7th International Blockchain School

Webpage: Can be found here

Organizer:
Prof. Dr. Roman Beck (ITU)

Lecturers:
Roman Beck (ITU)
Peter Sestoft (ITU)
Esra Yeniaras (ITU)
Asger Balle Pedersen (ITU)
Fritz Henglein (KU)
Stefan Voigt (KU)
Henrik Bjørn Axelsen (KU)

Dates of the course:
August 12th – August 16th, 2024

Rooms:
Scroll Bar, Auditorium 2, Auditorium 4, and others.

Course Description:
In this 7th Blockchain School, organized by the European Blockchain Center, we will focus on bringing together academia, industry, and the public sector to work on Web3 Decentralized Systems and Business Models. PhD students from different disciplines and regions of the world will be in Copenhagen to co-create new ideas and develop solutions in close cooperation with partners from academia, industry, and regulators from all over Europe.

Web3 represents a groundbreaking shift in the internet landscape in an era of decentralized, transparent, and collaborative applications built on blockchain technology. Blockchain, or more accurately, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), produces the fundamental infrastructure layer for when to use decentralized systems (Pedersen et al. 2019) to create and capture digital value (Schwiderowski et al., 2023a). Start-ups, large corporations, governments, and the European Union work on blockchain-based innovations, making the technology a key driver of the next generation Internet, the Internet of values, where market failures of the past can be addressed and solved, such as in the case of protecting global public goods.

The transformative concept of Web3, and the underlying DLT, extends its influence across many industries and fields, necessitating a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to examine its prospects and hurdles thoroughly. Embracing Web3 entails active education and participation from all stakeholders to guarantee its responsible and enduring adoption. Web3 introduces a wealth of opportunities for enhancing customer experiences and fostering business innovation within the digital space (Kaae et al., 2024). For instance, it empowers users to engage with each other and digital objects in the Metaverse, an environment capable of delivering immersive, interactive, and socially engaging experiences previously deemed unattainable in the current Web2 landscape.

All students will be encouraged to further improve their work in form of academic papers. We will work on special issues and fast track options in leading journals to allow teams who would like to publish their results in academic outlets can submit their work.

Programme

Day 1			Monday, August 12^th Opening Intro Lectures
08:00	-	09:00	Registration and light breakfast
09:00	-	10:15	Introduction to the summer school (ITU, CBS, KU)
10:15	-	10:30	Coffee break
10:30	-	11:30	Presentation (tba)
12:30	-	13:30	Lunch break
13:30	-	15:00	Presentation (tba)
15:00	-	15:30	Coffee break
15:30	-	17:30	Presentation (tba)
18:00	-	21:00	Social Event
	-	21:00	End of Day 1

Day 2			Tuesday, August 13^th Joined Lectures
08:00	-	9:00	Light Breakfast
09:00	-	10:15	Blockchain Economics and Market Engineering by Roman Beck (ITU)
10:15	-	10:30	Coffee break
10:30	-	12:30	Presentation (tba)
12:30	-	13:30	Lunch Break
13:30	-	14:30	Presentation (tba)
14:30	-	16:30	Use case presentation and discussion
16:30	-	17:00	Coffee Break
17:00	-	18:00	Group splits up into the use cases assigned. The mentors from the universities as well as the coaches from the participating organizations go into more details and discuss the tasks with the teams that are formed to work together.
18:00	-	20:00	Get together (Sponsor Reception and Drinks)
		20:00	End of Day 2

Day 3			Wednesday, August 14^th Makathons
08:00	-	9:00	Light Breakfast
09:00	-	10:15	Use case group work
10:15	-	10:30	Coffee break
10:30	-	12:30	Use case group work
12:30	-	13:30	Lunch Break
13:30	-	18:00	Use case group work
18:00	-	20:00	Get together (Sponsor Reception and Drinks)
		23:00	End of Day 3

Day 4			Thursday, August 15^th Makathons and Hackathon
08:00	-	9:00	Light Breakfast
09:00	-	10:15	Use case group work
10:15	-	10:30	Coffee break
10:30	-	12:30	Use case group work
12:30	-	13:30	Lunch Break
13:30	-	18:00	Use case group work
18:00	-	20:00	Get together (Sponsor Reception and Drinks)
		24:00	End of Day 4

Day 5			Friday, August 16^th Student Presentations, Awards and Nordic Blockchain Summit
00:00	-	08:00	Use case group work
08:00	-	09:00	Light breakfast
09:00	-	09:30	The teams complete their development and work for demonstration and presentation
09:30	-	11:30	Presentation of the results to the industrial and academic coaches
11:30	-	12:30	Lunch break and end of Block Chain School
			7^th Nordic Blockchain Summit
13:00	-	13:10	Welcom and Opening Remarks
13:10	-	13:40	Keynote 1
13:40	-	14:10	Keynote 2
14:10	-	14:40	Keynote 3
14:40	-	15:00	Presentation
15:00	-	15:30	Coffee break
15:30	-	16:00	Panel debate

Prerequisites:
Students interested in participating in the Blockchain School must be enrolled as PhD or master students in a computer science, information systems, engineering or other cognate programs at a university. As part of the admission process, the organizers will assess the quality of the submitted application material before finally accepting the participants. We encourage students to apply as a team and will prioritize proposals submitted by teams. Accepted Blockchain School participants must make themselves familiar with the teaching material made available before the International Blockchain School starts.

