Cryptocurrencies & decentralised ledgers

Cryptocurrencies enable the transfer of value entirely digitally between users, protected solely by cryptography. Modern cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, rely on a public distributed ledger (also called a blockchain) to record who owns what. This subject introduces students to the theoretical foundations of cryptocurrencies from cryptography and distributed systems, as well as practical skills for programming applications which interact with decentralised ledgers.

• 1Analyse the use of digital signatures, zero-knowledge proofs and authenticated data structures in the context of cryptocurrency transaction layers
• 2Assess the efficiency and security properties of different approaches to decentralised consensus
• 3Design and optimise adversarial strategies for consensus protocol participants in various models
• 4Implement and deploy decentralised applications (smart contracts) using application-specific programming languages (e.g. Solidity)
• 5Measure performance and scalability constraints in different cryptocurrency designs and evaluate their impact on real-world applications including ecological and social tradeoffs of designs.