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👩‍💻 List of crypto reading lists

💡 List of crypto reading lists

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🙌 Please note, full credit goes to every original author! Each files includes a link to the source and a hat tip to the individual I found it through, if I didn't stumble over it myself.

📚 I'm replicating the content here to learn in public and for ease of reference. This is entirely for personal study and no commercial use is intendend. Please comment below if you'd like your content removed, I will take it out immediately!

Contents

General reading list 💡:

Domain specific reading list 👩‍💻:

Other resources 💭:

the end 🤷‍♂️ (comments and suggestions very welcome!)

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a16z's Crypto Canon (2019)

What is this?

It's a simple markdown copy of a16z's crypto canon, so anyone interested can fork this and keep track of their reading.

Original source: https://a16z.com/2018/02/10/crypto-readings-resources/


Here’s a list of crypto readings and resources (2018-2019).

It’s organized from building blocks and basics; foundations (& history); and key concepts — followed by specific topics such as governance; privacy and security; scaling; consensus and governance; cryptoeconomics, cryptoassets, and investing; fundraising and token distribution; decentralized exchanges; stablecoins; and cryptoeconomic primitives and crypto goods (non-fungible tokens, cryptocollectibles, token-curated registries, curation markets).

We also included a section with developer tutorials, practical guides, and maker stories — as well as other resources, such as newsletters/updates and courses, at the end.

For a list of resources dedicated to NFTs, applications, community/social tokens and creator DAOs, please see a16z.com/nftcanon.

Building Blocks and Basics

Foundations (& History)

Key Concepts

Governance

Privacy and Security

Scaling

Consensus

Cryptoeconomics, Cryptoassets, and Investing

Fundraising and Token Distribution

Decentralized Exchanges

Stablecoins

Cryptoeconomic Primitives and Crypto Goods: Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Cryptocollectibles, Token Curated Registries (TCRs), and Curation Markets

Developer Tutorials, Practical Guides, and Maker Stories

Other Resources – Newsletters/ Updates

Other Resources – Courses

@bryanhpchiang's protocol-reading-list

🔗 Source: https://github.com/bryanhpchiang/protocol-reading-list

This is a list of resources intended to serve as a starting point for anybody interested in understanding how crypto protocols work under the hood.

Relevant topics include economics, finance, optimization, game theory, theoretical CS, cryptography.

Getting Started

Slides and videos are available online for both.

References

For anybody coming in without a finance background, it's worth doing some tradfi reading before you dive deep into defi.

Constant Function Market Makers (CFMMs)

Trading via decentralized exchanges (DEXes) and automated market makers (AMMs).

Uniswap

V2

Also:

V3

Also:

Curve

Alternative Designs

CFMM Analysis

Work from @GuilleAngeris, @tarunchitra, @alexhevans and more

Privacy-preserving CFMMs

Options

LPing on Uniswap V3

Protocol Owned Liquidity (POL)

Read these:

Then read these:

Asset Management

Balancer

Lending

Decentralized banks.

Stablecoins

Ramps

  • tbDEX for decentralized ramps
  • Sardine for faster settlement

Miscellaneous

ZK

Applied ZK falls into two main categories: ZK-enabled applications and ZK used at the infrastructure/L1 level.

Start with these:

Then dive deeper with these:

And check out these ZK-enabled hacks:

For more background on cryptography:

For more details on ZK enabling L1 infrastructure:

I want to point out some papers from Aleo (a ZK-enabled, privacy-first L1):

And also this analysis:

🧩 Émerick Mary's Curated Tokenomics Reading List

🔗 Source: Emerick's Notion site (h/t to Emerick's pinned tweet)

Game theory, utility, supply & demand and governance are just some of the knowledge covered by the interdisciplinary field of tokenomics. Tokenomics represent the latest innovations and experiments as they are at the forefront of web3. You will find below my curated list covering ideas put forward by pioneers in the space to the latest trends and innovations.