Exam:
Participants will present their blockchain solutions at the end of the Blockchain School and defend their work. In addition, they will produce 15 pages (+/-10%) of report after the Blockchain School and/or write a paper that is to be submitted to an academic outlet, such as conference or journal, coached by the PhD Blockchain School organizers. The presentation, report as well as the working paper are mandatory deliverables and after they have been assessed at a satisfactory level, the ECTS points will be granted, and a certificate issued.

Credits:
6 ECTS

Number of hours the student is expected to use on the course:

Participation: 56 hours (4 days 8 hour each and 24h hackathon on Thursday/Friday)
Preparation: 36 hours (proposal writing, self-study, and preparation of mandatory material)
Post-processing: 60 hours (finalizing the 15 pages report on the developed blockchain solution and writing a paper)

How to sign up:

Interested participants can sign up here: Sign up

Required information are:

first name,
last name,
e-mail address,
postal address, university,
background (CV),
motivational letter (1 page).

Deadline of registration: June 30^th.

Reading List

Agerskov, S., Pedersen, A. B., and Beck, R. (2023). Ethical guidelines for blockchain systems. In European Conference of Information Systems.

Andersen, J. V., & Bogusz, C. I. (2019). Self-Organizing in Blockchain Infrastructures: Generativity Through Shifting Objectives and Forking. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 20(9), 11.

Beck R., C. Müller-Bloch, J.L. King (2018) Governance in the blockchain economy: A framework and research agenda. Journal of the Association for Information Systems 19(10), 1.

Biais, B., Bisiere, C., Bouvard, M., & Casamatta, C. (2019). The blockchain folk theorem. The Review of Financial Studies, 32(5), 1662-1715.

Böhme R., N. Christin, B. Edelman, T. Moore (2015) Bitcoin: Economics, technology, and governance. J. Econ. Perspect. 29(2):213-238.

Catalini C., J.S. Gans (2016) Some simple economics of the blockchain. Working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge: MA.

Chanson, Mathieu; Bogner, Andreas; Bilgeri, Dominik; Fleisch, Elgar; and Wortmann, Felix (2019) "Blockchain for the IoT: Privacy-Preserving Protection of Sensor Data," Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 20(9), 10.

Chiu, J., & Koeppl, T. V. (2019). Blockchain-based settlement for asset trading. The Review of Financial Studies, 32(5), 1716-1753.

Chong, Alain Yee Loong; Lim, Eric T. K.; Hua, Xiuping; Zheng, Shuning; and Tan, Chee-Wee (2019) "Business on Chain: A Comparative Case Study of Five Blockchain-Inspired Business Models," Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 20(9), 9.

Cong, L. W., & He, Z. (2019). Blockchain disruption and smart contracts. The Review of Financial Studies, 32(5), 1754-1797.

Davidson S., P. De Filippi, J. Potts (2018) Blockchains and the economic institutions of capitalism. J. Institu. Econom., ePub ahead of print January 18.

Du, W. D., Pan, S. L., Leidner, D. E., & Ying, W. (2019). Affordances, experimentation and actualization of FinTech: A blockchain implementation study. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 28(1), 50-65.

Iversen, H. M. W., Schmidt, T., Pedersen, A. B., and Beck, R. (2023). How to cross the bridge: Interoperability among blockchain systems. In International Conference on Information Systems.

Kaae, C., Pedersen, A. B., Agerskov, S., and Beck, R. (2024). Web3 decentralized business models. In Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Li X., C.A. Wang (2017) The technology and economic determinants of cryptocurrency exchange rates: The case of Bitcoin. Decision Support Syst. 95:49-60.

Miscione, G., Goerke, T., Klein, S., Schwabe, G., & Ziolkowski, R. (2019). Hanseatic Governance: Understanding Blockchain as Organizational Technology. ICIS 2019 Proceedings.

Nakamoto S. (2008) Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. White paper, available at https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf .

Notheisen, B., Cholewa, J. B., & Shanmugam, A. P. (2017). Trading Real-World Assets on Blockchain. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 59(6), 425-440.

Pedersen, A. B., Risius, M., and Beck, R. (2019). A ten-step decision path to determine when to use blockchain technologies. MIS Quarterly Executive, 18(2).

Risius M., K. Spohrer (2017) A blockchain research framework. Bus. Inform. Syst. Engrg. 59(6):385–409.

Rossi, M., Mueller-Bloch, C., Thatcher, J. B., & Beck, R. (2019). Blockchain Research in Information Systems: Current Trends and an Inclusive Future Research Agenda. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 20(9), 14.

Schwiderowski, J., Pedersen, A. B., and Beck, R. (2023a). Crypto tokens and token systems. Information Systems Frontiers, pages 1–14.

Schwiderowski, J., Pedersen, A. B., Jensen, J. K., and Beck, R. (2023b). Value creation and capture in decentralized finance markets: Non-fungible tokens as a class of digital assets. Electronic Markets, 33(1):45.