To help developers at new blockchain startups, and at companies seeking to start using blockchain, IBM has developed the IBM Blockchain Platform Starter Plan to help them build blockchain proof-of-concepts quickly and affordably.

It offers an end-to-end blockchain development experience: a secure test environment, a suite of education tools and modules and one-click network provisioning. It is built on the open source Hyperledger Fabric.



IBM logo.  (Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images)

More than 2,000 developers and tens of thousands of transaction blocks used the Starter Plan in a three-month test environment, said Jerry Cuomo, vice president of blockchain technology at IBM.

The Starter Plan is for enterprises -- whether startups, large corporations or government agencies -- that want to understand and use blockchain technology, Cuomo said.

It is designed to make the technology disappear so developers can focus on their ideas rather than how to operate a test network.

“Starter is to provide the developers and test environment with single click deployment to enable an aspiring blockchain developer to get started,” he said. “When we put it out there as a beta in March of this year we saw very quick and significant adoption.

We had over 2000 smart contract contributors, developers building contracts on the platform and deploying smart contracts of every variety imaginable,” he added.

The Starter Plan attracted some companies he describes as “born on the blockchain” including Road Launch for logistics, Mediaocean, which automates and tracks digital ad buys, and Global Debt Registry, which helps institutional investors and warehouse lenders manage risk, improve efficiency and pricing in the credit markets by providing solutions that ensure the integrity of a loan asset.

“The Starter Plan is a great place to start because it offers low cost and high value, with the tools we provide on top of open source,” Cuomo said.

For now the plan runs on the IBM cloud although he suggested it may be available on other clouds in the future. Continue to page 2 on Forbes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2018/06/28/ibm-launches-starter-kit-for-blockchain-develo...

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning will offer a course focused on blockchain technology starting next month.


India's National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) has teamed up with IBM to provide a 12-week online course that will cover blockchain architecture and design as well as various use cases.


The course will be available via the NPTEL website starting July 2018, and aims to equip students with the conceptual and practical skills needed in the growing blockchain industry.

Professor Sandip Chakraborty from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and Dr. Praveen Jayachandran of IBM Research, India, co-developed the course.

It includes topics such as crypto primitives, consensus, permissioned blockchain, use cases, and research efforts. Jayachandran elaborated on the demand for blockchain education:

"The popularity of blockchain has moved from cryptocurrency to business applications across many industries such as insurance, finance, supply chain logistics, digital identity, healthcare and public sector. IBM's collaboration with India's leading academic minds to create a blockchain curriculum is a reflection of our commitment to enabling the technology to realize its full potential, while also addressing the increased demand for adequate skills for students and developers."

Intended to produce course content for the engineering and science fields, NPTEL is a joint initiative of seven Indian Institute of Technology branches, the Indian Institute of Science, and the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development.

The program disseminates instructional material through web supplements and video courses. Since many Indian students cannot attend a science or technology institute, NPTEL provides an alternative method for individuals to receive a quality education.India is one of many countries to recently promote blockchain education.

The University of California, Berkeley, plans to provide an online blockchain certificate program through the platform edX starting next month. In September 2017, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov includedcryptocurrency education in a statement about an effort to increase financial literacy in the country.

Educational institutions have also invested in blockchain technology for other uses, such as the issuance of academic credentials.

DANIEL PUTNEY

Daniel Putney is a full-time writer for ETHNews. He received his bachelor's degree in English writing from the University of Nevada, Reno, where he also studied journalism and queer theory. In his free time, he writes poetry, plays the piano, and fangirls over fictional characters. He lives with his partner, three dogs, and two cats in the middle of nowhere, Nevada.


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Ethereum: Zero to dApp Learn to Create Ethereum dApp’s

September 18 - September 29

Washington DC


$5,000



This 2-weeks course (delivered by The Blockchain Academy) is designed for web/app developers who wish to understand how to create and/or integrate Ethereum based apps.

The course gives a top down view of all the important aspects in creating such an app and a basic overview to how the Ethereum blockchain works.

ADMISSIONS STANDARDS

• Hands on experience in creating web apps
• JavaScript a plus
• 1-years minimum as a developer

AT THE END OF THIS COURSE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO

• Configure your Ethereum node – testRPC/parity
• Create a working environment for deploying and interacting with smart contracts
• Write your own tests for smart contracts
• Read and write smart contracts written in Solidity
• Explain how ERC20/223 tokens works, create your own tokens and offer them to the public with an ICO
• Make your own token exchange with Ethereum using multiple different approaches
• Deploy Multisig wallets
• Create user interface that can work with Ethereum based applications

ACCREDITATION

Accreditation is given to participants who pass with 70% score on all course examinations and successful completion of all of the coding assignments.

Course size: min 7, max 20

The Blockchain Academy reserves the right to cancel the Ethereum:

Zero to dApp course at least 72 hours in advance via Email if we have not received seven or more confirmed applications.

If the Ethereum: Zero to dApp is canceled by The Blockchain Academy then full refunds will be made. This means that the participant is aware that the event is not guaranteed to take place at the time of reservation.

COURSE MODULESBASIC CONCEPTS:

Basic concepts and configuring a working environment:
The first lessons will cover some basic concepts in blockchains and the many tools it implements.

We’ll cover some of the main differences between traditional and blockchain centered architecture and we’ll set our working environment and tools.

