Layer-0 Developer Academy
Workshop catalogue
170 workshops totalling 625 taught hours. Every workshop states its prerequisites, its labs, its security angle and how it is assessed.
170 workshops shown
- BAC-L0-FOUND-101Foundation
How the internet actually works
A request's full journey, from typing a domain name to the byte that comes back — because you cannot reason about a peer-to-peer network without knowing what a packet is.
Beginner · 3 h · no prerequisite
- BAC-L0-FOUND-102Foundation
Data structures and the cost of operations
Arrays, hash tables, trees: what each structure makes fast and what it makes expensive. The basis of every later argument about chain storage.
Beginner · 3 h · no prerequisite
- BAC-L0-FOUND-103Foundation
Databases, logs and state
A distributed ledger is first an ordered log whose state is a projection. This workshop plants that idea before it becomes a blockchain.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-104Foundation
Hash functions
What a hash function actually guarantees — collision resistance, the avalanche effect, determinism — and the uses it does not cover.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-105Foundation
Public keys, private keys, signatures
Asymmetric cryptography as a mechanism of authority: what a signature proves, who can produce one, and why the private key is the identity itself.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-106Foundation
Merkle trees and inclusion proofs
How to prove a piece of data belongs to a set without transmitting the set. The structure that makes light clients and availability sampling possible.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-107Foundation
Distributed systems: latency, partitions, consistency
Why a distributed system cannot guarantee everything at once, and how that constraint shapes every consensus protocol.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-108Foundation
Fault tolerance and Byzantine faults
Telling a crashed node from a malicious one, and why the latter is structurally more expensive to tolerate.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-109Foundation
Consensus families and finality
Proof of work, proof of stake, BFT: what each family buys, at what price, and what "finalised" means in each case.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-110Foundation
Anatomy of a blockchain
Assembling the earlier building blocks: blocks, headers, state roots, mempool, propagation. Where the foundations become a system.
Beginner · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-111Foundation
Accounts, transactions and fees
Account model versus UTXO, nonces, fees and priority: the economic machinery that rations scarce block space.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-112Foundation
Wallets, mnemonics and derivation
What a wallet actually holds — keys, never funds — and how twelve words generate a hierarchy of accounts.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-113Foundation
Nodes, validators and network roles
Who does what in a network: full node, archive node, light client, validator, collator. Confusing them makes any infrastructure discussion impossible.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L0-FOUND-114Foundation
Reading a blockchain critically
Explorers, indexers and dashboards display interpretations, not raw facts. This workshop teaches how to get back to the verifiable source.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-FOUND-115Foundation
Linux for blockchain engineers
The system every piece of infrastructure taught here runs on: permissions, services, logs, networking, diagnosis.
Beginner · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-FOUND-116Foundation
Git, GitHub and open-source contribution
The submission channel for all Academy coursework, and the skill that makes a developer employable in a protocol ecosystem.
Beginner · 4 h · no prerequisite
- BAC-L1-FOUND-117Foundation
Docker and reproducible environments
"Works on my machine" is not a result. Packaging a node and its dependencies so the lab runs identically everywhere.
Beginner · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-FOUND-118Foundation
APIs, JSON-RPC and node integration
Talking to a chain from code: calls, subscriptions, errors, rate limits, and the discipline of never trusting a single source.
Beginner · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-FOUND-119Foundation
TypeScript: the front end of a chain application
Building the interface that connects a wallet, builds a transaction and follows its status — without ever touching the private key.
Intermediate · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-FOUND-120Foundation
Smart contracts: fundamentals and limits
Solidity as a starting point, not a horizon: what a contract can do, what it will never do, and why the rest of the curriculum goes one layer down.
Intermediate · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-DOT-101Polkadot
Polkadot architecture
Why separate a security chain from a set of execution chains, and what that choice implies for an application builder.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-DOT-102Polkadot
The Polkadot developer toolkit
Polkadot.js, metadata, types and explorer interfaces: the instruments you observe a chain with before changing it.
