My Blockchain Reading List (and Summer Travel)
I took the past summer off between my two years in business school to read, write, and immerse in blockchain from friends’ flats in Europe.
From there, I discovered a bounty of articles that are at once cogent, detailed, and edifying. They led to “aha” moments and a deeper understanding of blockchain technology and its game-changing attributes, limitations, and applications. I cited many articles in the three-part series I wrote over the course of the summer, Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies & the New Decentralized Economy.
This post is meant to be a well-rounded yet playful, approachable, and non-technical reading list for those interested in learning about major trends in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
It’s not meant for advanced learners nor for those seeking a foundational reading list for self-education. For the former, I recommend Blockchain at Berkeley’s Deep Dives, which range from Ethereum to Post-Quantum Cryptography. For the latter, I recommend this online textbook and Blockchain at Berkeley’s publicly available introductory course materials.
So here they are — my favorites and greatest hits, the information soundtrack to my summer spent in pastoral train cars, cobblestone cafés, and cutting-edge tech conferences in Europe.
The Big Picture and the Decentralized Future
- Alexander Lange: Mapping the Decentralized world
I started my reading adventure in late Spring in Lisbon’s stony and azulejo-tiled city center. I sat in a plaza lined with purple-flowering trees facing the towering 15th century Convento do Carmo, in partial ruins after a 1755 earthquake. It was here that I came across my first find, an article called “Mapping the Decentralized World”.
This article is a concise summary of “decentralization,” the problems with centralized systems, and the multiple levels and key players involved in the blockchain and distributed technology world. It includes an excellent graphic map.
2. Goldman Sachs: Blockchain — The New Technology of Trust
An hour north of Lisbon there exists a whitewashed hilltop village called Óbidos where a hotel called The Literary Man is lined with books ranging in sophistication from Danielle Steele to Marx’s Capital. It also has a fully stocked gin bar. Sitting at the bar after trying out the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities, I opened my laptop.
Goldman Sach’s new website “Blockchain — The Technology of Trust” is a highly interactive and approachable overview of blockchain technology for the newcomer crowd. This is one to send friends and family. Leave it to GS to throw a ton of money at designing an elegant and highly effective primer. Anyways, I’m impressed, and I finally understood tokenization of assets from this report. #mindblown. tl;dr: Ticketmaster will be dis-intermediated.
3. Outlier Ventures Research: Blockchain-Enabled Convergence
From Portugal I flew to Berlin, where I spent three weeks checking out the fintech and blockchain scenes. I frequented this café Christa Lutum Backermeisterin in my down time from conferences and demo days. I know part of Berlin’s charm is grungy hipsterness, but I couldn’t seem to deviate from its little upscale cafés.
The white paper “Blockchain-Enabled Convergence” enumerates multiple emerging technologies enabled by blockchain that can together build a more connected, decentralized, and user-directed “Web 3.0” and global economy.
I highly recommend following the research that comes out of this venture capital firm. I heard their CEO Jamie Burke (Twitter) speak at the Blockchain Expo Europe in Berlin and have followed them closely since. Their most recent white paper, Next Stage ICOs: The Community Token Economy (CTE), is a pioneering report on ICOs and “community tokens,” which are utility tokens that a broad group of participants can employ to drive incentivization and coordination around common goals.
4. TechCrunch / Matthew Hodgson: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
I spent a night in a friend’s spare bedroom in Berlin’s edgy Kreuzberg neighborhood and took myself to brunch the next day at Fräulein Wild café in Oranienplatz. It specializes in pastries and cakes and appears to be coated in pastel frosting itself. It’s owned by a Turkish woman, and because I’m half Turkish I enjoyed spending time in this “Little Istanbul” neighborhood where many Germans feel like interlopers and I felt at home.
TechCrunch’s article distills and convincingly presents the user-controlled Internet paradigm enabled by decentralized technologies. It’s also a nice counterpoint to the “American Gods” essay that spread across the tech world in May. The essay argues that Western society has been worshiping tech giants because of their ubiquity, power, and eminence. Decentralized applications and protocols turn that power dynamic on its head and reclaim control for the user away from centralized applications and the big tech companies that own them. For further reading on this subject, check out Joel Monegro’s “Fat Protocols” blog post (and that blog post’s counterpoint “Fat Protocols are not an Investment Thesis”).
A Focus on Cryptocurrencies
5. Ben Thompson: Tulips, Myths, and Cryptocurrencies
From Berlin, boxes of marzipan in tow, I caught a 10-hour train across Northern Germany with a change in Hamburg and a ferry over the North Sea. It was nice to view the pretty windmills and cows in the countryside while I read this very interesting article.
Thompson presents a synopsis of the Dutch tulip bubble and why, despite people continuously throwing it around 😒, it’s not a good analogy for the summer’s cryptocurrency rally. He cites research arguing that “Tulipmania” is actually an exaggeration of the period’s true tulip spot prices. He also cites captivating excerpts on human myth-making from Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Note, this article was written in May 2017 before the price bubble in the first half of June and the subsequent plunge across cryptocurrencies that lasted from mid-June to mid-August. (The June crypto plunge’s particular catalyst was the acute congestion in the Ethereum network that peaked around June 20th as investors used Ethereum, and ether as the funding currency, to participate in the Status and other ICOs).
6. Balaji Srinivasan: Thoughts on Tokens
Absorbing the country’s famous work ethic, I was very productive on the train ride north from Germany and was reading this article as we pulled into Copenhagen’s Central Station at night under the lights of the Tivoli amusement park. Tivoli was founded in 1843 and is a cultural cornerstone of the city. Walt Disney was inspired by it during an early visit, and Adolf Hitler closed it during the Danish occupation to suppress national morale.
