Cryptocurrency Engineering and Design (Spring 2018)

• Video lectures
• Captions/transcript
• Lecture notes
• Assignments: problem sets (no solutions)

Bitcoin and other cryptographic currencies have gained attention over the years as the systems continue to evolve. This course looks at the design of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and how they function in practice, focusing on cryptography, game theory, and network architecture.

1. Signatures, Hashing, Hash Chains, e-cash, and Motivation.
2. Proof of Work and Mining.
3. Signatures.
4. Transactions and the UTXO model.
5. Synchronization Process and Pruning.
6. Wallets and SPV.
7. Catena: Efficient Non-equivocation via Bitcoin.
8. Forks.
10. PoW Recap, Other Fork Types.
11. Fees.
12. Transaction Malleability and Segregated Witness.
13. Payment Channels and Lightning Network.
14. Lightning Network and Cross-chain Swaps.
15. Discreet Log Contracts.
16. MAST, Taproot, Graftroot.
17. Anonymity, Coinjoin and Signature Aggregation.
18. Confidential Transactions.
22. Alternative Consensus Mechanisms.
23. New Directions in Crypto.
24. zkLedger.