Blockchains

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to the technology that powers blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. We will cover the key cryptographic tools that enable blockchains – collision-resistant hash functions and digital signature schemes. We’ll learn about the architecture of different blockchains, their consensus mechanisms, economics and how to interact with them. The assignments in this course are primarily coding-based. We will learn to read and write from the blockchain using Python libraries, and write our own smart contracts in Solidity. At the end of this course, students should understand the power and limitations of blockchain technology and be able to develop software that interacts with current blockchain platforms.