Help, Resources and Links

Blockchains, crypto, Web3 and NFTs are a very fast moving, challenging, and at times problematic space to understand and learn more about. Discussions of these technologies are often divisive. A key purpose of our research is to help people engage and fairly critique and discuss these emerging technologies, and consider their potential implications throughout our societies.
We're very happy to try and answer any questions you might have about these technologies or our research. We also recommend the following resources and further reading to better understand this space.

Please let us know what you're reading, and if there's more articles or guides we should add here!

Critical Reading / Watching / Listening

1. Funging the nonfungable? Laying down the law on NFTs (Panel discussion, 90 minutes)
   
   A topical panel discussion on NFTs and the law, to accompany an exhibition event at Edinburgh Insapce as part of the DeCaDe project.
   
   
2. The Decentralised Creative Economy; what are NFTs, and did they come out of nowhere? - Bernadine Brocker Wieder (Talk, 45 minutes)
   
   Bernadine is a well published and prominent thought leader in the art and tech community. She co-founded Vastari in 2012 and has been shaping Vastari's strategic direction, investor portfolio and industry advocacy ever since.
   
   
3. The Crypto-Syllabus
   
   The Crypto Syllabus will furnish intellectual resources to help understand many of the phenomena grouped under the “crypto” label, from blockchains to NFTs to DAOs to CBDCs. This includes an extensive bibliography on NFTs.
   
   
4. Web 3 - First Impressions (Moxie Marlinspike)
   
   A critical blog on Web3 from a well-known software engineer.
   
   
5. IEEE Blockchain Podcast (with Quinn DuPont)
   
   Through the IEEE Blockchain Initiative Q&A podcast series, IEEE Future Directions interviews experts in the field of blockchain across various industries. IEEE Blockchain Podcasts provides you access to the industry's blockchain innovators, experts and enthusiasts
   
   
6. TechnoLlama
   
   TechnoLlama covers several Cyberlaw topics, with emphasis on artificial intelligence, internet regulation, and cryptocurrencies. While the blog tackles these issues in a light-hearted manner, some serious points filter through from time to time.
   
   
7. Ethereum Emissions: A Bottom-up Estimate (Kyle McDonald)
   
   This analysis of the energy and emissions of the Ethereum network relies on current and historical data, including: hashrate, hardware overhead and typical worker configurations, datacenter overhead, grid loss, hashing efficiencies, power supply efficiencies, mining hardware mix, worker locations and pool distributions, and international emissions factors. It does not factor in the price of Ethereum or the price of electricity, so it may be underestimating the energy usage when the price is rising.
   
   
8. Tezos Energy Consumption
   
   The Tezos Agora Wiki is a place to get started and learn about Tezos. It also aims to answer the frequently asked questions about the Tezos protocol & the Tezos ecosystem.
   
   

How-to-guides/How it works

1. Curious Beginner's Guide to Crypto Wallets (Peter Yang)
   
   A practicle 'how to' guide for setting up, using and understaning crypto wallets.
   
   
2. DECaDE Webinar / Tutorial - Distributed Ledger Technology: Beyond Blockchain (Talk, 45 min)
   
   Technical talk on how blockchains and 'distributed ledger technologies' work.
   
   

Our Research

At the Institute for Design Informatics we have undertaken various research projects about blockchain technologies, since 2015.

Dave Murray-Rust, Chris Elsden, Bettina Nissen, Ella Tallyn, Larissa Pschetz, and Chris Speed. 2021. Blockchain and Beyond: Understanding Blockchains through Prototypes and Public Engagement. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. Just Accepted (November 2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3503462

Chris Elsden, Arthi Manohar, Jo Briggs, Mike Harding, Chris Speed, and John Vines. 2018. Making Sense of Blockchain Applications: A Typology for HCI. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174032

Bettina Nissen, Larissa Pschetz, Dave Murray-Rust, Hadi Mehrpouya, Shaune Oosthuizen, and Chris Speed. 2018. GeoCoin: Supporting Ideation and Collaborative Design with Smart Contracts. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 163, 1-10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173737

Jonathan Rankin, Chris Elsden, Ian Sibbald, Alan Stevenson, John Vines, and Chris Speed. 2020. PizzaBlock: Designing Artefacts and Roleplay to Understand Decentralised Identity Management Systems. Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1593-1606. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3357236.3395568