This article clarifies the nuances among different types of tokens along with their histories and different forms. It also describes the benefits of token models such as the “better-than-free” and non-dilutive characteristics for users and investors, respectively. The article digs into “utility tokens,” or coins that arguably have intrinsic value because they can be used to access (like a “paid API key”) products/services in decentralized protocols or applications.
Overall, classifying and categorizing coins is tricky and was a summer theme in the industry (along with others such as the gradual realization that Ethereum’s first “killer app” is serving as a token launch platform). Yet, defining tokens is essential; it helps us value them as investments and also predict how the SEC and CFTC will regulate them.
For more information on regulatory treatment, here’s the SEC’s report on the DAO from July and an excellent joint report by Coinbase, Coin Center, ConsenSys, and Union Square Ventures, A Securities Law Framework for Blockchain Tokens.
The “Thoughts on Tokens” author Balaji Srinivasan (Twitter) is someone to follow as he’s a leading thinker in the space and CEO of 21.co. He also published a compelling argument for Quantifying Decentralization in July, which I was lucky to see him present at Blockchain at Berkeley’s recent Cryptoeconomics Security Conference.
7. Chris Burniske: The Crypto J-Curve
From my twin sister’s flat in Copenhagen’s trendy Østerbro neighborhood where I’d stay the next six weeks, I became a regular at the corner café La Esquina. It’s very charming, blending a Spanish menu with Denmark’s hygge décor featuring wool-fur throws and candlelight.
“The Crypto J-Curve” has entered the mainstream dialogue for how to value and evaluate crypto assets with utility value. The author’s argument is that crypto asset prices have two major components: “current utility value” (CUV) and “discounted expected utility value” (DEUV). Driven by shifts in market sentiment and utility value, these two components take turns driving token prices as the projects and the market perception of them stabilize and mature.
The author also co-wrote “Bitcoin: Ringing the Bell for a New Asset Class” which is one of the first thorough reports to define bitcoin as an asset class.
8. Josh Stark: Making Sense of Cryptoeconomics
I discovered this article while seated outside Money 20/20 Europe, a major annual fintech conference in Copenhagen, after failing to sneak in. Their security is highly effective. I heard some roaring applause only to read about major industry announcements over Twitter. A new life goal is to be invited to speak at this conference.
“Making Sense of Cryptoeconomics” offers one of the few clear, non-technical outlines of “cryptoeconomics” and its role in blockchain technology.
As defined by Blockchain at Berkeley, “cryptoeconomics is a formal discipline that focuses on the design and characterization of protocols that govern the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in a decentralized digital economy.”
Blockchain Infrastructure Highlights
9. BigchainDB: The Blockchain Database
NI devoured this white paper while also devouring Denmark’s famous freshly baked bread during one of my many visits to Bevar’s on the popular shopping street Ravnsborggade in Nørrebro, Copenhagen. I visited this café so often that at one point I had an outstanding tab (Denmark is a “high trust” society). It was Copenhagen’s annual summer Jazz Festival when I read the report, and I was particularly caffeinated and captivated when the band began playing and I reluctantly closed my laptop
BigchainDB is developing the important “middleware” capability of distributed data storage that scales. As of now it’s one of the most viable blockchain databases in development. This is important as we build decentralized applications that need data storage. The team is based in Berlin, where I briefly met them and proceeded to wear their cute T-shirt around Europe ;)
After you’ve read the white paper classics (i.e., Bitcoin and Ethereum), I recommend this paper because it explains distributed data storage and this important capability in a well organized and clear manner. (Note: The link is updated with the version 2.0 white paper, published in May 2018).
10. ConsenSys: Introduction to IPFS
Still in Copenhagen, I frequented a hidden café called Djuus in Østerbro where a very nice and perky woman named Rikki owns the shop and brings you freshly baked scones and pretty lattés. I read this article on a day of heavy rain and the tiny shop was particularly cozy.
IPFS is a distributed file system developed by Protocol Labs (not ConsenSys, which is the enterprise and startup incubator arm of Ethereum) that can help redefine and reorganize how files are saved and retrieved in a decentralized Web. If realized, the bull case is that it could make file storage and retrieval faster, more efficient, and more secure for the world. Here’s the white paper for more details.
You may have heard of Filecoin after it raised more than $200 million in a September token sale (according to token data). Filecoin is developed by the same team and is the token layer on top of IPFS, creating financial incentive and a marketplace for file storage. In other words, people can transact in filecoin to buy and sell file storage from one another.
11. Trent McConaghy: Blockchain Infrastructure Landscape — A First Principles Framing
Perhaps the most high-end nordic coffee house I visited this summer was The Coffee Collective, which has a lively and bright location in Jægersborggade and a darker, intense location off Godthåbsvej across Copenhagen where they brew the organic coffees onsite and suggest you pair them with certain scones to experience their full glory. I enjoyed these spots and strolling around their respective neighborhoods, and was grateful for the crypto rallies to fund my afternoons in expensive hipsterland.
Following the two examples of middleware above (IPFS and BigchainDB), this article is an excellent mapping of the various infrastructure layers that provide storage, processing, and communications in the decentralized computing world. As a non-technical person, it helped me finally grasp different types of digital data, storage, and processing, and where projects like PolkaDot, Cosmos, Rchain, TrueBit, Tezos, IPFS, and BigchainDB fit into the system. As with many of the articles in this blog post, I continue to reference and share it.
At the end of my summer in Europe, 3,700 kilometers and an entrenched coffee addiction later, I returned to business school and continue to find the blockchain space as thrilling as ever.
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