Blockchain Technology

This course is a part of Blockchain Fundamentals, a 2-course Professional Certificate series from edX.

Developed by Blockchain at Berkeley and faculty from UC Berkeley's premier Computer Science department, this course provides a wide overview of many of the topics relating to and building upon the foundation of Bitcoin and blockchain technology.

The course covers many key topics in the blockchain space. First, we take a look at distributed systems and alternative consensus mechanisms, as well as cryptoeconomic and proof-of-stake. We then move on to the fundamental applications of bitcoin and blockchain technology, including exploring enterprise blockchain implementations (JP Morgan’s Quorum, Ripple, Tendermint, and HyperLedger), the challenges and solutions around scaling blockchain adoption, and the measures that the government is taking to regulate and control blockchain technology. We wrap up the course by also taking a look at the various blockchain ventures today and conclude with a blockchain-based future thought experiment.

This course is open to anyone with any background. Whether you are planning your next career move as a blockchain developer, crypto trader, data analyst, researcher, or consultant, or are just looking for an introduction to Blockchain.This course will help you beginto develop the critical skills needed to future-proof your career.

This is the second course in the Blockchain Fundamentals Professional Certificate program.

What you'll learn

• A formal definition of distributed consensus and foundational topics such as the CAP Theorem and the Byzantine Generals Problem.
• The alternative consensus mechanisms to Bitcoin’s Proof-of-work, including Proof-of-Stake, voting-based consensus algorithms, and federated consensus.
• The meaning and properties of cryptoeconomics as it relates to its two compositional fields: cryptography and economics, as well as the goals for cryptoeconomics with respect to distributed systems fundamentals
• The various enterprise-level blockchain implementations, such as JP Morgan’s Quorum, Ripple, Tendermint, and HyperLedger, including the industry use cases for blockchain, ICOs, and the increasing regulations surrounding blockchain.
• The challenges with scaling and obstacles to widespread blockchain adoption, as well as the possible solutions within vertical scaling (e.g. blocksize increases, Segregated Witness, and the Lightning Network) and horizontal scaling (e.g. sidechains, sharding).
• The measures that governments have taken to regulate and control blockchain technology e.g. Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations, anonymity goals, and government techniques for deanonymization of entities on blockchain.
• An exploratory look into blockchain ventures today, such as venture capitalism, ICOs, and crowdfunding.