Instructor: Arpita Patra (Email: arpita AT iisc DOT ac DOT in )

Timings: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm on Tuesday and Thursday.

Study Material for the course will mostly involve research papers whose references will be provided during the lectures.
Book : “Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies” by Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Andrew Miller and Steven Goldfeder.
Book : (KL) “Introduction to Modern Cryptography” by Jonathan Katz and Yehuda Lindell, second edition 2014, CRC Press.

Quiz 1 to be held on 14th Feb.
Papers for presentation to be submitted for approval by 7th Feb .
Please refer to the guidelines below for the recommended list of topics . Mail us your topic along with the set of papers before the deadline.
First set of presentations to begin on 19th Feb .
Project proposals to be submitted for approval between 18 - 25th Feb .

Projects need to be done in groups of 2.
The papers to be presented should preferably be related to the project.
While discussion among the group is highly encouraged, each paper should be presented by a single student.
Following are the recommended topics for projects/ presentations. Each of them comprises of a bunch of 5 - 6 papers. You are expected to select a topic (which would preferably be the same for your project as well). The goal is to gain a deep understanding of the topic - Accordingly, the presentations should be organized by collecting relevant information from the set of papers. For your reference, the primary author of the papers in the respective area has been mentioned.
1. Algorand (Silvio Micali)
  2. Ouroboros (Aggelos Kiayias)
  3. Sleepy Consensus (Rafael Pass)
  4. Bitcoin Backbone (Juan Garay, Rafael Pass) and Lower Bounds (Rafael Pass)
  5. Traditional Broadcast and Byzantine Agreement Extensions in Dishonest Majority (Rafail Ostrovsky, Arpita Patra) 6. ZK Proof for Blockchain ([1] [2] [3] [4])

Description : Lecture 2 : Network Settings and Introduction to Byzantine Agreement
References : Same as Lecture 1
Date & Time : 9th January

Description : Lecture 5: Crypto Basics - Hash Functions Constructions and Applications
References : KL - Chp 6
Date & Time : 24th January

Description : Lecture 15, 16: Byzantine Agreement & Algorand - Part 2 (Contd.)
References : [Link 1] [Link 2]
Speaker(s) : Protik
Date & Time : 5, 7th March

Description : Lecture 20, 21: Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Algebraic and Non-algebraic Statements
References : [Link 1]
Speaker(s) : Sriram
Date & Time : 21, 26th March