| Carl Friedrich Gauß Faculty | Department of Computer Science

Seminar Verteilte Systeme: Blockchain: From Cryptocurrencies to Smart Contracts

Semester

Winter 2017/2018

Winter 2019/2020 Summer 2019 Winter 2018/2019 Summer 2018 Summer 2017 Winter 2016/2017 Winter 2015/2016 Summer 2015 Winter 2014/2015 Summer 2014 Summer 2013 Summer 2012

Module #

INF-VS-041

Programmes

Bachelor Informatik, Master Informatik, Bachelor Informations-Systemtechnik, Master Informations-Systemtechnik, Bachelor Wirtschaftsinformatik, Master Wirtschaftsinformatik

IBR Group

DS (Prof. Kapitza)

Type

Seminar

Lecturer

Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Kapitza
Abteilungsleiter
rrkapitz[[at]]ibr.cs.tu-bs.de
+49 531 3913294
Room 135

Assistants

Signe Rüsch
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
ruesch[[at]]ibr.cs.tu-bs.de
+49 531 3913265
Room 116

Nico Weichbrodt
Externer Doktorand
weichbrodt[[at]]ibr.cs.tu-bs.de
+49 531 3913265
Room 116

Credits

Hours

0+2

Time & Place

*Kick-Off Meeting* Wed., 25.10.2017, 3:00 - 4:30 pm, IZ 105

Weekly meeting time: Wed., 3:00 - 4:30 pm

Certificates

Submission of the essay and successful presentation. The grade is determined by the activity in the seminar as well as the quality of essay and presentation.

Content

Seminar Topics

	Topic	Assistant
	1) Introduction to Blockchain Technologies (BA)	Signe Rüsch
	Do you need a Blockchain? Distributing Trust on the Internet SoK: Research Perspectives and Challenges for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
	2) Current Blockchains: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hyperledger (BA)	Signe Rüsch
	Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system Architecture of the Hyperledger Blockchain Fabric
	3) Architectures of Distributed Ledgers (BA)	Signe Rüsch
	Centrally Banked Cryptocurrencies A Secure Sharding Protocol For Open Blockchains Service-Oriented Sharding in Aspen Transparency Overlays and Applications
	4) Smart Contracts (BA)	Signe Rüsch
	Step by Step Towards Creating a Safe Smart Contract Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts The Ring of Gyges: Investigating the Future of Criminal Smart Contracts
	5) The DAO (BA)	Signe Rüsch
	Decentralized Autonomous Organization To Automate Governance A Call for a Temporary Moratorium on The Dao Thoughts on The DAO Hack
	6) Consensus Protocols: Proof-of-Work (BA/MA)	Signe Rüsch
	The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol: Analysis and Applications On the Security and Performance of Proof of Work Blockchains PermaCoin: Repurposing Bitcoin Work for Data Preservation
	7) Consensus Protocols: Proof-of-Stake (BA/MA)	Signe Rüsch
	PieceWork: Generalized Outsourcing Control for Proofs of Work Cryptocurrencies without Proof of Work Ouroboros Praos: An adaptively-secure, semi-synchronous Proof-of-Stake Protocol
	8) Consensus Protocols: Byzantine Fault Tolerance 1 (BA/MA)	Signe Rüsch
	The Stellar Consensus Protocol: A Federated Model for Internet-level Consensus The Honey Badger of BFT Protocols ByzCoin: Enhancing Bitcoin Security and Performance with Strong Consistency via Collective Signing
	9) Consensus Protocols: Byzantine Fault Tolerance 2 (BA/MA)	Signe Rüsch
	Non-Determinism in Byzentine Fault-Tolerant Replication SmartCast: An Incentive Compatible Consensus Protocol Using Smart Contracts Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreements for Cryptocurrencies
	10) Scalability of Blockchains (MA)	Signe Rüsch
	Bitcoin-NG: A Scalable Blockchain Protocol On Scaling Decentralized Blockchains VerSum: Verifiable Computations over Large Public Logs
	11) Anonymity in Cryptocurrencies (MA)	Signe Rüsch
	A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments among Men with No Names Evaluating User Privacy in Bitcoin Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin
	12) Attacks on Blockchains (BA/MA)	Nico Weichbrodt
	Majority is not Enough: Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable Theoretical Bitcoin Attacks with less than Half of the Computational Power Stubborn Mining: Generalizing Selfish Mining and Combining with an Eclipse Attack
	13) Networking and Network Attacks (BA/MA)	Nico Weichbrodt
	The Bitcoin P2P Network Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin's Peer-to-Peer Network Hijacking Bitcoin: Routing Attacks on Cryptocurrencies
	14) Trusted Execution on Blockchains (MA)	Nico Weichbrodt
	Town Crier: An Authenticated Data Feed for Smart Contracts Teechan: Payment Channels Using Trusted Execution Environments Scalable Byzantine Consensus via Hardware-assisted Secret Sharing Coco Framework Whitepaper
	15) Social and Economic Impact of Blockchains (BA)	Signe Rüsch
	Issues in Designing a Bitcoin-Like Community Currency The Other Side of the Coin: User Experiences with Bitcoin Security and Privacy The Bitcoin Market Potential Index
	16) Cryptography in Blockchains (MA)	Signe Rüsch
	On Bitcoin as a Public Randomness Source Distributed Cryptography Based on the Proofs of Work Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts

