BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, Pilani

Pilani Campus
AUGS/ AGSR Division

FIRST SEMESTER 2023-24

In addition to part I (General Handout for all courses appended to the Time table) this portion gives further
specific details regarding the course.
Course No : BITS F452
Course Title : Blockchain Technology
Instructor-in-Charge : Dr. Amitesh Singh Rajput
Instructor(s) : Dr. Amitesh Singh Rajput (amitesh.singh@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in)

1. Scope and Objective of the Course: The recent developments in blockchain have led to its pervasive
influence, especially in cryptocurrencies, insurance, energy and trade, finance, healthcare, supply chain,
and any other critical fields. With the widespread acceptance of cryptocurrencies and blockchain as its
core technology, both academia and industry are seeing enormous opportunities. Blockchain technology
can be used to develop solutions involving noneconomic transactions. Some of them include IoT,
distributed cloud storage, supply chain management, medicine, ownership, and royalty distribution, and
decentralized autonomous organizations. This course provides a comprehensive understating of essential
concepts involved in blockchain technology and its applications. The course provides fundamental
understandings of blockchain architecture, cryptocurrencies (especially Bitcoin), smart contracts,
consensus algorithms, permissionless and permissioned blockchains, and the development of
decentralized application using Ethereum and Hyperledger. The registered students will become confident
in understanding the existing applications and develop complete end-to-end solutions to the practical
problems using the blockchain concepts. The case studies discussions and projects enable students to
assimilate the concepts better. Finally, the course will also shed some light on the current advancements
in the blockchain and a few topics beyond blockchains such as DAG-based distributed ledgers.

The objectives of the course are:

1. To provide a comprehensive understating of foundational and other essential concepts involved

2. Text Books:
TB: Imran Bashir, Mastering Blockchain, third edition, Packt Publishing, 2020.

3. Reference Books:
R1: Narayanan, Arvind, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, and Steven Goldfeder.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies: a comprehensive introduction. Princeton University Press,
2016.

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 BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, Pilani
Pilani Campus
AUGS/ AGSR Division

4. Course Plan:

Module No. Lecture Session Reference Learning outcome

L1-L5
Blockchain and distributed ledger, blockchain
properties; decentralized, transparent, TB: Ch 1, 2 Students will get a good
01 immutable, and secure. Types of blockchain; overview of blockchain
R1: Ch 0, 1 technology
public, private, and consortium based
blockchain, when to use, and when not to use
blockchain, history of blockchain

L6-L7
Centralized, decentralized, and distributed Introduction to computing
02 TB: Ch 2
systems, decentralization vs distributed, P2P models
systems

L8-L11
Cryptographic hash functions, digital TB: Ch 3, 4 Foundational concepts
03 signatures, public keys as identities, hash required to understand
R1: Ch 1 blockchain data structure
pointers and hash chain and Merkel tree,
consensus mechanisms

L12-L15
TB: Ch 6 Cryptocurrency and how is
04 Cryptocurrency as the first blockchain
application, mechanics of bitcoin, bitcoin R1: Ch 2,3,4,5,6 uses blockchain technology
scripts, storing bitcoins, mining in bitcoin

L16-L17
Consensus mechanisms in
05 Consensus mechanisms, incentivizing and TB: Ch 5
blockchain
mining, distributed consensus (PoW)

L18-L20
Proof of storage, proof of stake, proof of TB: Ch 5
Other consensus mechanisms
06 deposit, proof of burn, proof of activity. R1: Ch 8 with different proof
algorithms for adjusting difficulty and formulation
retargeting. Limitations of bitcoin, alternative Class notes
cryptocurrencies

L21-L26
Smart contracts, introduction to Ethereum, TB: Ch 10, 11,
bitcoin vs Ethereum stack. P2P network in and 12
Ethereum, consensus in Ethereum, scripts in Smart contracts and
07
Ethereum, smart contracts (Ethereum virtual R1: Ch 11 Ethereum
machine). Developing and executing smart
contracts in Ethereum. State and data
structure in Ethereum.

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 BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, Pilani
Pilani Campus
AUGS/ AGSR Division

L27-L33
Need for the consortium. Hyperledger, Consortium based
08 innovation in Hyperledger, smart contracts, TB: Ch 17, 18 blockchain, Hyperledger, and
and distributed applications in Hyperledger, digital tokens
tokenization on blockchain

L34-L40
TB: Ch 21, 22 Case studies/ Enabling
09 Application of blockchain in privacy and
security, IoT and smart cities, business and Class Notes technologies and applications
industry, data management, e-Governance

5. Evaluation Scheme:
Weightage Date & Nature of component
Component Duration
(%) Time (Close Book/ Open Book)
Mid-Semester Test 90 min. 30 TBA Closed Book
Comprehensive Examination 180 min. 40 TBA Open/ Closed Book
Quiz 30 min. 10 TBA Closed Book
Project - 20 TBA Open Book

6. Chamber Consultation Hour:

To be announced in the lecture sessions.

7. Notices: All announcements will be done through Nalanda-AWS. More details shall be shared in the
lecture sessions.

8. Make-up Policy: Make-up will be granted strictly on prior permission and for genuine reasons only.

9. Note: Award of grades would be guided in general by the histogram of marks. If a student does not
produce sufficient opportunity for being assessed, either by missing a component entirely or by not
applying oneself to the task seriously, he/she may be awarded an ‘NC’ report.

Instructor-in-charge
BITS F452