Blockchain technology training methodology

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Blockchain is a technology of distributed storage and data integrity protection, whose name in English means “blockchain. One of the most famous products based on this technology is cryptocurrency, including bitcoin.

Due to the fact that blockchain technology is popular and in demand in the software development market, the issue of training young specialists in this field becomes relevant. When considering blockchain as an educational unit, it is worth considering that this technology is very flexible and can include dozens of different variations, each of which solves the problems of a certain problem area. First of all, it is necessary to provide in a clear and simple form the fundamental concepts of the technology in question. To facilitate trainees’ understanding, a simplified model should be provided for review that depicts standard blockchain structures and operations. At the heart of each blockchain, based on its name, are blocks that are linked together in a chain by a digital cryptographic signature, a hash. Each block carries information, the nature and quantity of which depends on the task assigned to the system, as well as the hash of the previous block, which allows to create a connected chain. It is also important for all systems to have a Nonce value, the calculation of which is called mining.

It is also worth noting that mining operations are very demanding on computing resources. In the computing machines of real blockchain networks, a lot of video cards are installed, which are necessary for fast calculation of a large number of hash functions. Such machines are very expensive, but their use is not necessary in the early stages of learning. For a user who is new to the technology, it is hard to understand the basics of how the system works in a live example, and to achieve the right level of visibility, the blockchain system must be implemented as software with a user graphical interface. Such a solution would allow the user to change the data within the blocks and observe how the system reacts to those changes. This and other factors indicate that there are several functional features that should be present in the software, namely:

availability of reference materials;
interface in Russian;
wide set of functions;
the ability to work offline.

It is necessary to develop software, which will include the following features:

the possibility of step-by-step learning, which implies the transition from smaller operations to larger nodes: hash functions, blocks, chains from blocks, chains from blocks distributed on the network nodes, etc;
the ability to work with multiple (at least 3) network nodes, to demonstrate the protection of the network from unauthorized data changes;
a wide set of reference information, which includes terminology, historical reference and mathematical basis of technology;
the ability to configure computed hash functions, to work load reduction and acceleration of the calculator.