This course will take place Mondays and Tuesdays 2-4pm. The first lecture will be on Tuesday, 18th October, 2-4pm in room SR049.

There will be two lectures per week until christmas and then there will be project work.

The lectures will be held in English.

We will study the basics of cryptocurrencies and blockchains. We will look into the history, applications and societal aspects. 

Literature

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction, by Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, Steven Goldfeder

• https://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/ this link has information about the book and links to the lecture videos.

Links:

• https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins
• https://www.coinbase.com/
• https://www.coindesk.com
• https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts
• http://ethviewer.live/
• https://bitnodes.io/
• https://ethernodes.org
• https://etherscan.io/
• https://bitcoin.org/en/
• https://john-mecke.medium.com/5-stories-about-people-who-lost-their-bitcoin-cdaaae329468
• https://vanitygen.net/
• https://www.hedgewithcrypto.com/cryptocurrency-exchange-hacks/
• bitcoinfees.info
• mempool.space
• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools
• https://etherscan.io/charts
• https://consensys.net/blog/blockchain-explained/the-roadmap-to-serenity-2/
• https://rekt.news/leaderboard/

Syllabus:

18.10.2022: Introduction, history, ledger, Satoshi Nakamoto

24./25.10.2022: Cryptographic basics: cryptographic hashing

31.10.//01.11.2022: Cryptographic basics: digital signatures

                    Simple cryptocurrency coins: GoofyCoin and ScroogeCoin

                   Ledger vs. Blockchain (Chap. 3.1), Bitcoin and Ethereum P2P network, distributed consensus

07./08.11.2022 Consensus, operation of mining, probabilistics of mining, difficulty (Chap. 2),

                  numbers in today's systems, mining pools (5.4)

14./15.11.2022 Bitcoin mechanics, types of transactions (Chap. 3)

21./22.11.2022 Bitcoin mining, mining pools (Chap. 5)

28./29.11.2022 Bitcoin anonymity, mixing services, zero coin, zero cash (Chap. 6)

05./06.12.2022 Bitcoin community, legal aspects (Chap. 7)

12./13.12.2022 Alternative mining, Altcoins (Chap. 8, 9)

02.01.2023 - 07.02.2023 Implementation of a smart contract on the Ethereum test network.