Blockchains - Protocols and Techniques for Distributed Trust

This course introduces the technology and protocols behind blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and distributed ledgers, ranging from traditional Byzantine-fault-tolerant consensus in consortium blockchains to censorship-resistant consensus in permissionless cryptocurrencies.

Topics

• Consensus, traditional consensus protocols
• Symmetric cryptography, hash functions, hash chains, and Merkle trees
• Nakamoto consensus
• Bitcoin, UTXO model, scripts
• Ethereum, smart contracts
• Atomic swaps
• Byzantine-resilient (BFT) consensus
• Hyperledger Fabric
• Tokens, ERC-20, and ICOs
• Proof-of-stake consensus
• Governance, meta-consensus, hard forks, and protocol-level consensus
• Public-key cryptography, discrete logarithms, Diffie-Hellman, ElGamal encryption, Pedersen commitments
• Zero-knowledge proofs, statements using discrete logarithms, proofs for equality, range proofs
• Confidential transactions

REFERENCES

• Christian Cachin, Rachid Guerraoui, Luís E. T. Rodrigues: Introduction to Reliable and Secure Distributed Programming (2. ed.). Springer 2011, ISBN 978-3-642-15259-7, pp. I-XIX, 1-367 https://www.distributedprogramming.net/
• Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward W. Felten, Andrew Miller, Steven Goldfeder: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies - A Comprehensive Introduction. Princeton University Press 2016, ISBN 978-0-691-17169-2, pp. I-XXVII, 1-304 http://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/