After successful completion of the course, students are able to master the foundations of blockchain technologies, becoming familiar with basic concepts (mining, consensus, etc.) as well as with the techninques underlying modern cryptocurrencies. 

- Introduction to blockchains and cryptocurrencies
- Consensus in synchrony and partial synchrony
- Longest chain consensus and PoW
- Bitcoin specifics
- Economics of blockchains
- Proof of stake
- Payment channels: The Bitcoin Lightning Network and state-of-the-art
- Other scaling techniques (e.g. sharding)
- Privacy

The contents of the course are conveyed via lectures scheduled to take place in presence and deepened in practical assignments to be solved at home.

Lectures are based on slides and research papers that will be made available to students.

If necessary (e.g., in case of increase of Covid cases) we reserve the right to switch to distance learning during the semester.

ECTS Breakdown:
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22h lecture

80h project

44h self-study

 4h (midterm and final) exam
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150h (6 ECTS)
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Written exam and practical assignments. 

Prior knowledge of programming, introduction to computer science, and basic probability theory is required.