ECE 598 PV

Subject offerings of new and developing areas of knowledge in electrical and computer engineering intended to augment the existing curriculum. See Class Schedule or departmental course information for topics and prerequisites. Course Information: May be repeated in the same or separate terms if topics vary.

Principles of Blockchains. Blockchains are decentralized digital trust engines and are a potential replacement to "digital platforms" that we encounter in today's world. Digital platform companies occupy seven of the largest companies in the world based on market capitalization (eg: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent, Facebook). Blockchains came into prominence through Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, introduced in 2009. In the decade since its inception, blockchain designs have evolved significantly, although the corresponding evolution of applications (beyond cryptocurrencies) have not caught up yet. In this course, we study a full-stack design of blockchains: we view the blockchains as a whole integrated system involving networking, incentives, consensus, application layer support. The course is structured into two parts: in the first part (5 weeks) we study the Bitcoin design in detail. Although very secure and remarkably incentive compatible in the real world, Bitcoin ha