Time and Location: T & R (11:00 AM - 12:15 PM) @ TORG 1050 & online

Instructor: Dr. Thang Hoang (@thanghoang)

• Office Hours: Tues @ 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
• Location: Zoom (link announced on Canvas)

Teaching Assistant: Sahil Hamal (@sahilhamal)

Office Hours	Weds @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Weds @ 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Modality	Zoom only	In-person & Zoom
Physical Location	N/A	McBryde 122
Zoom link	(announced on Canvas)

Assignment

Homework 3 (PDF | TeX) - Due Apr 20 (Thu) @ 11:59 PM

Homework 2 (PDF | Code | P1 Test Script) - Due Mar 27 (Mon) @ 11:59 PM (expired)

Homework 1 (PDF | TeX) - Due Feb 23 (Thu) @ 11:59 PM (expired)

DoD Blockchain Project

Description

Course Schedule

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

#	Date	Topic	Notes
1	Jan 17 (T)	Getting Started
	Jan 19 (R)	Blockchain Overview (1-20)
2	Jan 24 (T)	Blockchain Overview (cont.) (21-37)
	Jan 26 (R)	Distributed System (1-34)
3	Jan 31 (T)	Distributed System (cont.) (35-end) Cryptographic Primitives (1-10)
	Feb 02 (R)	Cryptographic Primitives (cont.) (11-28)
4	Feb 07 (T)	Cryptographic Primitives (cont.) (29-45)
	Feb 09 (R)	Cryptographic Primitives (cont.) (46-67)
5	Feb 14 (T)	Cryptographic Primitives (cont.) (68-end) Bitcoin (1-17)
	Feb 16 (R)	Bitcoin (cont.) (18-39)
6	Feb 21 (T)	Bitcoin (cont.) (40-62)
	Feb 23 (R)	Bitcoin (cont.) (63-77)	Homework 1 due!
7	Feb 28 (T)	Professor traveling (no class)
	Mar 02 (R)	Professor traveling (no class)
8	Mar 07 (T)	Spring break (no class)
	Mar 09 (R)	Spring break (no class)
9	Mar 14 (T)	Bitcoin (cont.) (78-96)
	Mar 16 (R)	Bitcoin (cont.) (97-end) Virtual Mining (1-15)
10	Mar 21 (T)	Virtual Mining (cont.) (16-end)
	Mar 23 (R)	Ethereum (1-21)	Homework 2 due extended to Mar 27!
11	Mar 28 (T)	Ethereum (cont.) (22-51)
	Mar 30 (R)	Ethereum (cont.) and DApp (52-end)	Presentation Guideline Final Report Guideline
12	Apr 04 (T)
	Apr 06 (R)
13	Apr 11 (T)
	Apr 13 (R)
14	Apr 18 (T)	#1: Group 9 #2: Group 2 #3:
	Apr 20 (R)	#1: Group 16 #2: Group 7 #3: Group 15	Homework 3 due!
15	Apr 25 (T)	#1: Group 5 #2: Group 1 #3: Group 12
	Apr 27 (R)	#1: Group 6 #2: Group 18 #3: Group 4
16	May 02 (T)	#1: Group 17 #2: Group 10 #3: Group 8
	May 04 (R)	#1: Group 3 #2: Group 13 #3: Group 15	Homework 4 due!

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

LaTeX Resources

User Manual
• LaTeX in 24 hours: a practical guide for scientific writing. Dilip Datta, Springer, 2017.
• The Not So Short Introduction to LATEX2ε (v. 5.03). Tobias Oetiker Hubert Partl, Irene Hyna, and Elisabeth Schlegl, 2021.
• How to Insert Graphics into LaTex Document
Software
• Overleaf is a cloud-based LaTeX editor used for writing, editing and publishing scientific documents. Premium is free through University (required VT email).
• MiKTeX is a free cross-platform TeX distribution for Windows, Linux and macOS.
• MacTeX is a free redistribution of TeX Live for specific Mac users.
• TeXstudio is a free cross-platform IDE to prepare LaTeX document on local machine (Windows, Linux, macOS).

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.