Economics and technology of Blockchain

Summary: This course aims to build an understanding from the ground up of the technologies that allow blockchains and distributed ledgers to represent financial assets:

• Fundamentals of the technology

1. Notions of cryptography
2. Peer to peer networks
3. Bitcoin white-paper and implementation

• Applied Techniques

1. Smart Contracts and the representation of financial assets
2. Enterprise blockchains and their consensus algorithms
3. A glimpse to the future : scalability and confidentiality

Professor: Xavier Lavayssière (CEO - ECAN, Blockchain & Emerging Technologies ; Co-Founder & President - Les Bricodeurs)

Student assessment: Project in Python/Solidity + Exam

Summer reading:

• Antonopoulos Andreas (2014) Mastering Bitcoin, chapter 1 and 2 (buy, source code)
• Guerraoui, Rachid (2018) [FR] L’algorithmique répartie : à la recherche de l’universalité perdue (document)
• Guerraoui, Rachid, Kuznetsov, Petr (2018) Algorithms for concurrent systems
• Internet Engineering Task Force (2014) RFC 7231 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (document)
• Raymond, Eric S.(1999) The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary
• Wong, David (2021) Real-World Cryptography (livebook)
• Antonopoulos Andreas, Wood Gavin (2019) Mastering Ethereum (editor, source code)
• Corda Documentation (link)
• Hyperledger Fabric Documentation (link)
• Lavayssiere, Xavier (2019) Libra Compendium (document)
• Nakamoto, Satoshi (2008) Bitcoin Whitepaper (document)
• Song, Jimmy (2019) Programming Bitcoin
• Wood, Gavin (2014) Ethereum Yellow paper