General Information

Instructor: Prof. Ronghui Gu
Lectures: MATH 417 and Zoom, Thu, 4:10pm ~ 6:00pm

Staff

Name Email Office hours
Prof. Ronghui Gu rg3123@columbia.edu Wed (01:00-02:00pm) at CSB515 and Zoom
Xuheng Li xuheng@cs.columbia.edu Mon (02:00-03:00pm) at CSB 501 and GMeet
Kele Huang kele@cs.columbia.edu Thu (04:00-05:00pm) at CSB 501

Note: For any general questions related to assignments and projects, please send emails to the following TA mailing list using your Columbia email address:

Gu4115TA@lists.cs.columbia.edu

Overview

The potential applications for blockchains and cryptocurrencies are enormous. The course will cover the technical aspects of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies, and distributed consensus. Students will learn how these systems work and how to engineer secure software that interacts with a blockchain system like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The general goal of this course is to help you understand the challenges and solutions to engineer blockchain and Web3 apps. If you are interested in doing research or a startup in this emerging area, this course will hopefully get you started.

Grades

TENTATIVE Syllabus (Subject to change!)

Date # Lecture Video Due
Sept 05 1 Introduction Video  
Sept 12 2 Bitcoin Mechanics Video  
Sept 19 3 Consensus Video Preliminary project proposal
Sept 26 4 Ethereum Mechanics Video  
Oct 03 5 Programming in Solidity Video  
Oct 10 6 Decentralized Finance I Video  
Oct 17   Proposal Presentation Video Project proposal
Oct 24 7 Decentralized Finance II Video  
Oct 31 8 Privacy Video  
Nov 07 9 Security I and
Invited speaker:
Raullen Chai, founder of IoTex		    
Nov 14 10 Security II
Invited speaker:
Peiyu Wang, Security Expert of CertiK		 Video MVP
Nov 21 11 Scaling the Blockchain
Invited speaker:
Lou Yu, Head of CertiK Ventures		 Video  
Nov 28   Holiday    
Dec 05   Final Presentation   Final project report