Lectures

Lecture-1: Introduction. Sep-30-2020

Lecture-2: Primitives and Bitcoin. Oct-5-2020

Lecture-3: The Bitcoin System. Oct-7-2020

Lecture-4: The Bitcoin System 2. Oct-12-2020

Lecture-5: The Bitcoin System 3. Oct-14-2020

Lecture-6: Security proofs (Private Attack). Oct-19-2020

Lecture-7: Throughput and the GHOST algorithm (Beyond the private attack). Oct-21-2020

Lecture-8: Safety beyond the Private Attack. Oct-26-2020

Lecture-9: Liveness, Chain Quality and General Delay. Oct-28-2020

Project ideas (discussed Oct-28-2020):

Project

Lecture-10: Prism: Low-latency confirmation. Nov-2-2020

– Lecture-11: Light nodes, decoupled validity and data availability. Nov-4-2020

Lecture-12: Schemes for throughput improvement. Nov-9-2020

Lecture-13: Beyond Proof-of-work. Nov-16-2020

Lecture-14: Proof-of-stake. Nov-18-2020

Lecture-15: Proof-of-stake 2. Nov-23-2020

Lecture-16: Proof-of-stake 3. Nov-25-2020

Lecture-17: Scaling. Nov-30-2020

Lecture-18: Scaling 2. Dec-2-2020

Lecture-19: Scaling 3 / Networking. Dec-7-2020

Lecture-20: Incentives. Dec-9-2020

Tentative Syllabus

Introduction [1 lecture]
- The Layers of Blockchain
  - Networking, Consensus, Scaling and Applications
- Two Distinct Lens
  - Adversarial: Some fraction of nodes / resources are controlled by a malicious user
  - Game theoretic: Rational users maximizing their incentives
Motivating System: Bitcoin [3 lectures]
- Proof-of-work
- Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin
- Longest-chain protocol
Consensus via Proof-of-resource [5 lectures]
- Different proof-of resource settings: Proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, proof-of-space
- Primitives: Verifiable Random Functions, Verifiable Delay Functions.
- Protocol structures: Randomness update
- Unified security theorems via stochastic processes (branching random walks)
- Tensorized consensus and information-theoretic ideas: Prism
- BFT protocols and Longest-chain protocols: Two Sides of the CAP Thereom
- Breaking the CAP theorem at the user level
Incentive design [1-2 lectures]
- Epsilon-Nash equilibirum and weakly dominant strategies.
- Fruitchains
Scaling Protocols [3-4 lectures]
- Sharded protocols: Multi-consensus and Uni-consensus
- Dynamic game theory: Blackwell approachability
- Coded Information Dispersal
Networking protocols [1-2 lectures]
- Efficiency via multi-arm bandits
- Privacy via non-isotropic rumor spreading
- Permissionless nature
New Properties [2 lectures]
- Privacy and Zero knowledge proof based Blockchains: Overview
- Accountability: Blockchain Forensics
- Fairness: Preventing front-running in the blockchain market
- Responsivity: To Bandwidth and Latency variations
Student Presentations [1 lecture]