The University of Chicago
Department of Computer Science

MPCS 56605/FINM 31400 Course Syllabus

Introduction to Blockchain:  Bitcoin, Ethereum and Smart Contracts
Online Offering Only - No Hyde Park Campus Class

Summer 2023

Instructor:        Mark Shacklette
Office:               Online Zoom Only
Office Hours:    Mondays 2:30 PM - 3:45 PM and by Appt.

email:    mark@cs.uchicago.edu (read hourly or so)
              mshack@post.harvard.edu (read hourly or so)

Teaching staff: 

EVERYONE:  Our discussion platform has moved from Piazza to Ed Discussion via Canvas.  Please access Ed here.  An Ed Discussion Quickstart guide is located here.

SUBJECT	COURSE	TITLE	TIME	BUILDING
324	56605	Introduction to Blockchain:  Bitcoin, Ethereum and Smart Contracts	Monday, 4:10pm - 6:00 PM (CST)	Zoom Online*

*Course is conducted entirely remotely via zoom.

Texts: Required

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction, Narayanan, et. al. Princeton, 2016.  ISBN: 978-0691171692

Building Ethereum Dapps, Roberto Infante, Manning Press, 2019.  ISBN:  978-1617295157

Mastering Ethereum:  Building Smart Contracts and DAPPS, Antonopoulos and Wood, O'Reilly, 2017.  ISBN:  978-1491971949

Hands-On Smart Contract Development with Solidity & Ethereum, Solorio et. al., O'Reilly, 2020.  ISBN:  978-1492045267

Proof of Stake:  The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains, Vitalik Buterin, ed. Schneider, Seven Stories Press, 2022.  ISBN:  9781644212486

Texts: Highly Recommended

Out of the Ether, Matthew Leising, Wiley, 2021, ISBN: 9781119602934

Learn Ethereum, Wu et. al., Packt Publishing, 2019, ISBN: 9781789954111

Recommended Reading

II. PREREQUISITE:

All MPCS students in this course are required to have passed core programming.  No exceptions.  FinMath students are expected to have equivalent experience.

Additionally, the following courses are suggested prerequisites for taking this course.  Those with this or equivalent background will find this course easier going:

Mathematics for Computer Science: Discrete Mathematics (MPCS 50103 or equivalent)
Algorithms (MPCS 55001 or equivalent)

Solid comfort with one (or more) of the following programming languages:  Java (Javascript), C/C++, Python, Ruby, C#, Go, Rust, Objective-C/Swift.   If you have a preferred familiarity with any Functional/Lisp/Haskell dialect (i.e., CLOS, Scheme, Haskell, etc.), we should talk.  Students will learn Solidity during the progression of the course.

All students will need to have available sufficient disk space for chains and test chains.  You will need ~600 Gig available for Ethereum and about ~600 Gig available for Bitcoin, at a bare minimum.  A 3-4 TB external drive will be most helpful. 

For those university students not enrolled in the MPCS or Financial Mathematics:

For those students wishing to audit this course:

III. COURSE DESCRIPTION

V. ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

Students are expected to have read and understood the University's policy on Academic Integrity. This policy is detailed in the Student Manual of University Policies and Regulations, available online at https://masters.cs.uchicago.edu/page/program-policies.
 

VI. METHOD OF INSTRUCTION

Methods include lecture and homework (labs) assignments.  
 

VII. OTHER COURSE INFORMATION

Attendance:

No formal attendance taken.  There may be information presented in class that is not in the texts. You will find the lectures helpful in doing the laboratory exercises.

Make-up Work:

Students are expected to read the assigned texts before class in order to be able to full participate in the discussions and course activities.
 

VIII. METHOD OF EVALUATING STUDENT PROGRESS

Assigned work evaluated as follows:

Grading scale:
 
95-100:     A
90-94:       A-
87.6-89:    B+
83-87.5:    B
80-82.9:    B-
76-79:       C+

Lab Deliverables will be graded on a 12-point basis.  Deliverable due dates are noted on the lab pages.  All labs and homework are due by 4:00 pm on the due date. For instructions about how to submit your lab work using GitHub , see...

All assignments are due as specified on this syllabus and lab and other deliverables.  Any and all lateness will suffer penalties.  The penalty for late labs will be 2.0 points off for each 24-hour period the lab is late, through six days late (6*2.0=12.0).  After six days delay, the lab will no longer be accepted for grading and will receive a 0.

NB: The instructor reserves the right to alter the course contents, dates, times or percentage of credit based on time allowed and class progress through the course material. The instructor also reserves the right to curve grades if he deems it in the best interest of the majority of students.

IX. COURSE SCHEDULE

Articles* (Abbreviations Key for Required texts (see esp. Required Reading under Schedule below):

*Articles starred may be found on the cluster under my pub directory (~mark/pub/56605/pdfs).  All numbers refer to chapters in texts, not pages, unless otherwise noted (as "pp. xxx").

The following abbreviations reference the following works (see esp. Required Reading under Schedule below):

EVERYONE:  Our discussion platform has moved from Piazza to Ed Discussion via Canvas.  Please access Ed here.  An Ed Discussion Quickstart guide is located here.