For additional suggestions, please tweet me @emerick__mary

Jump Crypto reading list

🔗 Source: https://github.com/JumpCrypto/crypto-reading-list

For a more friendly reading experience, we recommend navigating here.

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 crypto-research@jumptrading.com 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

💡 nosleepjon's gud reads

🔗 Source: NoSleep Reads Notion

NoSleep Reading List V13 🧵

🔗 Source: Twitter thread

NoSleep Reading List V12 🧵

NoSleep Reading List V11 🧵

NoSleep Reading List V10 🧵

NoSleep Reading List V9 🧵

🔗 Source: Twitter thread from @nosleepjon

pastryeth's crypto reading list

🔗 Source: https://twitter.com/pastryeth/status/1502686322623979531

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First posted on the cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, the BTC whitepaper describes the under-workings of a purely peer-to-peer financial system built using cryptographic primitives

In this essay, Piers details the ongoing societal shift towards digital life, & how crypto is paving way for a self sovereign financial system, an open creator economy, & a digital representation & ownership layer via NFTs

In this series, Peter takes us back to the 70’s to understand the origins of BTC.

Starting at Part One, Peter describes how the spread of cryptographic knowledge led to the cypherpunk movement & later on the invention of BTC

Naval has the ability to distill a complex world into short excerpts of wisdom, & the way he is able to articulate such things is a form of art.

The ideas expressed in this thread resonate deeply with me, and I have returned to them time & time again

In this podcast, Vitalik & Naval discuss the underlying technology of ETH, how it differs from BTC, scaling plans & timelines, ETH2.0, future considerations, & more.

The holy grail of MEV.

In this essay, researchers document & quantify the deployment of arbitrage bots who exploit inefficiencies in DEXs by paying high tx fees and optimizing network latency to frontrun ordinary users’ trades

In this post, Vitalik walks us through the significant evolutions and design decisions made while creating Ethereum, as well as many of the hardships faced along the way.

A cinematic masterpiece.

Hopium Diaries - Dystopian Dreams is a story that paints a picture of how cryptocurrency and decentralized finance will change the world.

In this video, Raoul Pal explains his personal journey into BTC & ETH, & explains how these technologies are forming a “black hole” that is driving in value and developer talent at an exponential rate

In this podcast, Tim, Chris, & Naval discuss the frontier of innovation for Web3, NFTs, & decentralization, & how such technologies are empowering a collective owned future over a corporate owned future.

Grant Sanderson is an expert mathematician with a unique ability to explain and visualize complex topics in simple terms.

In this video, Sanderson makes understanding Bitcoin easy.

This thread by Chris details the emergence of the Web3 era, which combines the decentralized, community-governed ethos of Web1 with the advanced, modern functionality of Web2.

Sunita Parbhu and gmirea's 10 lessons for web3 PMs

🔗 Source: https://sunita-parbhu.medium.com/2022-top-10-resources-for-learning-blockchain-defi-nft-cc016e963aad

So you’re a successful tech Product Manager or similar, considering a career move into the blockchain/Defi/NFT/web3 space. Or perhaps you’re already in the sector and want to broaden your horizons and point of view. Where do you start to train yourself?

Contents

  • Lesson 1— Commit to Usage (wallets, etc.)
  • Lesson 2— Read Widely (favorite reads)
  • Lesson 3— Learn Low-level Blockchain Concepts (favorite courses)
  • Lesson 4— Dig into DeFi or NFTs (non-fungible tokens)
  • Lesson 5— Put Yourself in the Daily Information Flow
  • Lesson 6— Understand Project/Company Types
  • Lesson 7— Study Counter-arguments and Risks
  • Lesson 8— Regulation
  • Lesson 9— Consider DAOs
  • Lesson 10 — Make friends, and Help

web3pm's recommended reading list

🔗 Source: https://web3pms.substack.com/p/web3pms-launch-?s=r

🐻 JasonYanowitz' bear market classics

🔗 Source: Tweet