Course description: In this course, we provide a comprehensive overview on blockchain technologies and its building blocks. We start by presenting protocols and algorithms for fault-tolerant operation. From there we continue to explore the design space by unrolling the conceptual foundations of blockchains. We will see that many of these building blocks already existed before the introduction of Bitcoin, but at the same time that blockchains in general disrupted the way we perceive distributed systems.

 In addition to conceptual knowledge on blockchains, students will acquire practical skills that are necessary to develop software that interacts with blockchains and/or to integrate ideas from blockchains into their own projects.