Beginner · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-DOT-103Polkadot
BABE and GRANDPA: production and finalisation
Two distinct mechanisms, routinely confused: one picks who produces a block, the other decides when a block becomes irreversible.
Intermediate · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-DOT-104Polkadot
Validators, nominators and NPoS
How nominated proof of stake distributes stake across validators, and why that distribution is an optimisation target rather than an accident.
Intermediate · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-DOT-105Polkadot
Collators and the parachain lifecycle
A collator does not secure the chain: it feeds it. Understanding that asymmetry changes how you design its infrastructure.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-DOT-106Polkadot
Acquiring and holding execution capacity
Access to shared security is paid for and planned. Acquisition models, costs, and what happens when access lapses.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-DOT-107Polkadot
XCM: foundations of the cross-chain message
XCM is not a transport protocol but an instruction language. That distinction is the source of most design mistakes.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-DOT-108Polkadot
Asset transfers and remote execution over XCM
Moving an asset between chains without duplicating it, and triggering a remote call whose execution you pay for elsewhere.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-DOT-109Polkadot
Bridges to external ecosystems
Connecting Polkadot to an ecosystem that does not share its security: what the bridge must verify itself, and at what cost.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-DOT-110Polkadot
OpenGov: on-chain governance in practice
Getting a decision adopted by a network with no central authority: tracks, thresholds, delays, and what governance can actually change.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-DOT-111Polkadot
Operating a Polkadot validator
Going from a node that runs to a validator that holds: session keys, failover, slashing, and the discipline that prevents double-signing.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-DOT-112Polkadot
Polkadot capstone: an operated application chain
Assembling the whole track: an application chain connected to a test Relay Chain — operated, monitored, upgraded and documented.
Expert · 6 h · 3 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-SUB-101Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Rust I — ownership, borrowing, lifetimes
The memory model that makes Rust suited to protocol engineering: what the compiler refuses, and why that refusal is a guarantee.
Beginner · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-SUB-102Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Rust II — traits, generics, error handling
The abstractions FRAME is built on end to end. Without them a pallet stays an unreadable wall of text.
Intermediate · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-SUB-103Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Rust for the constrained runtime environment
A runtime compiles to WebAssembly: no standard library, no implicit allocation, no non-determinism. The rules change.
Intermediate · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-104Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Node architecture: client and runtime
The Polkadot SDK's founding split: a native client handling networking and the database, a WebAssembly runtime defining the rules — replaceable without redeploying the client.
Intermediate · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-105Substrate / Polkadot SDK
First chain: specification and local network
From template to running network: chain specification, genesis state, authority keys, multi-node network on a single machine.
Intermediate · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-106Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Anatomy of a FRAME pallet
The pallet as the unit of business logic: configuration, storage, calls, events, errors. The vocabulary for the rest of the track.
Intermediate · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-107Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Designing on-chain storage
Every byte stored is replicated by every node, forever. On-chain storage is designed as a scarce resource, not as a database.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-108Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Extrinsics, dispatch and origins
How a transaction becomes a function call, and how the runtime decides who is allowed to trigger it.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-109Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Events, errors and block hooks
What the chain tells the outside world, and what it executes automatically each block — the part of the runtime nobody triggers.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-110Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Testing runtime logic
A runtime bug cannot be hot-fixed on a public chain. Testing is therefore not a good practice but a deployment condition.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-111Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Benchmarking and weights
A call whose cost is underestimated is a denial-of-service attack you priced yourself. Measure, do not estimate.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-112Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Runtime APIs and custom RPC
Exposing a read the raw storage does not give directly, without turning the node into an application server.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-113Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Runtime upgrades and state migrations
Forkless upgradeability is the Polkadot SDK's headline argument — and the source of its costliest incidents when state migration is botched.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-114Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Governing your own chain
Moving past the single admin account: council, referenda, enactment delays. An application chain's decentralisation trajectory.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-115Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Smart contracts on a Substrate chain
When to open your chain to third-party code, and on what terms — the exact opposite of the reflex to put everything in a contract.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-116Substrate / Polkadot SDK
EVM compatibility
Hosting the Ethereum toolchain on a Substrate chain: what compatibility genuinely buys, and the boundaries it does not cross.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-117Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Networking, discovery and synchronisation
The layer you ignore until the day a node stops syncing: peer discovery, gossip, synchronisation strategies.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SUB-118Substrate / Polkadot SDK
Substrate capstone: a complete application-specific blockchain
Deliver an application chain answering a real Cameroonian use case: business pallets, tests, measured weights, governance, operations documentation.
