EE374

A detailed exploration of the foundations of blockchains, What blockchains are, how they work, and why they are secure. Transactions, blocks, chains, proof-of-work and stake, wallets, the UTXO model, accounts model, light clients. Throughout the course, students build their own nodes from scratch. Security is defined and rigorously proved. The course is heavy on both engineering and theory. This course is a deeper investigation into the consensus layer of blockchains while CS 251 is a broader investigation, and it can be taken with or without having taken CS 251. Prerequisites: CS106 or equivalent, significant programming experience; CS103 or equivalent; CS109 or EE178 or equivalent.