In order to have a decentralised database, you need to have security. In order to have security, you need to have incentives. -Vitalik Buterin
We at nCent Labs think a great deal about incentives, incentive design, and incentive markets. We invite you to share some of our mindshare — and join our summer incentive hacking reading list. Contact me at anytime to discuss or debate further: kk@ncnt.io
(disclaimer: I reserve the right to tweet with citation any emails I receive!)
1 — Blockchain Background
1.1 The authoritative Guide to Blockchain Development
1.2 Bitcoin Coursera Course by Princeton
https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency
1.3 Stanford Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technologies
https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/
2 — Whitepapers
2.1 Bitcoin
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
2.2 Ethereum
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper
2.3 Stellar
https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf
2.4 Lightning
https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
2.5 Monero
https://whitepaperdatabase.com/monero-xmr-whitepaper/
2.6 zCash
http://zerocash-project.org/media/pdf/zerocash-extended-20140518.pdf
2.7 Casper Whitepaper
https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/papers/casper-basics/casper_basics.pdf
2.8 DFinity whitepaper
3 — Incentive Research
3.1 On Bitcoin and Red Balloons
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1111.2626.pdf
3.2 Reflecting on the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/4/106587-reflecting-on-the-darpa-red-balloon-challenge/fulltext
3.3 Query Incentive Networks
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/focs05-qin.pdf
3.4 Do Diffusion Protocols Govern Cascade Growth
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.07368
3.5 The Strength of Weak Ties
3.6 Partisan Bias in Factual Beliefs about Politics
https://www.nowpublishers.com/article/Details/QJPS-14074
4 — Applications
4.1 Time Critical Social Mobilization: The DARPA Network Challenge Winning Strategy
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1008.3172.pdf
4.2 Flash Organizations: Crowdsourcing Complex Work By Structuring Crowds as Organizations
http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2017/flashorgs/flash-orgs-chi-2017.pdf
4.3 Crowdsourcing Contest Dilemma
http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/99/20140532.short
5 — Cryptoeconomics
5.1 Selfish Mining Paper:
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ie53/publications/btcProcFC.pdf
5.2 Asset Flow and Momentum: Deterministic and Stochastic Equations
http://www2.pitt.edu/~caginalp/Paper70.pdf
5.3 Stablecoins: Designing a Price-Stable Cryptocurrency
https://haseebq.com/stablecoins-designing-a-price-stable-cryptocurrency/
6 — Potpourri
6.1 “The Rational Optimist” by Matt Ridley
https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Optimist-Prosperity-Evolves-P-s-ebook/dp/B003QP4BJM
6.2 “Striking Thoughts” by Bruce Lee
6.3 “Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street Paperback” by John Brook
6.4 “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” by Edwin Lefèvre
6.5 “The Mythical Man Month” by Frederick Brooks Jr.
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