Expert · 6 h · 3 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-COSMOS-101Cosmos SDK
Go I — types, interfaces, errors
The language most modern blockchain infrastructure is written in, approached through what sets it apart: enforced simplicity and errors as values.
Beginner · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-COSMOS-102Cosmos SDK
Go II — concurrency, contexts, testing
A node is a concurrent program. Goroutines, channels and cancellation contexts: the toolkit that keeps that concurrency from becoming a trap.
Intermediate · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-COSMOS-103Cosmos SDK
Cosmos ecosystem architecture
Sovereign chains linked by a common protocol: what that model enables, and the responsibility it transfers to each team.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-104Cosmos SDK
CometBFT and the ABCI interface
The most important boundary in the Cosmos stack: consensus orders transactions, the application decides their effect. The two know each other only through an interface.
Intermediate · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-105Cosmos SDK
Your first sovereign chain
Scaffold, configure and launch a multi-validator chain: genesis, keys, tokens, parameters. Where a template becomes a living network.
Intermediate · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-106Cosmos SDK
Anatomy of a Cosmos module
The module as the unit of application logic: keeper, state, messages, queries, lifecycle. The grammar for the rest of the track.
Intermediate · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-107Cosmos SDK
Designing state and storage
Designing a key space that stays queryable at millions of entries, and where every byte is justified.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-108Cosmos SDK
Messages, handlers and validation
The entry point for every state change, and therefore the chain's first line of defence.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-109Cosmos SDK
Queries, gRPC and indexing
Exposing state to the outside: what should be directly queryable, and what belongs in an off-chain indexer.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-110Cosmos SDK
Block lifecycle and automatic processing
What the chain executes on its own each block — expiries, distributions, cleanups — and the time budget that consumes.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-111Cosmos SDK
Accounts, signatures and fees
How a transaction is authenticated and priced before it ever reaches business logic.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-112Cosmos SDK
Tokens, issuance and the monetary model
Defining an application chain's unit of account: denominations, precision, issuance, and the mistakes you cannot walk back.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-113Cosmos SDK
Staking and economic security
What actually protects a sovereign chain: the value its validators lock up, and the cost of corrupting a third of it.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-114Cosmos SDK
Slashing, downtime and equivocation
The negative incentives that make misbehaviour expensive — and that also punish plain operational negligence, without distinction.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-115Cosmos SDK
On-chain governance
Deciding parameters, treasury and upgrades collectively, with thresholds that determine who actually governs.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-116Cosmos SDK
Coordinated upgrades and migrations
A sovereign chain upgrades at an agreed block height: a validator running the wrong version forks alone.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-117Cosmos SDK
Testing a Cosmos application
From keeper unit tests to integration tests on a simulated network: the only thing separating a shippable chain from a prototype.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-118Cosmos SDK
CosmWasm I — contracts on a sovereign chain
Opening your chain to third-party WebAssembly code: execution model, entry points, state, and the question of who may deploy.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-COSMOS-119Cosmos SDK
CosmWasm II — integrating with native modules
Making contracts and native modules talk to each other, and deciding what must stay in the protocol rather than move into a contract.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-COSMOS-120Cosmos SDK
IBC I — clients, connections, channels
The most widely deployed interoperability protocol, broken into its three layers. Each answers a distinct trust question.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-COSMOS-121Cosmos SDK
IBC II — token transfer between chains
IBC's founding use case, and its main subtlety: the token you receive is not the original token, and its worth depends on the path it took.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-COSMOS-122Cosmos SDK
Operating an IBC relayer
A relayer carries packets without being able to forge them — but if it stops, funds get stuck. Critical infrastructure with no privilege.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-COSMOS-123Cosmos SDK
Interchain Accounts and Queries
Beyond value transfer: controlling an account on a remote chain, and reading its state verifiably.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-COSMOS-124Cosmos SDK
Shared security between chains
Borrowing an established chain's validator set instead of building your own: what that choice changes about the sovereignty model.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-COSMOS-125Cosmos SDK
Cosmos capstone: a sovereign chain connected over IBC
Deliver a complete sovereign chain answering a real use case, and connect it to a second chain over IBC, relayer included.
