About
Welcome to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Bitcoin!
Introduction
When most outsiders think of “blockchain” or “cryptocurrency,” they immediately think of Bitcoin. Intuitively, this makes sense: Bitcoin is the oldest, most well-known cryptocurrency with the largest market cap. Yet, the informational resources for Bitcoin are very scattered, outdated, and not representative of all the latest innovation happening in the space.
By creating the Stanford Encyclopedia of Bitcoin (SEB), our goal is to increase transparency of the innovation happening within the Bitcoin community and provide a free, objective, and educational resource for all to understand the Bitcoin space.
Content
We hope to create a unique educational resource that “shines a light” on the latest innovations within the space, for innovators, educators, and curious minds to better understand the Bitcoin behind the ticker symbols.
In doing so, we hope to cover topics such as:
Innovations on the Base Protocol (Taproot, DLCs, Miniscript, BIPs)
Metaprotocols (Ordinals, BRC-20, Colored Coins, .sats)
Extensibility solutions and protocols (Federated sidechains, Lightning, zkRollups)
Application Layer Innovations (DeFi, Gaming, Social)
Within each entry, we hope to give a high-level overview of the principles and technical implementation of each topic and protocol, as well as resources for further reading. We do not plan to include more generic entries on “blockchains,” “cryptocurrencies,” and “consensus,” as there already exist many online courses and resources devoted to these topics.
Core Contributors
SEB is founded and spearheaded by the Stanford Blockchain Club, Stanford University's official student group for everything blockchain, cryptoeconomics, and cryptocurrency. Created as the Stanford Bitcoin Club in 2014, Stanford Blockchain Club has deep ties to Bitcoin and has one of the strongest alumni and community networks within the industry. As one of the oldest and most prominent student blockchain clubs, SBC is a neutral, credible, non-profit organization focusing on increasing educational awareness of the industry.
Bitcoin Startup Lab is a startup program focused on bleeding edge Bitcoin innovation, and a cofounding contributor to the SEB. BSL collaborates with more Bitcoin technologies than any other innovation platform on Bitcoin. One of its flagship projects is the Bitcoin Olympics Hackathon, which aims to cultivate the cross-pollination of ideas and collaboration to enable new Bitcoin innovations.
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