Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

https://github.com/ChristopherA/Blockchain-Developer-Resources

List of opininated links to resources useful to blockchain and bitcoin developers
https://github.com/ChristopherA/Blockchain-Developer-Resources

Last synced: 6 days ago
JSON representation

List of opininated links to resources useful to blockchain and bitcoin developers

Lists

README 

        
# Blockchain-Developer-Resources



A list of opininated links to resources useful to blockchain and bitcoin developers.



---



## Bitcoin



### Non-Technical Introductions



#### Non-Technical Videos (Very Intro)

  * [Bitcoin explained and made simple](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4g1XFU8Gto) (3m:24s) by [The Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/)

  * [The Essence of How Bitcoin Works (Non-Technical)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5JGQXCTe3c) (5m:24s) by [Curious Inventor](http://Patreon.com/CuriousInventor)

  

#### Non-Technical Videos (More Detail)

  * [Blockchain University — Bitcoin & the Blockchain: An Introduction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUoXUW9zVMs) (26m:16s) by [@ChristopherA](https://twitter.com/ChristopherA) 

  * [Bitcoin 101 - What is Bitcoin?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhe61JaNFLU) (22m:32s) by [James D'Angelo WBN](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgo7FCCPuylVk4luP3JAgVw)

 

#### Non-Technical Videos (Intermediate & Related Topics)

  * [Blockchain University — Bitcoin Keys Addresses and Wallets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic76iSnCb_0) (1h:06m:43s) by [@ChristopherA](https://twitter.com/ChristopherA)

  * [Bitcoin Sidechains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sXNVIaNL2Y) (5m:54s) by [Diginomics](https://diginomics.com/)



#### Non-Technical Articles

  * [What is Bitcoin?](http://www.coindesk.com/information/what-is-bitcoin/) by CoinDesk

  * [What is Bitcoin?](http://money.cnn.com/infographic/technology/what-is-bitcoin/) by CNN Money

  * [The Impact of the Blockchain Goes Beyond Financial Services](https://hbr.org/2016/05/the-impact-of-the-blockchain-goes-beyond-financial-services) by Don an Alex Tapscott



### Technical Introductions



#### Technical Videos

  * [How Bitcoin Works in 5 Minutes (Technical)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jOJk30eQs) (5m:25s)  by [Curious Inventor](http://Patreon.com/CuriousInventor)

  * [How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE) (22m:24s) by [Curious Inventor](http://Patreon.com/CuriousInventor)

  * [Mechanics of Bitcoin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3hJsFpPmXs) (1h:19m:49s) by [Princeton 

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies Online Course](https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech)

  * [Programming Bitcoin Youtube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/programmingbitcoin) by Murray

  * [Coding Multi-Signature Addresses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIbUSaZBJgU) by D'Angelo



#### Technical Books

  * [Mastering Bitcoin](https://github.com/aantonop/bitcoinbook) by Andreas M. Antonopoulos LLC



#### Technical Articles

* [Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm and its Applications in Bitcoin (http://cs.ucsb.edu/~koc/ecc/project/2015Projects/Malvik+Witzoee.pdf) by Arnt Gunnar Malvik and Bendik Witzoee

* [Programming Bitcoin Transaction Scripts](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D_gi_7Sf9sOyAHG25cMpOO4xtLq3iJUtjRwcZXFLv1E/edit) by Kofler

* [Developer’s Introduction to Bitcoin](http://bitcoinmagazine.com/9249/developers-introduction-bitcoin/) by Buterin

* [How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood](http://www.imponderablethings.com/2013/07/how-bitcoin-works-under-hood.html) by Driscoll

* [Bitcoins the hard way: Using the raw Bitcoin protocol](http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoins-hard-way-using-raw-bitcoin.html) by Shirriff

* [Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes](http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoin-mining-hard-way-algorithms.html) by Shirriff



#### Tutorials

* [Cryptographic Currencies Crash Course (C4)](http://www2016.net/proceedings/companion/p1021.pdf) by Aljosha Judmayer and Edgar Weipp

* [The libbitcoin Tutorial](http://libbitcoin.dyne.org/doc/) by Taaki

* [How to Parse the Bitcoin Blockchain](http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-to-parse-bitcoin-blockchain.html) by Ratcliff

* [Signing Offline Transactions](https://gist.github.com/jashmenn/9811205) by Maxwell

* [2 of 2 escrow example](https://gist.github.com/jashmenn/9811198) by Maxwell

* [2 of 3 multisig example](https://gist.github.com/jashmenn/9811185) by Andresen

* [How to decrypt messages in the blockchain from btcmsg](https://gist.github.com/ripper234/1625828) by ripper234



## Sidechains



Sidechains are new blockchains, but are backed by Bitcoin rather than being an altcoin. Using "two-way pegging" these sidechains provide a method for developers to make changes and play around with blockchain rules in a separate blockchain, while keeping these coins linked to Bitcoin.



### Introduction

  * [Ask Dr. Bitcoin: What are Side-Chains](http://siliconangle.com/blog/2014/04/21/bitcoin-sidechains/)

  * [Introduction To Sidechains and Blockchain 2.0](https://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/06/26/sidechains-blockchain-2-0/)

  * [Sidechains, Treechains, the TL;DR](http://blog.greenaddress.it/2014/06/13/sidechains-treechains-the-tldr/) by Sanders

  * [Side Chains: The How, The Challenges and the Potential](http://bitcoinmagazine.com/12349/side-chains-challenges-potential/) by Buterin

  * [Sidechain Technical Feasibility Discussion](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=566704.0;all) (discussion)

  * [Alternative Chains / merged mining](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_Chains) 



### Concepts

  * The Initial Two-Way Pegging [proposal](http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/32108143/) by Adam Back

  * Blockstream Whitepaper [Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains](https://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf)

  * [Tree-chains preliminary summary](http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg04388.html) by Todd



### Tutorials

  * [Sidechains: Alpha Sidechain Tutorial](http://blog.cryptoiq.ca/?p=395)



### Projects

  * [Sidechain Elements Project](https://github.com/ElementsProject/elementsproject.github.io/) - Open source github project investigating and experiment with various bitcoin sidechain concepts



## Altcoins



### Introduction

  * [A Treatise on Altcoins](https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/alts.pdf) 

  

### Tutorials

* [How To Clone Scrypt Based Altcoins for Fun and Profit](http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=scrypt_altcoin_cloning_guide&rev=1391981820) by shakezula 



### Projects

* [CoinGecko](https://www.coingecko.com/en) has charts for a number of altcoins, but more importantly, attempts to measure developer and user community activity.