Expert · 6 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-AVAX-101Avalanche
Avalanche architecture
A primary network that secures, application networks that build on it: the structure and what it implies for a builder.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-AVAX-102Avalanche
P, X and C chains: three distinct roles
A platform that separates validator coordination, asset exchange and contract execution into three specialised chains.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-AVAX-103Avalanche
Snowman consensus and repeated sampling
A consensus family that reaches agreement not by global vote but by repeatedly polling a small sample — and the properties that follow.
Intermediate · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-104Avalanche
Tooling: the command line and a local network
The tool that compresses into minutes what takes days elsewhere — and why you must know what it does on your behalf.
Intermediate · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-105Avalanche
Deploying your first Avalanche L1
Moving from a shared network to one that belongs only to your application: dedicated block space, your own rules, validators still to find.
Intermediate · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-106Avalanche
Genesis and L1 configuration
The file that fixes the network's initial state and economic rules. Nearly everything is decided there, and nearly nothing corrected afterwards.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-107Avalanche
Precompiles and execution customisation
Extending the virtual machine with native code: the route to features a contract cannot deliver at acceptable cost.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-108Avalanche
Fee economics on an application chain
On your own chain you set the price of execution. Too high and nobody comes; too low and anyone can saturate it.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-109Avalanche
Permissioned L1s and institutional requirements
Restricting who validates, who deploys and who transacts: the configuration public institutions expect, and what it costs in decentralisation.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-110Avalanche
Managing an L1 validator set
The question fast deployment hides: who validates your chain, at what price, and what happens when they stop.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-111Avalanche
Deploying an application on your L1
Reusing the Ethereum toolchain on a network whose rules you control, and measuring what changes when you are alone on your chain.
Intermediate · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-112Avalanche
Custom virtual machines I — concepts
Leaving the EVM model behind: defining for yourself what a transaction, a block and a state transition mean in your domain.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-AVAX-113Avalanche
Custom virtual machines II — implementation
Implementing the state transition specified in the previous workshop, and running it on a real network.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-AVAX-114Avalanche
Cross-chain messaging I — foundations
Making two L1s of the same ecosystem talk: what the validators' aggregated signature proves, and what it does not.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-AVAX-115Avalanche
Cross-chain messaging II — a distributed application
Building an application whose state lives on two chains, and taking seriously what happens when a message never arrives.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-AVAX-116Avalanche
Running validators in production
Going from a local network to a node that must stay up: hardware, networking, keys, monitoring, procedures.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-AVAX-117Avalanche
Monitoring and upgrading an L1
A production application chain must be watched and evolved: metrics, alerts, upgrades coordinated across validators.
Advanced · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-AVAX-118Avalanche
Security review of an L1
Putting your own chain under scrutiny before someone else does: genesis, permissions, fees, bridges, operations.
Expert · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-AVAX-119Avalanche
Interfaces and user-facing integration
A chain with no users proves nothing: connecting wallets, indexers and interfaces to a network nobody knows yet.
Advanced · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-AVAX-120Avalanche
Avalanche capstone: an application L1 in service
Deliver an L1 that is configured, validated, monitored, carrying an application and linked to a second chain by cross-chain messaging.
Expert · 6 h · 3 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-TIA-101Celestia and modular blockchains
The modular thesis
Why separate a blockchain's functions instead of stacking them in one protocol, and the conditions under which that separation holds.
