Presented by: David Tse (Stanford University), Ari Juels (Cornell Tech), Elaine Shi (Cornell University), Sreeram Kannan (University of Washington)

Blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have created a mechanism for secure decentralized computing in the presence of malicious and selfish nodes. In this tutorial, we will survey some of the fundamental problems in blockchain systems, including security, scalability, confirmation latency and fairness. We will highlight how applied probability, information and coding theory can play an important role in solving these problems. No prior background will be assumed.