Additional Material
We will add more content here over the course of the lecture. None of this is required to be read, but might be useful to gather some more information.
- Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces: In case you need to review some basic OS concepts. Especially the section on concurrency is relevant to this course.
- Paxos Made Moderately Complex: A great guide to understanding Paxos in particular, and consensus in general.
- Decentralized Thoughts: A blog on various consensus and blockchain-related topics.
- Bitcoin Wiki: More details about the Bitcoin protocol and implementation.
- Ethereum Development Documentation: More infos about the Ethereum protocol and smart contracts.
- Snowball BFT Consensus Visualization: Demonstrates how the Snowball protocol, which Avalanche builds on, works.
Other Interesting Papers
Papers that were mentioned in class but are not part of the curriculum.
- On Scaling Decentralized Blockchains: Discusses block sizes and block creation frequencies, among other things.
Helpful Blogposts
- The Indepth Anatomy of an HTLC: Useful for understanding the inner workings of payment channels.
- Towards 12 Second Block Time: Some more information on the GHOST protocol in Ethereum.