Ethereum Interactive Lecture

90-minute first-principles session for BSc students. Browser-only primary path. Sepolia level-up optional.

Greenfield, parallel to Module B / H
90Minutes 28Slides 12Deliverables 7Quiz Qs

What this lecture is

Anchor analogy: Ethereum as a shared, signed, append-only Google Doc where every edit must be signed and pays a small fee. Account = identity. Transaction = signed edit. Smart contract = a doc cell that runs itself. Gas = the per-character fee.

Audience: BSc students of the existing Cryptoeconomics-Blockchain course. Up to 20 in the room. No pre-class prep is required, though a 1-page checklist is shipped for the optional Sepolia level-up.

Format: Lecture-first 60/30 split. The primary workshop runs entirely in the browser on Remix VM (an in-browser chain). Sepolia and the Jupyter notebook are explicit level-ups, never required. An instructor-projected Sepolia anchor demo at minutes 35 to 38 keeps the shared-chain mental model honest.

Concrete artifact every student walks out with: a deployed Hello-World smart contract that returns "Hello, <your name>" on chain.

Five design principles

  1. Every student succeeds, even with locked-down laptops, no Google account, no prior crypto exposure, limited English.
  2. The artifact moment is reachable WITHOUT external network calls. Sepolia and notebook are level-ups, never prerequisites.
  3. Security and honesty come before novelty. Each new tool gets a "what this is, what it sees, what to never do" intro.
  4. Visual coherence with Module B and H of the host repo (same Beamer house style, same footer, same color palette).
  5. First principles means re-derivable after class without slides; re-derivable means students leave with a correct mental model, not just a working artifact.
M

All materials (12 deliverables)

slides + contract + notebook + lab + quiz + instructor kit + a11y
D1Lecture

Beamer slide deck (28 frames)

Madrid theme, matching Module B house style. TikZ diagrams for signatures, transaction anatomy, EVM consensus, Etherscan UI, Remix sidebar. Slide 2 ships the not-financial-advice notice; slide 9 is the TEST WALLET ONLY warning; slide 16 is the private-vs-shared chain diagram; slide 20 names where the Google-Doc analogy breaks; slide 27 is the L2 / account-abstraction appendix.

D2Workshop

HelloWorld.sol contract

Three-line minimal Solidity contract. One public string state variable, no functions, no events. Deploys to Remix VM in under 30 seconds. Sepolia deploy is documented as a level-up only.

D3Take-home

Companion notebook (Colab-runnable)

OFF the in-class critical path. Reads the student's deployed contract by address; decodes the block 46147 historical mainnet transaction. web3.py 6.20.1 pinned. RPC fallback chain across 4 public endpoints for both Sepolia and mainnet.

D4Workshop

Student-facing lab guide

Linear copy-paste-friendly steps from "open Remix" to "read the greeting". Brave / tracker-blocker fallback. Personalize-the-greeting hint so each student deploys a unique contract. German glossary appendix with proper UTF-8 umlauts.

D5Assessment

Auto-graded post-quiz (7 questions)

Concept-based scoring; non-deployers can score 100%. Schema matches the existing assessments/quizzes/ format. Covers Google-Doc analogy limit, private vs shared chain, gas, test-wallet hygiene, first principles vs tooling, EVM determinism, and the phishing playbook.

D6Instructor

Timing sheet (90 min exact)

Six lecture acts of 10 min each plus 4 workshop steps plus a 5-min close. Hard reset checkpoint at minute 50. 90-second physical break at minute 35. Instructor Sepolia anchor demo at minutes 35 to 38. Stragglers' protocol at minute 80.

D7Instructor

Fallback plan (5 failure modes)

Lab Remix block, classroom internet outage, Sepolia anchor demo failure, MetaMask install failure, Colab notebook failure. Each entry: reproduction steps, swap point, post-swap success path, time budget.

D8Security

Security and honesty brief

Five irresponsible patterns to never teach. The TEST WALLET ONLY warning verbatim. The not-financial-advice boxed paragraph for slide 2. Four-pattern phishing playbook (seed prompts, look-alike domains, look-alike Chrome extensions, DM scams) plus a 30-second mental script. Private-vs-shared chain honesty pattern.

