Time and Location: T & R (11:00 AM - 12:15 PM) @ TORG 1030 (Blacksburg campus) & 113 (NVC campus)

Instructor: Dr. Thang Hoang (@thanghoang)

• Office Hours: Tues @ 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
• Location: Zoom (announced on Canvas)

Teaching Assistant:

	Tung Le (@tungle)	Arman Riasi (@armanriasi)
Office Hours	Fris @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Mons @ 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Modality	In-person & Zoom	Zoom
Physical Location	MCB 122	-
Zoom link	(announced on Canvas)	(announced on Canvas)

Registered Groups

Link to keep track of the group registration for final project and presentation (only accessible by VT emails).

Assignment

Homework 4 (PDF | TeX ) - Due Apr 30 (Tue) @ 11:59 PM

Homework 3 (PDF | TeX | Code Skeleton) - Due Apr 11 (Thu) @ 11:59 PM

Homework 2 (PDF | Code Skeleton | Test Script) - Due Mar 21 (Thu) @ 11:59 PM

Homework 1 (PDF | TeX) - Due Feb 22 (Thu) @ 11:59 PM

Course Schedule

The schedule may be subject to change as the course proceeds.

#	Date	Topic	Notes
1	Jan 16 (T)	Getting Started(1-end) Blockchain Overview (1-16)
	Jan 18 (R)	Blockchain Overview (cont.) (1-end)
2	Jan 23 (T)	Distributed System (1-26)
	Jan 25 (R)	Distributed System (cont.) (27-end)
3	Jan 30 (T)	Cryptographic Primitives (1-11)
	Feb 01 (R)	Cryptographic Primitives (cont.) (12-38)
4	Feb 06 (T)	Cryptographic Primitives (cont.) (39-58)
	Feb 08 (R)	Cryptographic Primitives (cont.) (58-end) Bitcoin (1-13)
5	Feb 13 (T)	Bitcoin (cont.) (14-35)
	Feb 15 (R)	Bitcoin (cont.) (36-62)
6	Feb 20 (T)	Bitcoin (cont.) (63-77)	Homework 1 due!
	Feb 22 (R)	Bitcoin (cont.) (78-end)
7	Feb 27 (T)	Virtual Mining (1-20)
	Feb 29 (R)	Virtual Mining (21-end)
8	Mar 05 (T)	Spring break (no class)
	Mar 07 (R)	Spring break (no class)
9	Mar 12 (T)	Ethereum (1-)	Presentation Guideline Final Project Guideline
	Mar 14 (R)	Ethereum (1-25)
10	Mar 19 (T)	Ethereum (26-51)
	Mar 21 (R)	Ethereum (52-end)	Homework 2 due!
11	Mar 26 (T)	Privacy-Preserving Blockchain (1-27)
	Mar 28 (R)	Privacy-Preserving Blockchain (28-48)
12	Apr 02 (T)	Privacy-Preserving Blockchain (49-end)
	Apr 04 (R)	No class (Professor got sick)
13	Apr 09 (T)	Synchronous Consensus (1-end)
	Apr 11 (R)	Group presentation (slot 1) Group presentation (slot 2)	Homework 3 due!
14	Apr 16 (T)	Group presentation (slot 3) Group presentation (slot 4)
	Apr 18 (R)	Group presentation (slot 5) Group presentation (slot 6)
15	Apr 23 (T)	Group presentation (slot 7) Group presentation (slot 8)
	Apr 25 (R)	Group presentation (slot 9) Group presentation (slot 10)
16	Apr 30 (T)	Group presentation (slot 11) Group presentation (slot 12)	Homework 4 due!
	May 02 (R)	Group presentation (slot 13) Group presentation (slot 14)

Resources

The best source for this course is research articles that can be found on Google or public repositories such as iacr or arxiv. Some preferred books for cryptography and blockchain are as follows.

Blockchain Textbook

• Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies. Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller and Steven Goldfeder. Princeton University Press, 2016. (draft version here)
• Foundations of Distributed Consensus and Blockchains (free). Elaine Shi. Book manuscript, 2020.

Crypto Textbook

• Introduction to Modern Cryptography (3rd edition). Jonathan Katz and Yehuda Lindell. Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2020.
• A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography (free). Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup. Book manuscript, 2020

Grading Policy

Homework Assignments	50%
Group Presentation	20%
Final Project	30%
Total	100%

Grading Scale

A(93+)   A-(90-92)   B+(87-89)   B(83-86)   B-(80-82)   C+(77-79)   C(73-76)   C-(70-72)   D+(67-69)   D(63-66)   D-(60-62)   F(59-)

Grading will not be curved!
Late submission is NOT allowed unless emergency situation (require doctor's note or police report).

Code of Conduct

This course strictly follows the VT code of conduct.