The umbrella term “blockchain” describes a set of emerging, hetero­ge­neous technologies for designing distributed systems that – while generally assuming little to no trust between parties – are able to establish consensus about stored data and proce­dures. Pioneered as a system to allow transfer of crypto­graph­i­cally secure monetary tokens, blockchains have since evolved to appli­cation platforms for executing smart contracts written in domain-specific languages. While cryptocur­rencies are usually designed to lack a central authority, many indus­trial use cases admit partial cooper­ation between parties.
The central idea common to all blockchain imple­men­ta­tions is that trans­ac­tions can be stored in an append-only ledger that is being kept on multiple nodes, increasing resiliency and decreasing the potential for fraud­ulent post-hoc modifications.

Partic­i­pants of this module will learn to recognize and classify use cases of blockchain technology. They will gain a deep under­standing of the differ­ences and trade-offs between their various flavors (public vs. permis­sioned, Proof-of-Author­i­ty/S­take/Work, smart contracts). Platform requirements and abilities, including languages for smart contracts and their testing and deployment, will be discussed.

The BLOCKCHAIN module focuses on the transfer of software engineering aspects from tradi­tional method­ologies to blockchain technologies. Partic­i­pants will be able to make informed decisions about the tooling choices and be able to design decen­tralized applications.