This course will take place Mondays and Tuesdays 2-4pm. The first lecture will be on Monday, 16th October, 2-4pm in room SR051.

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 produced by the authors of the book.

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/

Tentative syllabus:

16/17.10.2023: Introduction, history, ledger, Satoshi Nakamoto

23./24.10.2023: Cryptographic basics: cryptographic hashing, digital signatures

30./31.10.2023: Simple cryptocurrency coins: GoofyCoin and ScroogeCoin
                          Ledger vs. Blockchain (Chap. 3.1),
                          Bitcoin and Ethereum P2P network, distributed consensus

06./07.11.2023: Consensus, operation of mining, probabilistics of mining, difficulty (Chap. 2),
                          Numbers in today's systems, mining pools (5.4)

15./16.11.2023: Bitcoin mechanics, types of transactions (Chap. 3)

20./21.11.2023: Bitcoin mining, mining pools (Chap. 5)

27./28.11.2023: Bitcoin anonymity, mixing services, zero coin, zero cash (Chap. 6)

04./05.12.2023: Bitcoin community, legal aspects (Chap. 7)

08./09.12.2023 Chainlink: Introduction to Implementing Smart Contracts

11./12.12.2023: Alternative mining, Altcoins (Chap. 8, 9)
 

08.01.2024 - 06.02.2024 Implementation of a smart contract on the Ethereum test network.