Shumo Chu (shumo@ucsb.edu)
- Foundations of Distributed Consensus and Blockchains (FDCB)
- Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies (BCT, You can find a free version of the earlier draft if you don't want to buy the book)
- Lecture: Tuesday/Thursday 1 PM -2:50 PM
- Office Hour: Tuesday 4PM (till 12th Dec)
Note: this is a tentatvie schedule
| Date | Speaker | Topic | Readings | Event |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 1 | No lecture | |||
| Oct 6 | Chu | Introduction, Cryptographic Primititives | FDCB Chapter 2 | Homework 1 Out |
| Oct 8 | Chu | Bitcoin Primer | Bitcoin White Paper, BCT Chapter 2-3 | |
| Oct 13 | Chu | Consensus I: Byzantine General Problems, Dolev-Strong | FDCB Chapter 3 | Homework 1 Due |
| Oct 15 | Chu | Consensus II: Nakomoto Consensus and the Longest Chain Protocol | FDCB Chapter 6,14 | |
| Oct 20 | Derek Leung (MIT/Algorand) | Consensus III: Speed Up Consensus using Randomness | Algorand Agreement, Algorand System | Project Team Formation |
| Oct 22 | Chu | Ethereum, EVM and Smart Contract | Ethereum Yellow Paper | |
| Oct 27 | Chu | Writing Smart Contracts using Solidity | Solidity Doc | |
| Oct 29 | Chu | Intro to Zero Knoledge Proofs | Lecture by Silvio Micali | Project Proposal Due, Homework 2 Out |
| Nov 3 | Fan Zhang (Duke/Chainlink) | Connecting blockchains with real world using oracles | ||
| Nov 5 | Chu | zkSnark Primer I | Homework 2 Due | |
| Nov 10 | Chu | zkSnark Primer II | ||
| Nov 12 | Chu | zkSnark Applications 1: zkRollup | ||
| Nov 17 | Chu | De-anonymizing the Blockchain and mixing | Project Progress report due | |
| Nov 19 | Chu | zkSnark Application 2: zcash | zerocash | |
| Nov 24 | Jiaping Wang (MSR) | Consensus IV: Speed Up Consensus using Sharding | Monoxide | |
| Nov 26 | No lecture (Thanksgiving) | |||
| Dec 1 | Chu | zkStark: removing trusted setup | ||
| Dec 3 | Victor Ji (Harvard) | Token Economy and Regulation | ||
| Dec 8 | Chu | Extra Office Hour for Project Hacking | ||
| Dec 10 | Project Presentation | |||
| Dec 12 | 11PM PST, Report Due |