Beginner · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L1-TIA-102Celestia and modular blockchains
The data availability problem
A block producer can publish a valid header while withholding the data. That long-underrated problem is what this whole track rests on.
Intermediate · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-103Celestia and modular blockchains
Data availability sampling
How a light node reaches near-certainty that data exists while downloading only a tiny fraction of it.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-104Celestia and modular blockchains
Namespaced Merkle trees
The structure that lets a rollup prove it received all of its data — and only its own — without reading the whole block.
Advanced · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-105Celestia and modular blockchains
Running a light node
The node you can run on a modest laptop that genuinely contributes to the network's security.
Intermediate · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-106Celestia and modular blockchains
Full nodes and bridge nodes
The nodes that store and serve the data light nodes sample — and without which sampling has nothing to sample.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-107Celestia and modular blockchains
Publishing and retrieving blobs
The data availability layer's elementary operation: writing data into a namespace, then proving you got it all back.
Intermediate · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-108Celestia and modular blockchains
Integrating the availability layer into an application
Consuming data availability as a service from application code, with serious error and retry handling.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-109Celestia and modular blockchains
Rollup architectures
A structured survey of rollups: where computation runs, where disputes settle, where data lives, and who decides the valid chain.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-110Celestia and modular blockchains
Rollup sovereignty: who decides the valid chain
The decisive difference between a rollup that can evolve its own rules and one whose fate a foreign contract arbitrates.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-111Celestia and modular blockchains
Building a sovereign rollup I — execution
Defining the rollup's state machine: transactions, state transition, blocks. The part that belongs entirely to the team building it.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-112Celestia and modular blockchains
Building a sovereign rollup II — data publication
Wiring the state machine to the availability layer: publishing every block, and proving none was withheld.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-TIA-113Celestia and modular blockchains
Building a sovereign rollup III — sync and fork choice
Ensuring anyone can rebuild the same chain from the published data — the operational definition of sovereignty.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-TIA-114Celestia and modular blockchains
Fraud proofs and validity proofs
Two opposite answers to one question: how a verifier knows a state transition is correct without re-executing all of it.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-TIA-115Celestia and modular blockchains
The sequencer: centralisation, censorship and exit
The component almost every rollup centralises, and the mechanisms that stop that centralisation becoming a power to block.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-TIA-116Celestia and modular blockchains
The economics of data availability
For a rollup, data publication is the dominant cost line. Controlling it is an architecture skill, not a late optimisation.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-TIA-117Celestia and modular blockchains
Operating a rollup in production
Monitoring a modular stack means monitoring several coupled systems: the rollup, the data layer, and the link between them.
Advanced · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-TIA-118Celestia and modular blockchains
Security review of a modular stack
Every boundary between layers is a trust assumption. The review consists of enumerating them all and testing each one.
Expert · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-TIA-119Celestia and modular blockchains
Connecting a sovereign rollup to the wider ecosystem
A sovereign rollup has no settlement contract to act as its bridge: its connection to the outside world must be designed from scratch.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-TIA-120Celestia and modular blockchains
Celestia capstone: a deployed sovereign rollup
Deliver a complete sovereign rollup: state machine, data publication, independent sync, monitoring and a cost model.
Expert · 6 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-XCHAIN-101Interoperable systems engineering
The cross-chain messaging landscape
One reading grid applied to every model: who verifies what, on whose word, and what happens when something fails.
Advanced · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-XCHAIN-102Interoperable systems engineering
Light clients: what is actually verified
The mechanism that makes trust-minimised interoperability possible, and the cost that explains why so many bridges skip it.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-XCHAIN-103Interoperable systems engineering
Relayers: infrastructure without privilege
Those who carry messages without being able to forge them, but whose stopping is enough to strand funds.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-XCHAIN-104Interoperable systems engineering
IBC lab: Cosmos to Cosmos
First of three comparative labs: establish a complete link between two sovereign chains and measure its properties.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-XCHAIN-105Interoperable systems engineering
XCM lab: parachain to parachain
Second comparative lab: messaging under shared security, where transport inherits guarantees the other models must produce themselves.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-XCHAIN-106Interoperable systems engineering
Warp lab: Avalanche L1 to Avalanche L1
Third comparative lab: verification by a validator set's aggregated signature, and what it assumes about that set.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-XCHAIN-107Interoperable systems engineering
Comparative synthesis of the three models
Confronting the three lab records and deriving a defensible selection doctrine, backed by figures.
