stablecoin (minted by the protocol) against it). We say that it is a competitor of sorts to (1) where the lender is the protocol. Example: MakerDAO

Initial reading material on these categories:

For much more, see our in-depth page on DeFi

NFTs & digital identity

In-depth page: NFT

DAOs & Governance

In-depth page: DAO

Byzantine Fault Tolerance & Proof-of-Stake algos

At this point, we'd recommend learning about alternative smart contract blockchains.

A fundamental design decision in blockchains is the mechanism by which block producers (miners in Bitcoin and Eth 1.0) come to consensus on the next block. This problem of doing so in a distributed system with a variety of actors--some of whom may be sending intentionally confusing or destabilizing messages to their peers--is the key to establishing consensus and progressing the blockchain.

Bitcoin and Eth 1.0 accomplish this by proof of work ("Nakamoto consensus"), but most other blockchains use variants of a different family of algorithms referred to as Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) algorithms.

L1s

In-depth page: L1

At this point you might want to dig into different L1 blockchains--both their protocol designs and their ecosystems. See in-depth pages below:

L2s

In-depth page: L2

Trading mechanics

In-depth page: TradingDynamics

In-depth page: MEV/Arbitrage

Smart contract programming

In-depth page: Development

Economic design

In-depth page: EconDesign

Tools & Analytics

In-depth page: Tools

Exercises

Check your understanding with these thought questions and exercises.

Other references

Other lists/directories

In-depth page: Other Lists

Original research

In-depth page: Researchers

Online courses

Owner
Jump Crypto
Building toward the next frontier in crypto infrastructure.
Jump Crypto
Highly decentralized and censorship-resistant way to store key data

Beacon coin Beacon coin is a Chia singelton coin that can store data that needs to be: always available censorship resistant versioned potentially imm

Sebastjan Trepca 24 Oct 04, 2022
DIY gravity falls cryptograms made with python

ciphers-cryptograms some diy code to implementing ciphers-cryptograms from gravity falls with python, it's fun tho Algorithm or ciphers list Caesar At

Muhammad Asthi Seta Ari Yuwana 3 Jun 26, 2022
A Python library to wrap age and minisign to provide key management, encryption/decryption and signing/verification functionality.

A Python library to wrap age and minisign to provide key management, encryption/decryption and signing/verification functionality.

Vinay Sajip 3 Feb 01, 2022
Cyber Security Starter Kit Platform

Cyber Security Starter Kit Platform (CSSKP) allows to instantiate new self-assessment products such as Fit4Cybersecurity, Fit4Privacy, Fit4Contract and the like.

CASES Luxembourg 3 Oct 21, 2021
Python Dash app that tracks whale activity in cryptocurrency markets.

Introduction Welcome! This is a Python-based Dash app meant to track whale activity in buy / sell walls on crypto-currency exchanges (presently just o

Paul Jeffries 549 Dec 25, 2022
Generate Random ETH addresses and Private Keys and Saved to file.

ethgen.py Generate Random ETH addresses and Private Keys and Saved to file. ETH address the file is stored in ETH-address.txt. ETH private keys the fi

deanondroid 2 Dec 21, 2021
A hybrid(AES + RSA) encryptor in python.

python-file-encryptor A hybrid(AES + RSA) encryptor in python. Tasted on Windows and Linux(Kali). Install Requirements Use the package manager pip to

Alireza Kalhor 8 Jun 24, 2022
Atomkraft - Lightweight e2e testing for cosmos blockchains

Atomkraft End-to-end testing of Cosmos blockchains should be easy and reproducib

Informal Systems 57 Dec 16, 2022
This is a simple application to generate HD wallet addresses for cryptocurrency coins.

HD-Wallet-Address This is a mini service to generate addresses in the master HD-Wallet. It will use py_crypto_hd_wallet package as a base. Prerequisit

Amin Abbasi 1 Dec 16, 2021
Given a string or a text file with plain text , returns his encryption using SHA256 method

Encryption using SHA256 Given a string or a .txt file with plain text. Returns his encryption using SHA256 method Requirements : pip install pyperclip

yuno 3 Jan 24, 2022
Ceres is a combine harvester designed to harvest plots for Chia blockchain and its forks using proof-of-space-and-time(PoST) consensus algorithm.

Ceres Combine-Harvester Ceres is a combine harvester designed to harvest plots for Chia blockchain and its forks using proof-of-space-and-time(PoST) c

38 Nov 14, 2022
Simple python crypto bot to trade crypto on Binance based on RSI. Utilizing web sockets to get real-time prices

Py Crypto Bot Using Binance WebSocket API to get real-time price data for cryptocurrencies. Using the TA-Lib library to calculate the RSI and execute

Kennedy Ngugi Mwaura 15 Jan 04, 2023
An BlockChain Based solution for storing the medical records

Blockchain-based Medical Records 📄 Abstract Blockchain has the ability to keep an incorruptible, decentralized, and transparent log of all patient da

Yuvraj Singh Deora 3 Jan 14, 2022
An extreme encryption for everyone, encrypt your text before sending to anyone.

An extreme encryption for everyone, encrypt your text before sending to anyone. Alphabets and numbers are going to be encrypted like a hell

Saad 6 Oct 28, 2022
In this repository there are two types of code files

encryption-decryption In this repository there are two types of code files Me Friend Code in the 'Me' file can use for encryption and Code in the 'Fri

Vicksura Dulhan Perera 1 Nov 22, 2021
A Docker image for plotting and farming the Chiaâ„¢ cryptocurrency on one computer or across many.

An easy-to-use WebUI for crypto plotting and farming. Offers Plotman, MadMax, Chiadog, Bladebit, Farmr, and Forktools in a Docker container. Supports Chia, Cactus, Chives, Flax, Flora, HDDCoin, Maize

Guy Davis 328 Jan 01, 2023
Privfiles - Encrypted file storage using Fernet with zero Javascript

Privfiles - Encrypted file storage using Fernet with zero Javascript Source code for the onion service: l3n6v6dm63frml22tlmzacnasvp7co7wylu4hhcs34ukxe

5 Jul 30, 2022
Quick and dirty script to fix MD5 hashes in poetry.lock file

fix-poetry-md5-hash Quick and dirty script to fix MD5 hashes in poetry.lock file. Usage: poetry run fix-poetry-md5-hash

2 Apr 20, 2022
Blockchain with crypto transaction feature

python script that asks users for their name, who they are sending J2 coin too(fictional cryptocurrency) and how much they're sending. it then prints the transaction detail in words and prints the ha

Joshua Stojkovic 2 Jan 10, 2022
Lottery by Ethereum Blockchain

Lottery by Ethereum Blockchain Set your web3 provider url in .env PROVIDER=https://mainnet.infura.io/v3/YOUR-INFURA-TOKEN Create your source file .

John Torres 3 Dec 23, 2021