## Javascript & Bitcoin



At Blockchain University we use a number of Javascript based examples to teach the more technical details of Bitcoin. You are not required to have an in-depth knowledge of Javascript, but learning some basics is very useful.



### Setting Up on Mac



If using a Mac, you'll need some basic knowledge how to use the Terminal and the Mac's command line interface, and you'll need to install brew, node and git. A basic tutorial on how to do this is at https://github.com/ChristopherA/intro-mac-command-line



You can also use this script which sets up your Mac automatically, but the above teaches you how do to do it manually https://github.com/blockchainu/prepare-osx-for-blockchain-webdev



### Introduction to Javascript



Javascript is in both server (node) and client (browser) development. Some basics of Javascript are common to both. Here are some resources for learning about Javascript that are generally applicable to both platform.



  * [Learn Javascript](https://www.gitbook.com/book/gitbookio/javascript/details) - a free online book with interactive exercises.



### Introduction to Node & Javascript



Server-based Javascript typically uses Node. These Javascript learning resources are node specific:



  * I like the command-line based [nodeschool.io](http://nodeschool.io) tutorials, as they require you to both use the command line and to create real working code. These are the basic interactive tutorials, but there are many more available.

   * Learn javascripting basics `npm install -g javascripting`

   * Learn Node basics: `npm install -g learnyounode`

   * Learn git: `npm install -g git-it`



### Online courses on Javascript



Most of these courses teach general Javascript, but tend to be more client-side Javascript oriented.



Free online courses:

  * [Code Academy: Javascript](http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/javascript) is an online interactive course that comes highly recommend. The course says 10 hours, but one of our students reported that it took him about 17 hours over 5 days, and found Q&A forum and glossary both helpful.

  * [How to Learn JavaScript Properly](http://javascriptissexy.com/how-to-learn-javascript-properly/)

  * [Introduction to Computing Principles](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs101/)

  * [Introduction to JavaScript Development](https://www.udemy.com/refactoru-intro-js/?dtcode=DvGKZ5c30m1I)



Some non-free online courses:

  * [Node.js Essential Training](http://www.lynda.com/JavaScript-tutorials/Nodejs-Essential-Training/141132-2.html)



### General Javascript Books and eBooks



Some general Javascript online books in eBook (in rough order of preference)



  * [Eloquent Javascript](http://eloquentjavascript.net)

  * [JavaScript Guide](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide)

  * [JavaScript Garden](http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-Garden/)



### Local-client Javascript Tools & Playgrounds



These tools can be cloned from github to allow you to use your browser to play around with various bitcoin capabilities:



  * [Bip32 Generator](https://github.com/bip32/bip32.github.io) `git clone https://github.com/bip32/bip32.github.io.git ; cd bip32.github.io ; open index.html` lets you create Bip32 Deterministic Heirarchical Keys (prefix xpub* and xprv*) based on a simple brainwallet (aka arbitrary mnemonic) passphrase.

  * [Bip39 Mnemonic Code Converter](https://github.com/dcpos/bip39) `npm install bip39 ; npm run compile` lets you create Bip39 mnemonics (typically 12 words) used for deterministic keys, typically for Bip32.



### Bitcore.js

  * [Bitcoin 101 - Getting Started With Bitcore - A Full JavaScript Implementation of Bitcoin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmkN8yYyOv8)

    * https://github.com/wobine/blackboard101/blob/master/BitcoreDayOne.html - code for the above

  * [Bitcoin Quick Tools](https://github.com/chulini/bitcoin-quick-tools) - Simple browser-based app (loaded locally) that is Bitcore.js. Has key and address generator and simple transaction tool. Useful working example of browserfy bitcore.js code.



### Testnet Faucets



You'll need bitcoin testnet coins while developing apps with bitcoin. List in rough order of reliability and number of coins offered.



  * [Sidechains Elements Project Testnet Faucet](https://testnet-faucet.elementsproject.org) - 10 BTC per day per ip

  * [TP Faucet](http://tpfaucet.appspot.com) - 1.9 BTC per request



### Bitcoin Standards

  * BIP32 - Bitcoin Deterministic Heirarchical Keys

  * Good article on [Deterministic Wallets](http://blog.richardkiss.com/?p=313)

  * Discussion of [BIP32 Advantages and Flaws](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/8396/deterministic-wallets-advantages-flaw/)

  * The [BIP0032 Standard](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0032)

  * [Bip32 Generator](https://github.com/bip32/bip32.github.io) `git clone https://github.com/bip32/bip32.github.io.git ; cd bip32.github.io ; open index.html` lets you create Bip32 Deterministic Heirarchical Keys (prefix xpub* and xprv*) based on a simple brainwallet (aka arbitrary mnemonic) passphrase.

  * [Blockstack Keychains JS](https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-keychains-js)



### Blockchain Explorers

  * [Blockr.io](http://btc.blockr.io)

  * [Blockchain.info](https://blockchain.info/)