Technical review and projects

Option A: Programming Project

Timeline

  • Topic proposal: TBA
  • Final submission: TBA

Students should work individually.

Deliverable

  • Proposal (15%): one-pager (one line or a short paragraph) 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 proposal: TBA
  • Final submission: TBA

Technical reports must be done individually.

Deliverable

  • Proposal (15%): one-pager (one line or a short paragraph) including the chosen topic and members in your team.
  • Final report (85%): Format requirement here: [Google doc].

Suggested Format for Final Report

In general, a good paper summary/tech review should answer the following questions:

  • Paper summary
    1. What problem does the paper address?
    2. What approach the paper presents to solve the problem?
    3. How effective does the proposed approach solve the problem?
  • Paper novelty
    1. How is the problem an open problem in the field? What related works are there in the literature?
    2. Are there any technical challenges posed by the aimed problem?
    3. How does the proposed approach overcome the challenges?

A technical review is intended to systematize knowledge on a focused research/technical problem. The following is the suggested structure of final technical review.

  • Section 1 Paper Summaries
    • Subsection 1.1: Summary of Paper P1
      • Problem studied in P1
      • Approach in P1
      • Evaluation in P1
      • What's new in P1
      • Your opnion on the strength and limitation of P2
    • Subsection 1.2: Summary of Paper P2
      • Problem studied in P2
      • Approach in P2
      • Evaluation in P2
      • What's new in P2
      • Your opnion on the strength and limitation of P2
    • ...
    • Subsection 1.n: Summary of Paper Pn
  • Comparative Framework
    • Defining m applicable properties F1, F2, F3, ...
    • The table for comparison (example below) _ Open problems and your prediction of future work.
F1 F2 ... Fm
P1 ...
P2 ...
Pn ...

References

  • Example topics to propose: [link]
  • Course project slides: [link]