Seminar

The talk and essay can be in either English or German. Each participant will take one or more papers under a specific topic. Participants are responsible for a peer review, including:

Attend peer's presentation dry run and give feedback.
Review peer's essay before submission.
Collect questions to peer's presentation during discussion session.

Notes

Please submit the essay as well as your presentation slides. The requirements for presentation and essay are listed as follows:

Presentation and essay in English or German.
Presentation time about 25 minutes.
Essay should comprise about 6 pages.

Each participant is supposed to do further research based on the paper. The supervisors are always glad to help in this case.

The strength of the university depends on academic and personal integrity. In this seminar, essays must be done in your own words. Plagiarism is an offense against the examination regulations.

Templates

The LaTeX template for seminar essay can be found here.

Additional considerations for the design of the essay can be found on the website of IBR.

LaTeX templates for presentation slides can be found here.

Additional considerations for the design can be found on the website of IBR.

Material

The material is only available to registered attendees. In order to register, you need either an IBR POSIX account or a self-activated IBR-y-account. Afterwards you can login to this site.

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Chapter

Slides

Exercises

1. Introduction to Blockchain Technology

2. Current Blockchains

3. Architectures of Distributed Ledgers

4. Smart Contracts

5. The DAO

6. Proof-of-Work

7. Proof-of-Stake

8. Byzantine Fault Tolerance

10. Scalability of Blockchains

11. Anonymity in Cryptocurrencies

12. Attacks on Blockchains

14. Trusted Execution on Blockchains

16. Cryptography in Blockchains

Schedule

Date	Description
[ Subscribe Calendar \| Download Calendar ]
25.10.2017, 15:00	Kick-Off Meeting (IZ Raum 105)
01.11.2017, 15:00	Ausfall (IZ Raum 105)
08.11.2017, 15:00	nur Betreuertreffen (IZ Raum 105)
15.11.2017, 15:00	nur Betreuertreffen und erste Ausarbeitungen (IZ Raum 119)
22.11.2017, 15:00	Präsentation Intro und Current Blockchains (IZ Raum 105)
29.11.2017, 15:00	Präsentation Architectures, Smart Contract, Crypto (IZ Raum 105)
06.12.2017, 15:00	Präsentation The DAO, Proof-of-Work (IZ Raum 105)
13.12.2017, 15:00	Ausfall (IZ Raum 105)
20.12.2017, 15:00	Präsentation Proof-of-Stake, BFT (IZ Raum 105)
27.12.2017, 15:00	Ausfall, Uni geschlossen (IZ Raum 105)
03.01.2018, 15:00	Ausfall, Uni geschlossen (IZ Raum 105)
10.01.2018, 15:00	nur Betreuertreffen (IZ Raum 105)
17.01.2018, 15:00	Präsentation Scalability (IZ Raum 105)
24.01.2018, 15:00	Präsentation Anonymity und Attacks (IZ Raum 105)
31.01.2018, 15:00	Präsentation Trusted Execution, Social Impact (IZ Raum 105)

References

Slides:

On World-Wide-Web, there are different ways to enhance your seminar presentations:

How to Read a Paper, S. Keshav, University of Waterloo
How to Give a Talk, Paul N. Edwards, School of Information, University of Michigan
How to Give a Good Presentation

For the literature review there links might be helpful:

(La)TeX Tips + Tricks

last changed 2020-07-14, 15:34 by Signe Rüsch