Expert · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-XCHAIN-108Interoperable systems engineering
Bridges to Ethereum and EVM ecosystems
The ecosystem everyone wants to reach, and the compromises that connection almost always imposes.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-XCHAIN-109Interoperable systems engineering
Data availability as an interoperability substrate
Two chains publishing to the same data layer can verify each other without a bridge: an often-overlooked route.
Advanced · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-XCHAIN-110Interoperable systems engineering
Taxonomy of cross-chain trust models
Building the reference classification BAC architects will use to assess any future solution.
Expert · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-XCHAIN-111Interoperable systems engineering
Asset representation across ecosystems
An asset that crosses three chains is no longer the same asset. Tracking its identity, fungibility and risk at every hop.
Expert · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-XCHAIN-112Interoperable systems engineering
Designing a multichain application
Spreading a system across several chains without producing an unmanaged distributed system: boundaries, consistency, reconciliation.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-XCHAIN-113Interoperable systems engineering
Cross-chain failure modes and recovery
What happens when a message never arrives, arrives twice, or arrives after everyone has given up.
Expert · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-XCHAIN-114Interoperable systems engineering
Heterogeneous architecture: connecting distinct ecosystems
The problem the mandate poses explicitly: designing an architecture that links Polkadot, Cosmos, Avalanche and a modular layer.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-XCHAIN-115Interoperable systems engineering
Interoperability capstone: connected infrastructure
Deliver an infrastructure genuinely interoperable across at least two distinct ecosystems — operated, monitored and documented.
Expert · 6 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SEC-101Blockchain security
Threat modelling a blockchain system
Before securing anything, know against whom: actors, motives, capabilities, budgets. A threat model without an attacker budget is decorative.
Intermediate · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-SEC-102Blockchain security
Keys, custody and multisignature
Key compromise remains the leading cause of real loss. Designing custody that survives losing a person or a device.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-103Blockchain security
Security review methodology
The reference workshop the protocol tracks call into: how to run a reproducible, prioritised and defensible review.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-104Blockchain security
Node and validator hardening
Reducing the exposed surface of a machine that holds signing keys and must stay reachable by its peers.
Advanced · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-105Blockchain security
RPC and API security
The entry point through which a public service exposes its chain, and through which an attacker reaches it without ever touching consensus.
Advanced · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-106Blockchain security
Smart contract security
The recurring vulnerability classes, the tools that detect them, and the precise limit of what a tool can prove.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-107Blockchain security
Software supply chain security
A node compiles hundreds of dependencies. One compromised dependency is enough, and the code you run is no longer the code you read.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-108Blockchain security
Consensus attacks
What it actually takes to attack a consensus — in stake, hardware or network position — and at what price.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-109Blockchain security
Governance attacks
Taking over a protocol without attacking its consensus: buying votes, exploiting apathy, or simply waiting for the right moment.
Expert · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-110Blockchain security
Cross-chain bridge security
Bridges account for most of the sector's historical losses. Understanding why structurally, not accidentally.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-111Blockchain security
Denial-of-service resilience
A chain does not need to be hacked to stop serving: it only needs to become unusable or too expensive.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-112Blockchain security
Incident response and on-chain forensics
What to do in the two hours after a compromise is discovered — and how to reconstruct what happened afterwards.
Expert · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-SEC-113Blockchain security
The secure development lifecycle
Building security into the process rather than bolting it on: review, tests, automated analysis, responsible disclosure.
Advanced · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-SEC-114Blockchain security
Red team exercise on a cohort chain
Two teams, one chain, an announced window: one attacks, the other defends and documents. The security track's moment of truth.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-SEC-115Blockchain security
Security capstone: a full system assessment
Producing the security assessment of a complete blockchain system, from protocol to operations, in a report a client can act on.
