Power up your Engineering CV with Decentralized Applications Giuseppe Aceto

We move on with professor Jose Pachetto uh with the talk called power up your engineering CV with decentralized application the master course in computer engineering at university Napoli the Joseeppe we're going to share behind the scene journey of designing and teaching a cutting edge master level course on decentralized application and blockchain. From student feedback to course impact, this talk explores how academic programs can align with web 3 industry demands and help shape the engineers of tomorrow. Let's give a warm applause to Joseeppe. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for the introduction.

So, uh go Okay, works. Next. Okay. So, uh a quick uh quickest introduction uh yeah besides several things uh uh about network computing uh uh uh networking performance deep learning this is my research field of study. Uh I'm here because in uh 2022 uh I was tasked uh with uh the creation of a blockchain uh themed course at the master degree in computer engineering.

So this is the story of uh how it went. Uh so 2022 it was designed and the first edition was just uh in September 2024. Those are the times of university takes some time to change the course design everything get the approvals insert that in in in the curriculum and then get it started. And you know that uh this can be a bit of an issue if you're planning for something like two more than two years before in in dynamic field is the blockchain related so so I'm sure you know you know this diagram diagram not they're not We need some power and power for the computing computer. So, so basically anyway you can you can see the message message what what has the change uh since 2022 and 2024 according to this and you name it consulting company that analyzes what are the um prospects of new technologies how they flow through the so-called hype cycle and you see at the top you know that's the the top the maximum of hype where the technology is far from uh being defined uh its applications are a bit uh uh overinflated uh regarding expectations and after that phase there is the this of this illusment.

So when the the expectations are are seen that are not matched actually after that we should see the uh an enlightenment phase when we realize what is actually possible what actually works and then it goes in in production that should be the the the last phase. So since 2022 and still in 2024 we can see not much has changed in those expectations. So some of the technologies uh of course you cannot read but uh in in the last part there is uh cryptocurrencies uh there is layer one blockchain u uh there's consensus mechanisms. So those are the technological aspects that were deemed more mature and were the same in 2022. So the dots when you see a white dot it means uh they forecasted that in in two years that technology will be mature and be in productivity.

But as you can see, two years passed and they didn't progress much. So they're still two year into becoming productive, mature. So I don't necessarily agree with with this uh uh this is a proprietary analysis. We don't know uh the considerations that are uh behind this kind of result but it's just a way for me to to have a hint of how this is perceived in in the more general business area. So what what does it mean that most of it is still experimentation and research and this is something that universities, academia have been always quite good at even though um most of uh people in the uh blockchain environment may be not fully aware of But all the technologies that led to Bitcoin were devised in in academic research for more than 40 years of research and and then 15 passed more.

Oh, so we are I would say we are in the right place. And talking about academic the the course that I designed and teach uh decentralized applications and blockchain just to highlight the blockchain is just one specific implementation of a more general concept that has more to the with decentralization. That is the the main the main goal and the technical aspect is functional to get to that main goal and is part of the internet and cloud area of the uh master degree in computer engineering. But the nice thing is doesn't matter which area you choose, you can pick the exams that you want. So if you are in a in academia and maybe uh thinking about an Arasmus uh so you could come and like follow your passion and also get credit for it uh during the first semester of teaching in the year.

So this is uh if you're interested as a potential student, but if you are a recruiter, if you're looking for expertise, if you're um startuper and you're looking for help in in building a team, you can also contact me and have access to the new students that are still learning the these technologies. And I'll tell you a bit more uh regarding this but um the the course uh aims to give this kind of competencies. to understand how the blockchain technologies work from the lower layers uh in in the tech technical details. Um and also okay the basic of programming smart contracts but also the the more general issues in in the design in development and also adoption of these technologies and maybe we can help progress them beyond the the pre-productive phase. And so this is kind of a mesh of uh concepts there are n it's uh and and um uh during the the course and you can see we can broadly group uh between the programming aspects we go into detail even in bitcoin script.

So it will be like uh machine code for for the Bitcoin execution stack machine and also of course the the uh EBM but also we uh analyze the actual usage and you know that DeFi is uh probably the most advanced uh part of the actual usage of those technologies. we analyze that that are those aspects. So the the governance and and uh also the the risks the attacks the privacy issues. So it's a well-rounded course around those technologies. It's not just the the basic technical details and I started seeing that it takes a lot of time uh between designing a course and uh having it uh taught actually.

But so I wanted to bridge uh what I got from from the scientific research academia that is lagging uh physiologically a couple of years behind the the cutting edge because couple of years is more or less how much you it takes to to get uh a journal paper analyzed and published. So during the course we have seminars many seminars of people that are currently working with those technologies. So maybe you recognize some of those uh they're part of the organization of uh um Anapolit. Uh so they had um a fouryear uh four four hours um kind of boot camp on this specific team. like oracles and specifically a stepby-step deployment uh of a with chain link but also we had uh people from this uh cooperative uh that is exploring the usage of blockchains in in let's say it's not not just for the yield it's not just for profit but using the finance financing the decentralized financing mechanism for good for other purposes embedded in the blockchain.

So this was interesting and we also had uh local projects. uh maybe you don't know but uh Napoli this city has been one of the first in Europe to adopt officially blockchain technologies in in the uh previous uh government and it is uh not not uh progressing at the moment is waiting for political support but the the technical aspect has been has been uh explored and there is an association that is locally u let's say keeping up with with those technologies and also maybe you know uh Marco Monaco was former in consensus is co-founder of a famous L2 he also had a ask me anything about defy touching a lot of uh hot topics at the moment so we get the insight of professionals uh on the current situation. And and actually the final exam is the discussion of a practical project that that the students have to to develop and uh preferentially they have to develop a contribution to an existing project and this is uh I'm reporting just three feedbacks from three students of this first round uh this first edition So what what uh oh I asked for this after they passed the exams otherwise yeah would have been too much cheating but now they had already the number signed so they didn't need anything more from me so I hope those are sincere because they're quite good and and so yeah um this course gave those students the possibility to study at university for exams and some of them also for the master thesis. Uh some topics that they heard about not necessarily in academia, not necessarily in technical places but more commercial ones. So you can imagine the hype and the confusion but they could uh get to to be experts uh in this very complex technical field.

And yeah I had a third one. All of them participated uh uh had to develop a a concrete uh uh project in collaboration. This one like brute funds was with the cooperative data set. The other one was on tomato nfd was using the chain link technology. So but they got to participate to events.

Uh I encouraged them I introduced them to those events. So a hackathon and also the napoulet hackathon and those three guys were the winners yesterday of the most prizes of the hackathon. So I'm very proud of them of course but also this is kind of a confirmation that uh our design our project is kind of working and so yeah uh I'm done and so what what can can give this to you so of course if you're a student and maybe an international student uh you could come and and have those credits studying stuff that you're interested in. But if you're a startup founder, if you have an an interesting project, you can contact me and pitch this project during the course to the students and have the project used as a exam project. So you will have young people, passionate people that are becoming experts technically in in this field and they will participate uh contributing to your project.

So of course uh possible research collaborations, internships. So uh write down my contacts and thank you for your attention. I'm available for questions.