General Information
Instructor: Prof. Ronghui Gu
Lectures: 1127 Seeley W. Mudd Building, Thu, 2:10pm ~ 4:00pm
Staff
| Name | Office hours | |
|---|---|---|
| Prof. Ronghui Gu | rg3123@columbia.edu | Thu (04:10-05:10pm) at CSB515 and Zoom |
| Yi Rong | yr2488@columbia.edu | Mon (04:00-05:00pm) at CS TA room and GMeet |
| Ganxiang Yang | gy2333@columbia.edu | Fri (04:00-05:00pm) at CS TA room and GMeet |
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
- 10%: Preliminary project proposal (due on Sept 18)
- 20%: Project proposal (and presentation) (due on Oct 30)
- 20%: Minimum viable product (due on Nov 13)
- 50%: Final project report (and presentation) (due on Dec 04)
TENTATIVE Syllabus (Subject to change!)
| Date | # | Lecture | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sept 04 | 1 | Introduction | |
| Sept 11 | 2 | Bitcoin Mechanics | |
| Sept 18 | 3 | Consensus | Preliminary project proposal |
| Sept 25 | 4 | Ethereum Mechanics (Zoom) | |
| Oct 02 | 5 | Solidity | |
| Oct 09 | 6 | Decentralized Finance I - Stablecoin | |
| Oct 16 | 7 | Decentralized Finance II and Invited speaker: Ella Zhang, head of YZI Labs |
|
| Oct 23 | 8 | Invited speaker: James Zhang, CEO of Jambo |
|
| Oct 30 | Proposal Presentation | Project proposal | |
| Nov 06 | 9 | ZKP in Web3 by Invited speaker: Dr. Xin Gao, founder of Delphinus Lab Prof. Yupeng Zhang, UIUC |
|
| Nov 13 | 10 | Security by Invited speaker: Peiyu Wang, Sr. Partner of CertiK |
MVP |
| Nov 20 | 11 | Scaling the Blockchain and Invited speaker: Stefan Muehlbauer, CFO of A10 |
|
| Nov 27 | Holiday | ||
| Dec 04 | Final Presentation | Final project report |