Expert · 6 h · 3 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-OPS-101Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Infrastructure as code
A hand-configured server is an irreproducible server. Describing infrastructure as versioned code is the precondition for everything else.
Intermediate · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-OPS-102Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Configuration management
Provisioning a machine is not enough: it must be configured idempotently, so that ten nodes are genuinely identical.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L2-OPS-103Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Continuous integration for a protocol repository
Building protocol-grade Rust or Go is expensive in machine time. Badly designed CI becomes a brake rather than a safety net.
Intermediate · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-104Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Cloud architecture for node infrastructure
Designing the substrate: networking, storage, isolation, cost — accounting for real latency from Central Africa.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-105Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Deploying a production node
The reference workshop every protocol track calls into: a node that starts itself, heals itself and is watched.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-106Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Kubernetes for blockchain workloads
What orchestration brings to a node fleet — and the traps specific to stateful workloads with stable identities.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-107Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Metrics, dashboards and alerts
The reference observability workshop: what a node exposes, what to watch, and what should wake someone at night.
Advanced · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-108Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Logging and incident search
Logs only help whoever can find them: central collection, indexing, retention and cost.
Intermediate · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-109Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
On-call and incident command
The human side of operations: who is paged, who decides, who communicates — and how you learn from an incident.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-110Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Backups, snapshots and state restoration
A backup never restored is not a backup. This workshop is about restoring, not backing up.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-111Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Disaster recovery drill
Total loss of the hosting region. Rebuild the entire infrastructure under time pressure, from repositories and backups alone.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-112Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Public RPC infrastructure
Serving developers without exposing your validators: load balancing, caching, rate limiting and strict isolation.
Advanced · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-113Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Load testing and capacity planning
Knowing your breaking point before users find it, and knowing what it costs to push it further.
Advanced · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-114Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
Secrets management and key infrastructure
Where a validator's keys live, who can read them, and how you rotate them without stopping the service.
Expert · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L3-OPS-115Blockchain infrastructure and DevOps
DevOps capstone: a complete operated infrastructure
Deliver a network's infrastructure: validators, RPC nodes, monitoring, backups, recovery plan — all described in code.
Expert · 6 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-101Blockchain architecture
Founding protocol design decisions
The handful of choices that determine everything else and cannot be replayed: execution model, state model, unit of security.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-102Blockchain architecture
Choosing a consensus
Starting from real constraints — operator count, finality requirement, censorship tolerance — rather than an ecosystem preference.
Expert · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-103Blockchain architecture
Choosing an execution model
Contracts on a shared chain, an application chain, a sovereign rollup: three answers to one need, with three cost and control profiles.
Expert · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-104Blockchain architecture
Token economics and incentive design
Designing a system where honest behaviour is the rational strategy — and showing it by simulation, not assertion.
Expert · 4 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-105Blockchain architecture
Governance architecture
Designing who decides what, within what delays, with what counterweights — including when the operator is a public institution.
Expert · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-106Blockchain architecture
Scaling and data availability strategy
Where to place the constraint as volume grows: execution, state, data or bandwidth — and what each choice really costs.
Expert · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-107Blockchain architecture
Zero-knowledge systems within an architecture
What cryptographic proofs bring to an architecture — confidentiality, verification compression — and their real implementation cost.
Expert · 3 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-108Blockchain architecture
Security architecture of a complete system
Designing security as a whole-system property: trust chains, compartmentalisation, detection, response, continuity.
Expert · 3 h · 2 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-109Blockchain architecture
Enterprise and public-service blockchain architecture
Translating real institutional constraints — data sovereignty, compliance, procurement, continuity — into technical decisions.
Expert · 4 h · 1 prerequisites
- BAC-L4-ARCH-110Blockchain architecture
National capstone: blockchain infrastructure for Cameroon
The curriculum's culmination: design, cost and defend a production blockchain infrastructure answering a real national need.
Expert · 8 h · 2 prerequisites