Advanced Topics in Cryptography and Blockchain Technologies - F20

Readings

• Introduction to blockchains, Bitcoin, Proof-of-Work consensus, wallets.
  Bitcoin whitepaper, Bitcoin dev guilde: blockchain, transactions, wallets.


• Cryptographic preliminaries: hash functions, digital signatures, commitment schemes.
  lecture notes from JHU class, patricia tree, Sections 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 10.1, 10.3.3 from Lecture Notes on Cryptography


• Consensus protocols, Proof of Stake, committee selection: Rethinking Large-Scale Consensus, Verifiable Delay Functions, Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreements for Cryptocurrencies


• Ethereum, smart contracts, and applications: Ethereum whitepaper, Ethereum yellowpaper, Solidity docs


• Scaling blockchains, payment channels, interoperability: Lightning, bitcoin lightning, Optimistic Rollups, Arbitrum, Cosmos whitepaper.



• Privacy in blockchains, zero-knowledge proofs, Monero, ZCash: A Fistful of Bitcoins, ZeroLink, zcash, cryptonote


• Decentralized finance and stablecoins: stablecoins, uniswap, compound, A Visual Guide to the Howey Test, Taxation of Proof-of-Stake Protocols