Village
Welcome to the Cryptocurrency Village, an exciting place hosted by the Cryptocurrency Advocate. Learn unique ways that cryptocurrency systems are attacked, defended, and secured while building your fintech skills. Meet hackers, be entertained, and get inspired to explore cryptocurrency.
EDUCATION
Workshops
Mnemonic Seeds and Keys
You will secure your cryptocurrency data without depending on questionable entropy by generating secrets using casino style and Dungeons and Dragons style dice. Learn the security pitfalls of paper wallets, and defend against them by using advanced modern materials. A group discussion of vulnerabilities and attack surfaces when creating wallets concludes our workshop.
SeedSigner Secured Transactions
Guided by a hardware security expert, you build your own SeedSigner DIY (made by amateurs) device. SeedSigner build DIY like this support verifiably air-gapped, stateless Bitcoin transaction signing with inexpensive, publicly available hardware components. Your new SeedSigner may help save Bitcoin by assisting with trustless private key generation and multi-signature wallet setup, and helps transact with Bitcoin via a secure, air-gapped QR-exchange signing model.
Security Aspects of a New Coin
If you never experienced the birth of a new cryptocurrency, then this workshop will replace the mystery with a standard software engineering approach. Learn the basics of blocks, mining, nodes, wallets, seeds, tokens, and coins, from the perspective of an inventor. Attack your new system by trying to force a double spend, or attack usbility by censoring transactions or DoSing a valid testnet based purchase.
Securing Privacy with Tor
One tool for securing transaction identities in cryptocurrency networks is Tor. In this workshop you learn three different ways Tor can defeat privacy attacks, as well as the value of such identity security. Your team will practice testnet transactions with and without Tor, to identify possible vulnerabilities.
Securing Privacy with CoinJoin
While the use case that CoinJoin secures is honorable, unfortantely the practice suffers from controversy. To learn how CoinJoin secures privacy in transactions, your team makes testnet transactions with and without the technology, while considering privacy and other attack vectors.
Applied Cryptocurrency Hardware
Using an electronic circuit camera, we zoom in on cryptosecure devices and their circuits. Descriptions of existing cryptocurrency hardware lead to consideration of future integrations in the physical world and how secure elements work. We pass around a showcase of half a dozen wallets and similar hardware, as well as Nitrokeys (for defence) and ChipWhisperers (for attack.) We get set up with a set of hardware development software tools, and consider the physical production workflow that top manufacturers follow in high security areas like the Ledger Donjon.
Security aspects of Exchanges
Cryptocurrency exchanges have the reputation of hosting 'not your keys so not your coins', but we analyze further to understand what technology powers them and which security aspects serve users. In this hour we use tools like Helloex and Octobot to build our own experimental testnet exchange. Your team divides into exchange providers maintaining stability and opportunistic traders taking advantage of system loopholes. A group discussion finally concludes under which conditions cryptocurrency exchanges provide security and value.
Cryptocurrency Enforcement Actions
Multiple agencies have attempted to regulate cryptocurrencies through various means. This workshop will begin with a short presentation about the different organizations with an interest in regulating cryptocurrency (SEC, CFTC, IRS, and DOJ) and provide examples of enforcement actions. Next, participants will break out into discussion groups to consider the pros and cons of regulation by enforcement. Then, participants will be given a hypothetical cryptocurrency and be assigned a role either as a 'regulator' or as a 'developer.' The participants will engage in a settlement type discussion to determine if the cryptocurrency should be regulated under one agency, multiple agencies, or not at all.
