Crawl all the coins (theme)

Blockchains have become popular platforms for trading assets. They are best-known for their two main representatives, Bitcoin and Ethereum, with the recent addition of anonymous payment (ZCash or Monero). Blockchains are operated by tens of thousands of clients, akin to peer-to-peer networks. It is unknown, however, how these networks form and coordinate precisely. As a response, we have built the Blockchain Observatory to monitor these networks. At present, we already have several thousand datasets - and we want more.

In this project, you are going to develop a crawler for one of the many blockchains that are out there and that have reasonable deployment. The crawler will track peers in the network and report its results to a central collector. You will then analyse your data with respect to network formation, cohesion, geographic distribution.

Several projects are available within this theme, with each focusing on one particular network. For this project, you should have very good programming skills and a solid background in networking. Knowledge in security would be benficial, too. But most of all, we want someone who is passionate about what they are doing!

Keywords: blockchain, scan, coding, security

Advisor(s): Ralph Holz

Suitable for: MSc

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