Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that allows for decentralized and distributed storage of information. Maybe the hottest topic at the moment in the field of software engineering – besides artificial intelligence and machine learning – is blockchain technology. Many experts in the industry predict that the blockchain will disrupt the ways we interact with technology.

In this course you will learn about the basics of blockchain technology as well as about cryptocurrencies. You can learn about the concrete implementation of these technologies in Java – although you can skip the implementation parts if you wish.

Chapter 1 – Blockchain Theory

• the fundamental basics of blockchain technology

• SHA-256 hashing technique

• centralized and decentralized ledgers

• the concept of mining (and miners)

• consensus algorithms

• proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS)

• the byzantine generals problem

Chapter 2 – Blockchain Implementation

• implementing a simple blockchain from scratch in Java

Chapter 3 – Cryptocurrency Theory

• motivation behind cryptocurrencies

• Merkle trees and transaction verification algorithms

• mining in cryptocurrencies

• mempools

• unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs)

• elliptic curve cryptography in cryptocurrencies

• what is a wallet?

• orpahned blocks and the block verification problem

• the 51% attack

• soft fork and hard fork

Chapter 4 – Cryptocurrency Implementation

• implementing a simple cryptocurrency from scratch in Java

Chapter 5 – Altcoins & Cryptocurrency Evolution

• Ethereum, Solidity and the Ether cryptocurrency

• what are ICOs?

• cardano and ADA

• altcoins

• LiteCoin (LTC)

• Dash

• layer 1 and layer-2 scaling solutions

• sharding and rollups (zk-rollups and zk-snarks)

• coins and tokens

You should take this course, if you are interested in blockchains and cryptocurrency technology. Thanks for joining my course, let’s get started!