Hacking Incentives Book Club

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 think a great deal about incentives, incentive design, and incentive markets. We invite you to share some of our mindshare — and join our incentive hacking reading list.

1 — Blockchain Background

1.1 The authoritative Guide to Blockchain Development

The authoritative guide to blockchain development

Cryptocurrencies, ICOs, magic internet money — it’s all so damn exciting, and you, the eager developer, want to get in…

medium.freecodecamp.org

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

https://dfinity.org/tech

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

https://sociology.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/the_strength_of_weak_ties_and_exch_w-gans.pdf

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

https://www.amazon.com/Bruce-Lee-Striking-Thoughts-Library-ebook/dp/B014C57RYK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1530658575&sr=1-1&keywords=striking+thoughts

6.3 “Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street Paperback” by John Brook

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

"Business Adventures remains the best business book I've ever read." -Bill Gates, The Wall Street Journal What do the…

www.amazon.com

6.4 “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” by Edwin Lefèvre

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (A Marketplace Book)

"Although Reminiscences...was first published some seventy years ago, its take on crowd psychology and market timing is…

www.amazon.com

6.5 “The Mythical Man Month” by Frederick Brooks Jr.

https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1530659424&sr=1-1&keywords=Mythical+Man+Month