2nd week (2019.09.24.)
Bitcoin deep-dive, Proof of work and various miner strategies (e.g. selfish mining, merged mining etc.)1st Homework: Deadline: 2019.10.08. 14:14 CEST. Submit by e-mail!
3rd week (2019.10.01.)
Security and Privacy of Bitcoin: selfish mining, anonymity issues The selfish mining classic paper.4th week (2019.10.08.)
Ethereum and programming in Solidity. A little bit more lightweight introduction to Ethereum. 1st homework submission deadline!5th week (2019.10.15.)
Szilagyi Peter's list of known contract vulnerabilities and exploits. Thinking like an attacker: A brief history of the DAO disaster;One of many possible Solidity intros. Feel free to use your favourite. This is just a suggestion.
Solidity Language Documentation
Nice Solidity Hacking exercises! Highly advised!
Homework 2. Submission deadline: 2019. November 5. 14:14 CEST by mail
6th week (2019.10.22.)
Privacy issues of blockchains and proposals to solve it (mixing, confidential transactions, ZKPs). Privacy-preserving currencies: Monero and ZCashA Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names
Zero-link protocol by Adam Ficsor (nopara73)
Current privacy-enhancing scene for account-based cryptocurrencies
7th week (2019.11.05.)
Scaling blockchains: Layer-2 technologies: LightningHow does Lightning Network work by Rene Pickhardt
State channels by Patrick McCorry
8th week (2019.11.12.)
Cross-chain interoperability and (fair) cross-chain atomic swapsXCLAIM: Trustless, Interoperable Cryptocurrency-Backed Assets
On the optionality and fairness of atomic swaps
2nd homework submission deadline!9th week (2019.11.19.)
There was no class!10th week (2019.11.26.)
Random beacons, randomness on the blockchain, VDFs and applications;Bitcoin as a randomness source
Proof-of-delay and randomness beacon for Ethereum
Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs)
Simple Verifiable Delay Functions
Efficient Verifiable Delay Functions
11th week (2019.12.03.)
Cryptographic accumulators, Logarithmic Accumulators (Merkle Trees). RSA accumulators. Stateless Blockchains. Benedikt Buenz's slides. Applications of Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). Giving a high-level perspective of potential applications of ZKPs.12th week (2019.12.10.)
Oracles: the problem of connecting a blockchain with the physical world! Andrew Miller's lecture on the topic! Algorithmic stablecoins: MakerDAO and the DAI ecosystem; Short intro to the topic13th week (2019.12.17.)
Showcasing your project/paper! (15 mins each + 3 mins Q&A) If you don't have a project/paper pls contact me!IMPORTANT: Exceptionally lecture starts at 14:00. Pls send me your slides no later than 12:00!!!
Stefano: will introduce his own Lightning Network Project
Kimsukha: how to save Bitcoin against a quantum adversary: Committing to quantum resistance: a slow defence for Bitcoin against a fast quantum computing attack
Erik: Centrally Banked Cryptocurrencies
Aleksandr: TBD
Zihan: Blindcoin: Blinded, Accountable Mixes for Bitcoin
Mohammed:Hierarchical deterministic Bitcoin wallets that tolerate key leakage
Grading
25% Homework + 25% projects + 50% Final exam