AML Cryptocurrency Compliance
Students receive exposure to the law side of cryptocurrency business, including certification, regulation, government policy, and risk assessment. Regulators around the world evaluate and implement diverse regulations governing the use and applications of Blockchain reflecting varying degrees of acceptance ranging from blanket prohibition to highly facilitating frameworks. Organisations, in turn, assess the related risks and legal challenges. This workshop considers emerging trends and security essentials vital for business and financial businesses, providing a brief overview of AML and KYC and suggestions to increase security and decrease risk exposure
Self Custodial Wallet Use
The workshop will begin with brief presentation about cryptocurrency, exchanges, hardware wallets, hot wallets, cold wallets, and other introductory information needed to begin cryptocurrency transactions. Participants will be given a sample wallet for practice purposes only. Participants will be guided through the opening of a wallet, with a detailed discussion on public and private keys and the different types of wallets available for self custody and the different security features of wallets. The discussion will delve into hot security topics, including the importance of randomized seeds and consider a couple of case scenarios where wallets have been hacked due to a lack of security, followed by a discussion on how to prevent these types of security defects. Next, participants will create hot and a cold wallet, each with a twelve word seed. After completing set up of the cold wallet, participants will be required to simulate a lost/stolen/destroyed wallet and wipe the wallet and re-set up the wallet.
EDUCATION
Crypto Kids
Allowance Program
If sponsors allow, and with parents' permission, we give kids a standard allowance to the wallet of their choice.
Free Gifts
If sponsors allow, kids can choose from a variety of cryptocurrency branded products including electronics.
Add your idea
Add your idea here, how to encourage kids to embrace science and technology in their lives and foster their hacking creative mentality.
SHOWCASE
Featured Projects
Kastelo
The Kastelo devkit is a cryptocurrency developer kit including multiple secure elements to defend against hardware based (EMP or power glitch), firmware (bootloader dereference), and software (kernel or isolation) attacks.
Bleskomat
The Bleskomat ATM is the world's first offline Bitcoin Lightning ATM, enabling air gapped currency exchange. A mobile wallet on the customer phone requests a Lightning payment from the backend server on behalf of the ATM.
SeedSigner
SeedSigner is a Raspberry Pi based device used to sign Bitcoin transactions from verifiably air-gapped, stateless signing hardware. SeedSigner secures user data with trustless private key generation and multi-signature configuration.
RELAXATION
Live Music
Featured DJ
Between workshops and security challenges, relax on a sofa while enjoying the video loops and music selections by our featured DJ.
ENTERTAINMENT
Demoscene
Second Reality
This is an IBM PC compatible demo created by the Finnish demogroup Future Crew. It debuted at the Assembly 1993 demoparty on July 30, 1993, where it was entered into the PC demo competition, and finished in first place with its demonstration of 2D and 3D computer graphics rendering. The demo was released to the public in October 1993. It is considered to be one of the best demos created during the early 1990s on the PC; in 1999 Slashdot voted it one of the 'Top 10 Hacks of All Time.' Its source code was released in a GitHub repository as public domain software using the Unlicense on the 20th anniversary of the release on 1 August 2013.
Blunderbuss
Though it was created for fun over a couple of days, with over a million particles in motion at any one time, Blunderbuss is anything but a blunt weapon. The demo features what looks like a burning match head, with wisps of smoke curling away from it under the influence of a slight breeze. An acoustic guitar and vocal plays in the background. As the demo unfolds, the smoke sometimes moves as if responding to a gust of wind, and takes on the shape of a word from the song.
Elevated
Show people Elevated and most will be mildly impressed. Show them the size of the executable, however, and they'll immediately want to see it again. Elevated is just 4kB long and yet contains a near photo-realistic fly-through of a mountainous landscape. It's all generated entirely in real-time – including camera motion blur. The trick to packing so much into so little space is a powerful graphics card.
ENTERTAINMENT
Iconic Films
Wing It!
An uptight engineer gets an unwelcome visit from a enthusiastic wannabe-pilot, causing both of them to be launched into the air inside an out-of-control space shuttle.
Charge
In an energy-scarce dystopia, an old destitute man breaks into a battery factory but soon finds himself confronted by a deadly security droid and no way out.
Sprite Fright
When a group of rowdy teenagers trek into an isolated forest, they discover peaceful mushroom creatures that turn out to be an unexpected force of nature.