D9Pre-class

Pre-class checklist (encouraged, not required)

Three optional steps: install MetaMask, add Sepolia network, request Sepolia faucet. The lecture works WITHOUT any of this; this checklist only enables the optional Sepolia level-up.

D10A11y

Accessibility decisions

Six categories: alt-text strategy for diagrams, color-plus-text status indicators, written-card alternative to think-pair-share, German glossary for non-native English speakers, large-font Solidity listings, screen-reader reading order.

D11Instructor

Sepolia anchor demo assets

Folder + README documenting how to pre-record the 90 to 180 second instructor video and capture the Etherscan screenshot before each class delivery. The recording is the source of truth for the in-class anchor moment, with the live page as a confirmation. Gated by D12 dry-run signoff.

D12Instructor

Dry-run sign-off

13-checkbox template for the instructor's clean-laptop dry-run. Gates the missing mp4 video and Etherscan screenshot from D11. PASS or FAIL verdict slot with placeholders for instructor name and date.

+Reading

Take-home references

Vetted reading list ordered easiest-first: Vitalik whitepaper, ethereum.org Learn, Solidity by Example, Trail of Bits, L2BEAT, EIP-4337 explainer, Chainlist. Plus an explicit "do not read this" list for influencer videos, DM support scams, and urgency-prompt content.

PRDPlan

Product requirements document

The originating PRD (ralplan v2.1 consensus output): 12 user stories with task-specific acceptance criteria, priority order, verification commands per story, ADR with alternatives considered, pre-mortem with three failure scenarios, optimality review.

T

Lecture timing (90 minutes exact)

6 acts + 4 workshop steps + close
MinuteBlockSlidesActivity
00 to 02Room setupn/aPre-load Remix in instructor browser, project on screen
02 to 12Act 1: The shared doc1 to 5Title, not-financial-advice, Google-Doc analogy
12 to 22Act 2: Identity to write6 to 9Accounts, signatures, TEST WALLET ONLY, think-pair-share
22 to 32Act 3: The cost of writing10 to 13Transactions, gas, dollar example
32 to 35Physical break1490-second stand-up-and-look-out-the-window slide
35 to 38Sepolia anchor demo15 to 16Instructor projects pre-recorded mp4 of Sepolia HelloWorld deploy + Etherscan view
38 to 48Act 4: A cell that runs itself17 to 20Smart contracts, EVM, where the analogy breaks, treasure hunt of block 46147
48 to 50Hard reset checkpoint21Instructor projects Remix, "everyone follow along now"
50 to 60Acts 5 and 6 bridge22 to 26Etherscan as a UI on the doc, bridge to HelloWorld preview
60 to 68Workshop step 1n/aOpen Remix, drop in HelloWorld.sol, personalize the greeting
68 to 76Workshop step 2n/aCompile + deploy to Remix VM. Read greeting via deployed-contract panel.
76 to 80Workshop step 3 (optional)n/aSepolia level-up for students with funded MetaMask
80 to 81Stragglers' protocoln/aTA pulls aside any student still without an artifact for a 5-min projector walkthrough
81 to 83Workshop step 4272-minute instructor notebook demo (no student execution)
83 to 88Workshop step 5287-question post-quiz (concept-based; non-deployers can score 100%)
88 to 90Close29 to 30Recap: what is shared, what is private, what to never do
I

For the instructor

before delivering this lecture

1. Record the Sepolia anchor demo. Pre-fund a single instructor Sepolia wallet, screen-record a 90 to 180 second deploy of HelloWorld plus the Etherscan view. Save as ethereum_interactive_lecture/instructor_kit/sepolia_anchor_assets/anchor_demo.mp4. See the recording instructions.

2. Capture the Etherscan screenshot. High-resolution PNG of the Etherscan contract page from the same recording session. Save as etherscan_view.png in the same folder.

3. Run the dry-run signoff. On a clean laptop with no MetaMask, no Python, fresh browser profile. Walk the lab guide top to bottom, time the 90 minutes, fill dryrun_signoff.md with PASS or FAIL.

4. Optional: capture screenshot placeholders. Lab guide references lab_guide_assets/step3_compile.png, step4_deploy.png, step5_read.png. The lab is fully usable without these (steps are described in text), but capturing them on the same browser version students will use polishes the experience.