International School of Advanced Studies

This curriculum explores blockchain and distributed ledger technology in the field of economics and finance with a multidisciplinary approach. As a notable application, this program will consider socio-economic, legal, organizational, and technological aspects of cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These includes user trust and reputation mechanisms underlying the transition from institutional and centralized currencies to decentralized digital currencies, the emergence of central bank digital currencies, analyzing transactions for anomaly detection, fraud, suspicious behavior (cybercrime), and community analysis, token-based economy business models, techniques for anonymization and de-anonymization, the interaction between cryptocurrencies/NFTs and social media/virtual words, exploring the real-word consequences of virtual money in the metaverse, performance and reliability of blockchain algorithms and implementations, the environmental footprint of digital ledgers, combining game theory, economics, and cryptography to understand the incentive models underlying distributed blockchain protocols. The curriculum will also cover platform economies, smart contracts, and their communication/interaction protocols. Candidates will have the opportunity to explore smart contract specification languages, techniques for analysis and verification of correctness and compliance of smart contract, legal and regulatory aspects, game theory applied to human-algorithms interaction, and the psychology of money. Candidates in this program can also study blockchain in supply chain management for digitalization and certification of commercial documents and NFTs for intellectual property rights.