The origin of the blockchain and its basic working mechanism
Consensus and the blockchain.
How to agree on things
Asymmetric (key) encryption
Transactions and scripts
How the Ethereum VM works.
Storage, transactions, OP_CODES etc
Installing and configuring truffle framework
Creating a private blockchain using testRPC and parity
Working with RPC and HTTP requests
Using truffle to deploy smart contracts and run tests
Writing tests for our smart contracts

Using nodeJS as the back of our appBy the end of this module the students will be able to:

Explain the basic working mechanism of blockchain (specifically, the Ethereum blockchain and Virtual Machine).
Configure their own nodeJS, testrpc/parity nodes, and truffle projects.
Write simple tests for smart contracts

INTRODUCTION TO SOLIDITY:

The main language used for creating smart contracts.
In this session, we’ll cover some of it’s basic syntax and structure.
The smart contract as an object on the blockchain
Variables, types, arrays, mapping, memory, and storage
Inheritance and classes. Interaction between contracts, calls and libraries
Functions, constructors, modifiers and control flow
In-line assembly
Security considerations

By the end of this module the students will be able to:

Write their own smart contracts using Solidity.
Compile and debug their smart contracts
Write useful test cases for their codes
Deploy their smart contracts to the Ethereum network
Interact with deployed smart contracts

EXPLORING SMART CONTRACTS AND ETHEREUM PROTOCOLS:

Now that we know how to write, deploy, test and interact with smart contracts it’s time to see some real example in action. All topics in this section will be covered by learning and mimicking real running protocols.

ERC20 and ERC223 protocols
Token issuance mechanisms
Identity management systems (uport, civic etc.)
Token exchanges
Wallets and multisig

By the end of this module the students will be able to:

Create their own tokens.
Issue tokens to the public as an ICO
Create and interact with identity management system
Exchange tokens in a token exchange smart contract and in offline protocols
Deploy and use their own multisig wallet

FINALIZING YOUR APP:

We know how Ethereum works and how to write smart contracts for it. We’ve also created some sophisticated apps and made sense of contracts already running on the Ethereum blockchain.

Now it’s time to create a user interface for our costumers/end users.
Using web3JS library
Connecting your app to an Ethereum node
Architectural considerations – how and when to use the blockchain
Building the proper framework for displaying and receiving information to/from the user

By the end of this module the students will be able to:

Connect any smart contract to a user interface
Demonstrate in a graphical way the working of their smart contracts

Learn more to book: 
https://www.theblockchainacademy.com/p/GBA_ethereum_dapp

While blockchain-based applications such as Bitcoin are still in their infancy, a dramatic increase in industrial and academic interest in blockchain technology is evident.

In addition, start-ups, as well as industry initiatives, are presently working intensely on blockchain-based innovations, making the technology one of the most promising drivers of innovation in many sectors and industries.

However, the design and implementation of blockchain-based systems requires know-how in various areas, as well as mindful consideration of larger economic and societal issues.

These objectives provide the starting point for this summer school.In this first ever blockchain summer school to be held worldwide, this course/summer school will focus on educating students in blockchain technology to develop solutions within three focal industries.

The participants will learn how blockchain technology is disrupting existing business models and will gain insights in paradigmatic changes occurring from economic, organisational, and computer science viewpoints.

As a result, the participants will be able to develop their own, new value creating information systems, which are designed as decentralized autonomous systems.

As learning outcomes, the participants will receive computer science, information systems, and business knowledge background in order to analyse existing business processes and their potential to convert them into blockchain-based solutions. In doing so, they will be able to co-create new blockchain-based cryptographic economic systems.

Within the summer school, participants will learn how to set up a development environment and how to work with the emergent crowd-funded decentralized blockchain application platform of Ethereum. They will be able to design and implement their own smart contracts and will code their own dapps (decentralized apps).

Once basic blockchain elements have been introduced, participants will work on their own blockchain development projects, supported by the participating industry partners.

The outcomes will be functioning demonstrators as well as a written documentation and reports that illustrate the business process or transaction realized in a blockchain implementation and how, in so doing, a real world challenge is addressed.

Admission

There is only a limited number of participants. Interested students need to apply: How to Apply 

Exam

All participants will present their blockchain solutions at the end of the summer school and defend these.

PhD students can receive ECTS points. For that, they have to produce a 15 pages comprising report after the summer school.

In addition, they have to defend the report in a 30 minutes oral exam. Only when all three mandatory tasks (presentation, report, and oral exam) are assessed as satisfactory, ECTS points will be granted and a certificate will be issued.

Credits (for PhD students only, pending approval at the moment) 4 ECTS pointsAmount of hours the student is expected to use on the courseParticipation: 60 hours (3 days 8 hour each and 36h hackathon over two days)

Preparation: 18 hours (proposal writing, self-study and preparation of mandatory material)

Post-processing: 36 hours (finalizing the 15 pages report on the developed blockchain solution)

Required readings 

All participants are expected to familiarize themselves with the required readings before the start of the summer school. This is our tentative reading list: Required Readings :

Continue reading and enroll here: 
 http://blockchainschool.eu/about/

Description

Bitcoin. Ethereum. Hyperledger. With all the cryptocurrency buzzwords flying around, it is hard to get to the core of all of these technologies. The essential piece that serves as the underlying mechanism of all these technologies is blockchain. Blockchain is a decentralized, trustless, distributed ledger technology that was popuarlized by the Bitcoin global cryptocurrency platform.

This course will cover the fundamentals of blockchain technology, including the three core layers of a blockchain and the three types of blockchains.This course is appropriate for technologists who are interested in the technology and business owners who are looking to understand the technology on a deeper level.

Who is the target audience?

• This blockchain course is meant for anyone who has an interest in blockchain or cryptocurrency technology and who want to know more about the underlying mechanisms that make up a blockchain. Although there will be some references to cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, this course is about blockchain technology on a low level. As such, this course may not be for those who are wanting to do a deep dive into cryptocurrencies specifically.

Learn more...
https://www.udemy.com/blockchain101/