Technical review and projects

Option A: Programming Project

Timeline

  • Topic proposal: Oct. 07, 2021
  • Midterm submission: Nov. 21, 2021
  • Final submission: Dec. 11, 2021

Students can work in groups. But once groups are formed, collaboration is only allowed within the group. More specifically, inter-group collaboration is prohibited. Each group can have no more than 3 people.

Deliverable

  • Proposal (15%): one-pager including the chosen topic and members in your team.
    • Motivation of your proposed systems to build, like why do you want to use Blockchain? What benefit does Blockchain bring in your application
    • Initial system design including system modules and assignment to team members.
  • Mid-term report of project (35%): Mid-term needs to include the following elements
    • System architecture, including detailed system modules, both on chain and off chain.
    • Implementation progress. Describe what modules have already been implemented, which tools used in implementation, if possible, a demo with screenshots of your implemented system so far.
    • Implementation plan. Describe what modules have NOT been implemented yet, and the assignment to team members to further the progress.
    • Be as concrete and specific as possible. Bonus points will be given to students/groups with novel design/applications and concrete demos.
    • Group with a good mid-term report will be given an opportunity to meet the instructor for further advises.
  • Final report/demo (50%): Demo needs to allow other people to reproduce your results.
    • The demo option is to include in your project submission the screenshots (or better yet, video-shot if you have too many screens to show). We may sample some teams (but not all teams) to do the demo in person.
    • The report should have a descriptive title.
    • Describes what applications your system is to support? Why you choose to support this application? Why it matters? and who/what users can benefit from the application?
    • Describe what specific functionalities your system enables (e.g., what's the input/output of your system)? What's the workflow of your system?
    • Describe the system architecture? You may include a figure showing different system components and how they interact.
    • If possible, describe your future plan.

Option B: Technology Review

Timeline

  • Topic selection: Oct. 07, 2021
  • Final submission: Dec. 11, 2021

Technical reports have to be done by individual students.

Deliverable

  • Proposal (15%): one-pager about the chosen topic.
  • Final report (85%): Formal survey of the technology with no less than 10 pages (format: 12-point font size on single-spaced 8.5" x 11" pages). You should clearly lay out different topics studied in your report. For instance, if you survey "techniques for Blockchain throughput", you can have sections for "on-chain techniques" including sharding, new consensus algorithms, etc. and sections for "off-chain techniques" including say payment channels and networks, etc.
    • Here is a more detailed description of technology review: Topics can come from weekly lecture and class discussions as well as papers in the reading list. You are required write a technology review of 10-15 pages, including figures and references.
    • An example: Write a 10-page summary of the current state of work improving Blockchain throughput. The paper should address the following:
      • What is the overall thrust in terms of development and goals, or products and goals of industry in this area?
      • What technical solutions or standards exist: elaborate on them. Include protocols, data formats, and architectures.
      • State what problems remain to be solved and how the developer community is approaching them.
      • List any open problems.

Sample topics

  • Sample topics for both projects and technology review: [link]