Bitcoin

Cryptography

Cryptocurrency

Wallets

Consensus protocols

State Machine Replication (SMR)

Dynamic availability

Nakamoto consensus

Sybil resistance

Finality

Accountable safety

Ethereum

Decentralized Apps

Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)

Solidity

Stablecoins

Synthetics

Non-fungible token (NFT)

Decentralized Exchanges (DEX)

Automated Market Makers (AMM)

Constant Function Market Makers (CFMM)

DeFi Lending Systems

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)

Crypto Regulation and Policy

Privacy on the Blockchain

zk-SNARK

Payment Channels

State Channels

Recursive SNARKs

Rollups

Miner Extractable Value (MEV)

Blockchain interoperability (Bridging)

Proof of stake

CS 251 Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technologies Stanford University Fall 2022 Stanford's course covers a wide spectrum of blockchain and cryptocurrency concepts, focusing on technical aspects and engineering secure software. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the main case studies, and the course delves into numerous applications, including DeFi, NFTs, and privacy on the blockchain. The course covers all aspects of blockchains and cryptocurrencies, including distributed consensus, smart contracts, economics, scalability, and applications. We will focus on Bitcoin and Ethereum as case studies. The potential applications for blockchains and cryptocurrencies are enormous. The course will cover the technical aspects of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies, and distributed consensus. Students will learn how these systems work and how to engineer secure software that interacts with a blockchain system like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This course is intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. The course assumes a familiarity with computer programming. CS107 (Computer Organization) or equivalent is required. CS111 (Principles of Computer Systems) or equivalent is strongly recommended. To the extent possible, the projects will be done in Python and Solidity. CS255 (Introduction to Cryptography) is helpful but not required; we will introduce concepts from cryptography as needed during class. We will list external reading sources on the [course syllabus page](https://cs251.stanford.edu/syllabus.html). These readings will often serve to expand on what we will discuss in class. They are not a replacement for the lectures. They are also not necessary to be read before coming to lecture, but pre-reading can help in following the lectures.

CS 251 Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technologies

Blockchain

End-to-end encryption

Man-in-the-middle attacks

Public key infrastructure (PKI)

Merkle trees

Certificate Transparency

Anonymous messaging

Encrypted search

Smart contracts

Algorand

Zero-knowledge proof

Zero-knowledge smart contracts

Web3

Multi-Party Computation (MPC)

Cryptocurrency wallets

Backdoor-resilient authentication

Federated learning

CS 294-163: Secure Systems from Decentralized Trust UC Berkeley Fall 2022 This graduate seminar focuses on the development of secure systems built from decentralized trust, including end-to-end encryption systems and secure collaborative learning. It requires a solid introduction to cryptography and systems. Topics include blockchain, smart contracts, and zero-knowledge proofs, among others. This course is a graduate seminar on developing (secure) systems from decentralized trust.

In the past years, there has been much excitement in both academia and industry around the notion of decentralized security, which refers to, loosely speaking, security mechanisms that do not rely on the trustworthiness of any central entity. In only a few years, this area has generated many beautiful cryptographic constructs as well as a tremendous amount of real-world adoption, through blockchain, secure custody of secrets, secure collaborative learning – and now forming the technical backbone of the movement on “web3.0”.

The course will cover topics such as decentralized ledger systems, decentralized authentication and access control, end-to-end encryption systems, secure collaborative learning through secure multi-party computation, and others. For concrete learning, throughout the class we will develop a decentralized trust stack enabling common decentralized trust applications (3 units).  This is an advanced course, requiring a solid introduction to cryptography (CS161 or equivalent) and to systems (CS162 or equivalent). There is no required textbook for this class. You can refer to the [Berkeley CS161 textbook](https://textbook.cs161.org/) to refresh on security concepts and [A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography](http://toc.cryptobook.us/) for cryptography.

CS 294-163: Secure Systems from Decentralized Trust

Computer Security and Cryptography

Diffie-Hellman key exchange

UI Attacks

WPA (WiFi Protected Access)

DNS (Domain Name System)

Malware

Cookies

Memory Safety Vulnerabilities

Pseudorandom Number Generator (PRNG)

Passwords

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)

Transport Layer Security (TLS)

Intrusion Detection

Asymmetric Key Cryptography

x86 assembly language

Cryptographic Hashes

Digital signature

Session Management

Networking

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)

Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks

Message authentication code (MAC)

Call stack

Certificates

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

ARP (Address Resolution Protocol)

UDP (User Datagram Protocol)

Firewalls

Memory Safety

Security Principles

Public-key cryptography

Same-Origin Policy

DNSSEC

Anonymity

SQL Injection

Symmetric-key Cryptography

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)

CS 161: Computer Security UC Berkeley Summer 2022 This course offers an introduction to computer security, including cryptography, operating system security, network security, and software security. It uses case studies from real-world systems. Prerequisites include experience working with large codebases and a basic understanding of modular arithmetic/set notation. Introduction to computer security. Cryptography, including encryption, authentication, hash functions, cryptographic protocols, and applications. Operating system security, access control. Network security, firewalls, viruses, and worms. Software security, defensive programming, and language-based security. Case studies from real-world systems.  The prerequisites for CS 161 are:

- CS 61B (Data Structures), for experience working with large codebases (500–1000 lines of code) and basic data structures. This is relevant for Project 2.
- CS 61C (Machine Structures), for understanding of C memory layout and hex/binary number representation. This is relevant for the memory safety unit (Project 1). All necessary CS 61C content will be reviewed during lecture.
- CS 70 (Discrete Math and Probability Theory), for basic understanding of modular arithmetic/set notation and some mathematical intuition. This is relevant in the cryptography unit. We will review any necessary CS 70 content in lectures, so don’t worry if you don’t feel very comfortable with all the CS 70 material.

We assume basic knowledge of C and Python. Some basic familiarity with Unix systems is helpful for Project 1. Project 2 is done in Go and we won’t have any lectures on Go syntax, so we expect students to be able to learn the basics of the language on their own. The readings are all linked on [the course website](https://su22.cs161.org/) and freely available. The majority of readings come from the [course textbook](https://textbook.cs161.org/), which is freely available for you to use as a study and review resource. All readings are optional (but recommended) unless otherwise indicated.

CS 161: Computer Security

Bitcoin

3 courses cover this concept

CS 251 Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technologies

CS 294-163: Secure Systems from Decentralized Trust

CS 161: Computer Security