Course Numbers: TBD
Units: 1
Day and Times: Wednesday 6pm – 8pm
Location: McCone Hall 141
Course Staff: Janice Ng (janiceng@berkeley.edu), Erika Badalyan (ebadalyan@berkeley.edu), Sehyun Chung(sehyun@berkeley.edu), Andrew Kirillov (akirillo@berkeley.edu)

Class Format: 2 hours a week, consisting of lecture and subsequent discussion on relevant topics. Lectures will be on big picture ideas in the blockchain space, and discussions will go in depth on the material and will require participation from everyone. Each student may be required to formulate one question about the lecture material. There will also be regular reading and study material provided.
Communication: Primarily through e-mail. Course e-mail is fun-decal@blockchain.berkeley.edu

Prerequisites: This course have no formal prerequisites. However, blockchain is very technical in nature, so coming into this course with knowledge of computer science or cryptography will be extremely helpful, although not required. If you have any concerns about the nature of this course, do not hesitate to reach out to the facilitators. All are welcome regardless of technical background, and additional resources will be available upon request.

Enrollment: After applying on the decal website (TBD), the facilitators will update you with your enrollment status (accepted or waitlist) as soon as it changes. Entering our class is dependent on obtaining a course entry code, which will be given out after the second week. If you are accepted and attend the first two lectures, we will email you your code and you must enroll in the class within three days or the code will be considered invalid. We will also be enforcing a mandatory attendance policy for the first two classes—you will be dropped if you miss either of these two classes. Additionally, because the first two weeks of lecture are instrumental in building a concrete understanding of cryptocurrency, waitlisted students that have attended the first two weeks of classes will be strongly preferred.

Grading: P/NP. You must get at least a 70% to pass the class – to be clear, a lower score equates to a No Pass. Grading will be based on Homework and Quizzes (30%), Attendance (30%), a Final Paper (30%) and Participation (10%). There will be assigned readings each week, which you should complete in order to do well. If you have any questions regarding grades, email your discussion leader.

Full details in the syllabus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PWUtFXa7DG8ftZkxByAuRu8x6UUoW_ELm1y02VmUqmg

Blockchain at Berkeley EdX Lectures: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqeIoMMTKl9PK9O8BcEpNhQ/playlists

Textbooks: You are free to read from these books, which are both freely distributed and available online. Please do NOT go out and buy them. Some readings may be pulled from these books during the course.

● Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies by Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, and Steven Goldfeder

PDF: https://d28rh4a8wq0iu5.cloudfront.net/bitcointech/readings/princeton_bitcoin_book.pdf

● (Optional) Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos:

PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8lgcDXI8hEfbXFYcTh6aXNqRkk/view?usp=sharing

Source: https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook

● If you have a content-related question: Post in Piazza!
● If you have an administrative question – enrollment, auditing, logistics: fun-decal@blockchain.berkeley.edu