Steve Lupien, Director of the University of Wyoming Center for Blockchain and Digital Innovation, co-authored the textbook “Blockchain Fundamentals for Web 3.0” with Mary Lacity, Director of the Blockchain Center of Excellence at the University of Arkansas, and published it in October of last year.
Lupien and Lacity wrote the textbook feeling as though there was insufficient blockchain curriculum available to use in their classrooms.
Blockchain, a system in which a record of transactions and data is maintained across several computers that are linked in a peer-to-peer network, is commonly found in the crypto-mining world.
“I’ve been teaching it now for four years at the university, and the challenge was, because it’s such a new industry, there’s not a lot of academic level material that’s available for faculty,” Lupien said.
“One of the real deficits we saw was, there’s just not the curriculum and the material to really teach effectively. That was really the impetus of it, which was, since we couldn’t find anything that we really liked, we created it.”
Lupien strives to put his students before himself and priced the book at $29. At that price, Lupien does not make any profit off of sales.
“I never want to profit off of my students. All of my proceeds from this book are being donated back to the University of Wyoming. I don’t make a single penny off this book,” Lupien said.
As the World Wide Web is constantly changing, Lupien feels it is necessary to adequately prepare his students with the help of this textbook..
“That’s the kind of stuff we’re teaching here at UW, to prepare our students. We want our graduates to be the best at understanding, ‘how do we take this new technology blockchain, and how do we apply it to everyday business?’”
Over the past eight years, Wyoming has grown into a great state for the blockchain industry according to Lupien.
“Wyoming as a state has taken a significant lead in creating a regulatory environment around this industry as well,” Lupien said.
“Since 2016, Wyoming has passed over 30 laws around attracting blockchain businesses to Wyoming by defining what blockchain is under the law, by creating essentially a regulatory sandbox for blockchain companies to come to Wyoming.”
Additionally, Wyoming was the first state to create banks specifically with blockchain in mind.
“Wyoming created the first new type of financial institution in the US in over 60 years, with something called Special Purpose Institutions Depository banks.” Lupien said.
“They’re Wyoming regulated banks that can operate in this new digital asset space, they can custody digital assets, and they can engage in these new modern payment systems that are going to be developing.”
