Welcome!
Before the start of the program, we ask all participants to glance at the first four sections of the Intro to ETH article series.
In particular, if you're new to blockchain, we highly encourage you to take a close read through the full series, and to follow along the mini-tutorials. This will probably take a few hours, but it's well worth it to ensure that we can hit the ground running. Participants are coming into the program with a variety of different experience levels, and we want to ensure that everyone has a consistent baseline of knowledge.
If you're more of a visual learner, feel free to also check out these videos as well!
How Does Bitcoin Work? - 3blue1brown on the math/tech behind Bitcoin
ETH.BUILD - A visual explainer on building with Ethereum
How MakerDAO Works - Coindesk on the DAI "stablecoin" protocol
If you've read the above and have spare time on your hands, here are a few additional essays and articles that we'd recommend. These are mostly context around the philosophy of the crypto movement, though some dig into slightly more technical details of schemes like Proof of Stake.
The Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto (Timothy C. May, 1988) - short
True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy (Timothy C. May, 1996)
The Idea of Smart Contracts (Nick Szabo, 1997) - short
B-Money (Wei Dai, 1998) - short
A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy (Vitalik Buterin, 2016)
Engineering Security Through Coordination Problems (Vitalik Buterin, 2017)
Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: 5 Years Later (Vitalik Buterin, 2019)
Control as Liability (Vitalik Buterin, 2019)
A Philosophy of Blockchain Validation (Vitalik Buterin, 2020)