Pocket Crypto Miner

The Pocket Miner in the classroom

How can the Pocket Miner be used in the classroom?

Learning, oftentimes, is best done in a hands-on and participative way. Not everything can be taught in this way, but many things can, and cryptocurrencies and blockchain thankfully can be taught hands-on with the Pocket Miner. When and where hands-on learning is possible, it is often recognized to be highly effective and beneficial for both the teacher and student alike.

Here I will summarize how the Pocket Miner can be used in the classroom environment to teach key principles and concepts that underlie blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

The Pocket Miner is a solar powered (“green”) pocket friendly device that holds a powerful microcontroller, memory, power management, and WiFi connectivity. It is easily programmed using MicroPython, CircuitPython or C/C++. All the programming tools are free to use and freely available for download and run on Windows, Linux and Mac. Updating the device with new programs can be as simple at dragging a file to a thumb-drive. Many useful blockchain and crypto programs require only, say, a page Python code to explore key concepts, and there is much blockchain code on the Internet that can be run on the device, or ported with minimal effort. Or you can easily write your own programs to support class content. Moreover, because the device fits in students’ pockets, learning outside class can continue while walking around campus; in fact, wherever the sun shines.

Here are some of the key principles and concepts that can be taught using the Pocket Miner:

Blockchain

Hashing and the formation of the blockchain
Processing of transactions / digital ledgers / time-stamping / digital signatures
Consensus / validation / immutability / security
Role of the miners in blockchain / incentives to mine
Solo and pool mining
Decentralization / distributed ledger / Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks
Blockchain attacks (e.g. 51% attack)
Energy and costs of blockchain / trade-offs for PoW, PoS and other mechanisms of consensus
Explore differences in efficiency and energy between software and hardware (SHA-256 in silicon)
Governance / disintermediation / Allow students to play games and experiment with how blockchain works
Given the generality and flexibility (programmability) of the device, you can explore the intersection between
IoT (Internet of Things), blockchain, edge-AI, and green energy. If you can imagine it, you likely can program it.

Cryptocurrencies

Explore various cryptocurrencies and their mining mechanisms
Some real-world cryptocurrencies can be mined directly with the Pocket Miner, albeit with low hash rates
Design and implementation of new coins and tokens for blockchain (class exercise?)
Privacy issues and transparency
Role of wallets as off-blockchain applications (tokens themselves are stored on the blockchain)

And beyond cryptocurrencies (other uses of blockchain) ...

Tokenization and the blockchain / digital assets / NFT / digital identity / voting systems
Smart contracts / DeFi (Decentralized Finance)
IoT devices, limited compute resources, energy consumption and environmental impact

Why a hardware device rather than software on students' laptops?

You might ask: why the Pocket Miner rather than some software on students’ laptops (or a whiteboard)? I would make these points:

Most crypto mining operations today use hardware specific to that task, typically ASIC. To explore the many advantages (for example, energy efficiency) of hardware specific to mining in the classroom, you have to have a device that can implement the same mining operations in both software and hardware. The Pocket Miner has both general purpose CPUS (software) and SHA-256 in silicon (hardware); the Pocket Miner is therefore such a device. Not so the typical laptop.
So much else other than mining is taking place on a laptop that it is impossible to disentangle what else is going on apart from mining. The Pocket Miner is a device dedicated to only mining, so there is no ambiguity.
Nowhere is the above point more relevant than in the case of energy consumption and energy economics of mining. On a laptop, it would be impossible to accurately measure the energy consumption of mining, whereas with the Pocket Miner, such measurements are trivial. Nothing else other than mining is going on.
A laptop typically isn’t powered with solar, so it is not possible to explore the intersection between “green” energy and mining. With the Pocket Miner you can. And, again, much else besides mining is going on with the laptop so how would you measure things?
Don’t underestimate the power of tactile learning — which is to say learning while having a physical device in your hand (or in your pocket!). There is much research to show that interacting with physical objects during the learning process improves that learning (it “sticks” better). In 10 years from now, students will remember how they walked around campus with a pocket device that mined cryptocurrency on the blockchain; which is to say, they will remember the experience, and it is hoped the lessons learned. Can other classes say the same?