Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Learning Outcome

1) Familiarise the functional/operational aspects of cryptocurrency ECOSYSTEM. 2) Understand emerging abstract models for Blockchain Technology. 3) Identify major research challenges and technical gaps existing between theory and practice in cryptocurrency domain Syllabus UNIT 1 - The consensus problem - Asynchronous Byzantine Agreement - AAP protocol and its analysis - Nakamoto Consensus on permission-less, nameless, peer-to-peer network - Abstract Models for BLOCKCHAIN - GARAY model - RLA Model - Proof of Work ( PoW) as random oracle - formal treatment of consistency, liveness and fairness - Proof of Stake ( PoS) based Chains - Hybrid models ( PoW + PoS) . ( 6 weeks). UNIT 2 - cryptographic basics for cryptocurrency - a short overview of Hashing, signature schemes, encryption schemes and elliptic curve cryptography ( 2 weeks) UNIT 3 - Bitcoin - Wallet - Blocks - Merkley Tree - hardness of mining - transaction verifiability - anonymity - forks - double spending - mathematical analysis of properties of Bitcoin. UNIT 4 - Ethereum - Ethereum Virtual Machine ( EVM) - Wallets for Ethereum - Solidity - Smart Contracts - some attacks on smart contracts ( 6 weeks for UNIT 3 and 4). UNIT 5 - (Trends and Topics) - Zero Knowledge proofs and protocols in Blockchain - Succinct non interactive argument for Knowledge ( SNARK) - pairing on Elliptic curves - Zcash. ( 2 weeks).

TextBooks

Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, and Steven Goldfeder. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies: a comprehensive introduction. Princeton University Press, 2016. (Free download available)

ReferenceBooks

1. Joseph Bonneau et al, SoK: Research perspectives and challenges for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, IEEE Symposium on security and Privacy, 2015 ( article available for free download) { curtain raiser kind of generic article, written by seasoned experts and pioneers}. 2. J.A.Garay et al, The bitcoin backbone protocol - analysis and applications EUROCRYPT 2015 LNCS VOl 9057, ( VOLII ), pp 281-310. ( Also available at eprint.iacr.org/2016/1048) . ( serious beginning of discussions related to formal models for bitcoin protocols). 3. R.Pass et al, Analysis of Blockchain protocol in Asynchronous networks , EUROCRYPT 2017, ( eprint.iacr.org/2016/454) . A significant progress and consolidation of several principles). 4. R.Pass et al, Fruitchain, a fair blockchain, PODC 2017 ( eprint.iacr.org/2016/916).