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

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This course is not offered in the academic year 2019/20