- Foundations of Blockchains
Foundations of Blockchains (15435/15635/15735/18435/18635) Fall 2023

Instructor: Elaine Shi

Tuesday/Thursday 9:30am - 10:50am

TEP 1403 + Zoom

Course Description

In this course, we will learn the mathematical foundations for blockchains. The course will have three main modules which form the scientific foundations for blockchains:

  1. Cryptography: including computational security, encryption, message authentication, digital signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, multi-party computation, Oblivious RAM, and their applications in blockchains

  2. Distributed consensus: including Byzantine broadcast, state machine replication, Bitcoin’s Nakamoto consensus, lower bounds, and incentive compatibility in large-scale consensus

  3. Incentives and mechanism design: including second-price auction, VCG auction, transaction fee mechanism design, game-theoretically secure protocols for blockchains, Miner Extractable Value, DeFi

Students are required to write mathematical proofs for homeworks and exams. We require the students to have mathematical maturity.

Prerequisites:

  • CS students: 15251 or 15210 or 15330

  • ECE students: (18334) or (18335) or (18465) or (18733) or (18202 and 18213) or (18202 and 15513) or (18202 and 18613) or (18202 and 14513)

We will have 1 programming lab, 5 homeworks, 3 mid-terms, and no final.

Course Staff

Instructor: Elaine Shi (please contact me through the private message of Piazza)

TAs:

  • Head TA: Hao Chung (haochung@andrew.cmu.edu)
  • Head Lab TA: Nikhil Lalit Vanjani (nvanjani@cmu.edu)
  • Head Nice TA: Sri Harish Govinda Rajan (sriharig@andrew.cmu.edu)
  • Head Nice TA: Tianyao Gu (tianyaog@andrew.cmu.edu)

When sending an email to TA, please add the course number (one of 15435/15635/15735/18435/18635) you enroll in the email title. For example, "15735: My question is ... "

We use Gradescope to distribute the homework. If you're not registered on Gradescope, please specify your AndrewID and contact Hao Chung (haochung@andrew.cmu.edu) to get the access.

Attendance Options

We encourage in-person attendance. However, in case you are sick, we do offer a couple more options for you option for you:
  • You can attend the lecture synchronously via Zoom.
  • You can also watch the recorded lecture videos asynchronously on Panopto. The Zoom and Panopto links will be posted on Piazza.

Suggested Readings