EE 465: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technologies (Spring 2026)

• Instructor: Saravanan Vijayakumaran
• Schedule: Slot 6, Wednesday and Friday (11:05am - 12:30pm)
• Location: EEG 302

Slides

• Bitcoin Introduction
• Hash Functions
• Bitcoin Transactions
• Group Theory
• Elliptic Curve Cryptography in Bitcoin

Course Content

• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
  • Proof-of-Stake Consensus
  • Smart Contracts
  • Decentralized applications
• Blockchain Privacy
  • Zcash
  • Monero
  • Tornado Cash
• Blockchain Scalability
  • Layer 2 Technologies
  • Optimistic Rollups
  • Validity Rollups aka ZK Rollups
• Zero-Knowledge Proofs
  • Succinct Non-interactice Arguments of Knowledge (SNARKs)
  • Rank-1 Constraint Systems (R1CS)
  • Domain Specific Languages for R1CS
    • Circom

Grading Policy

• Relative grading
• No audits
• 80% attendance required to avoid DX grade
• 30% Assignments, 70% Exams
• Assignments
  • Assignments will involve programming in
    • Python
    • Solidity
    • Javascript
    • Circom
• Exams
  • A few sheets of notes will be allowed in exams