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Syllabus - Fall 2018

CS1699 Special Topics: Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency

Although the instructor will make a best effort to have the class topic on the day listed, occasionally a change must be made (e.g., a lecture going long, or a guest lecturer unable to make it to class that day). However, these are the topics that will be covered and the expected date that they will be taught.

Week 1 (Week of 27 AUG):

  1. What is a blockchain? What is cryptocurrency?

  2. High-level overview (READING: BCT, Foreword)

    • Short history of digital currency
    • Problems with previous implementations
    • How they were solved by Bitcoin
    • Basics of using Bitcoin (wallets, transactions)

Week 2 (Week of 3 SEP):

  1. Public-key cryptography (READING: BCT, Chapter 1)

    • How does it work?
    • Public and private keys
    • One-way functions

  2. Hashing and cryptographic hashing algorithms - what makes a good hashing algorithm?

    • collision‐resistance
    • hiding
    • puzzle‐friendliness.

Week 3 (Week of 10 SEP):

  1. Blockchain and related data structures

    • Hash pointers
    • Naive blockchain (linked list with hash pointers)
    • Merkle tree (binary tree with hash pointers)

  2. More hashing

    • Merkle-Damgard transforms
    • Digital signatures
    • Public identities

Week 4 (Week of 17 SEP):

  1. Decentralization and Bitcoin (READING: BCT, Chapter 2)

    • Distributed Consensus protocol
    • Attacks on distributed consensus
      • False spending - block creation/modification
      • Denial of service
      • Double-spend attack
      • 51% attack

  2. Proof of Work and mining

    • What are miners doing? (Hash puzzles)
    • Bernoulli trials and Poisson process outcome
    • Transaction fees and block rewards

Week 5 (Week of 24 SEP):

  1. Mechanics of Bitcoin (READING: BCT, Chapter 3 - 3.4)

    • What makes up a transaction?
    • Ledger vs account model
    • Bitcoin scripts
    • Anatomy of a Block (transactions and metadata)

  2. The Bitcoin network (READING: BCT, Chapter 3.5 - 3.6)

    • Block propagation
    • Lightweight (SPV) vs full nodes
    • Hard and soft forks
    • Limitations of the current Bitcoin network, and how to improve

Week 6 (Week of 1 OCT):

  1. MIDTERM 1

  2. Using the Bitcoin network (READING: BCT, Chapter 4 - 4.7)

    • What does it really mean to "own"/"have" some bitcoin?
    • Key management
    • Hot and cold storage
    • Sharing and splitting keys (multi-sig, threshold)
    • Exchanges and Risks of Bitcoin
      • What is an exchange?
      • Counterparty, regulatory, reserve risk
      • Quantum, SHA-256 weakness, or other "unforeseen" attack

Week 7 (Week of 8 OCT):

  1. Mining in-depth (Chapter 5)

    • Specifics on how mining works
    • Mining difficulty (ever-increasing)
    • Hardware (CPU vs GPU vs FPGAs vs ASICs)
    • Mining pools
    • Drawbacks of mining

  2. Bitcoin as Anonymous Currency (READING: BCT, Chapter 6 - 6.3)

    • Anonymity vs Pseudonymity
    • Deanonymization via side channel attacks
    • Taint analysis
    • Mixing

Week 8 (Week of 15 OCT):

  1. NO CLASS ON TUESDAY - HAPPY FALL BREAK

  2. Improving the Anonymity of Bitcoin (READING: BCT, Chapter 6.4 - 6.5)

    • Decentralized Mixing
    • CoinJoin
    • Zerocoin and Zerocash
    • zk-SNARKs and the challenges of a trusted setup

Week 9 (Week of 22 OCT):

  1. Achieving Consensus (READING: BCT, Chapter 7)

    • Kinds of consensus: rules, history, value
    • Bitcoin Core
    • BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals)

  2. Variations on a Theme: Non-SHA256 Puzzles (READING: BCT, Chapter 8 - 8.2)

    • Progress-freeness
    • ASIC-resistant (not ASIC-proof) puzzles
    • Memory-hard puzzles (Scrypt)

Week 10 (Week of 29 OCT):

  1. More variations on a theme: Non-SHA256 Puzzles (READING: BCT, Chapter 8.3 - 8.5)

    • Proof-of-useful-work
    • Non-outsourceable Puzzles
    • Proof-of-stake vs Proof-of-work
    • Problems with Proof-of-stake

  2. Bitcoin as a platform (READING: BCT, Chapter 9 - 9.4)

    • Secure timestamping
    • Burning bitcoin (unspendable transactions)
    • Overlay currencies
    • "Smart property" (colored coins)
    • Bitcoin as a source of randomness

Week 11 (Week of 5 NOV):

  1. MIDTERM 2

  2. Bitcoin applications (READING: BCT, Chapter 9.5)

    • Smart contracts
    • Bitcoin lotteries (e.g. SatoshiDice)
    • Decentralized prediction markets
    • Contract settlement

Week 12 (Week of 12 NOV):

  1. Altcoins (READING: BCT, Chapter 10 - 10.4)

    • What is an altcoin?
    • How to create (story, initial allocation, parameter/code/consensus diffs)
    • Altcoin infanticide
    • Merge mining

  2. A Tour of Altcoins and Bitcoin Maximalism

    • Litecoin - "Silver to Bitcoin's Gold"
    • Dogecoin - Inflationary Bitcoin
    • Ethereum - More powerful scripting language
    • Monero - Anonymous, not pseudonymous, transactions
    • Nano - Distributed Proof of Stake, multiple blockchains
    • What is Bitcoin Maximalism?

Week 13 (Week of 19 NOV):

  1. Atomic Swaps and Sidechains (READING: BCT, Chapter 10.5 - 10.6)

    • Cross-chain swap protocol
    • Sidechains - "Altcoins on Bitcoin"
    • SPV proofs
    • Transfer contesting
    • PoW sampling via PoW skiplists

  2. NO CLASS - THANKSGIVING BREAK

Week 14 (Week of 26 Nov):

  1. GUEST LECTURE - Wenchao Wang - Solidity and Smart Contract Security

  2. MIDTERM 3

Week 15 (Week of 3 Dec):

  1. Societal Impacts and the Future of Blockchain Technology (READING: BCT, Chapter 11)
  • Decentralization of institutions
  • Blockchain interaction with the "real world"
  • Economic impact
  • Political impact
  • Recent changes and roadmap of Bitcoin (Segregated Witness a.k.a. SegWit, Bitcoin / Bitcoin Cash fork, Lightning Network)
  • Current political climate and its impact on cryptocurrency
  1. Societal Impacts (discussion class - ATTENDANCE MANDATORY)
  • DUE: Blockchain Impact Paper