Secure Distributed Computation

Protocols for secure distributed computation, in one form or another, have been around for over 40 years. But over the past 10 years we have witnessed an incredible shift from largely theoretical work to large-scale deployments. This is true both in the realm of robust distributed computing (with the rise of Bitcoin and, subsequently, many other blockchain protocols) as well as in the fields of zero knowledge and secure multiparty computation (with many startups exploring different applications in that space).

This course will be an introduction to some of the foundational results in these fields, assuming prior knowledge of cryptography but no prior background in distributed protocols. As time permits, we will also discuss how these results have been optimized and adapted to run in the real world.

Material

Materials on sciebo (available until 2022-09-25 with the password told in class).