What is this?

While planning the Chaincode Residency, we put considerable effort into finding the best resources and creating a curriculum around Bitcoin protocol development. If you have interest in this, we have also published a similar resource for Lightning protocol development.

Bitcoin is constantly evolving, and so we expect maintenance of this document to be an ongoing task. We could use your help. Please consider opening a pull-request or opening an issue to keep this document relevant.

There are three portions to this curriculum:

1. Study Groups designed to provide grouped subjects that you can either complete bookclub style or alone.
2. Seminar Videos recorded during the Summer 2019 Chaincode Residency.
3. Bitcoin Syllabus a collection of resources grouped by subjects.

Seminar Videos

Topic	Link
Network partitioning & network level privacy attacks	https://youtu.be/StnOVBbIpD8
Undocumented P2P Design of Bitcoin Core	https://residency.chaincode.com/presentations/bitcoin/P2P_Design_Bitcoin_Core.pdf
Researching P2P privacy attacks	https://youtu.be/qKNEUfnYue0
Security Models	https://youtu.be/6gGcS4N5Rg4
Alternative UTXO Set Proposals	https://youtu.be/F3BCP0wiYOw
Fee estimation	https://youtu.be/PYA1f2xlIOM
Malleation Exercise	https://github.com/dongcarl/malleability-exercise
Advanced SegWit	https://youtu.be/JgNgnwF9hfY
Wallet Development in Bitcoin Core	https://youtu.be/j0V8elTzYAA
Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions	https://github.com/achow101/residency-trezor-t/
Breaking Bitcoin Core	https://residency.chaincode.com/presentations/bitcoin/Breaking_Bitcoin.pdf

Bitcoin Syllabus

Subject	Topic	Sources
Introduction	White Paper	Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Introduction	If I'd Known What We Were Starting (2017)	If I'd Known What We Were Starting
Introduction	Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree (2017)	Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
Introduction	Intro to Blockchain	What is blockchain anyway?
Introduction	The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and the Blockchain	The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and the Blockchain
Introduction	Proof of work	The Anatomy of Proof-of-Work, Bitcoin Developer Reference
Introduction	Difficulty adjustment	What keeps the average block time at 10 minutes?
Introduction	byzantine generals problem	The Byzantine Generals Problem
Introduction	Running a full node	Full Node Question
History & Philosophy of Bitcoin	History of Bitcoin Development	The Incomplete History of Bitcoin Development
History & Philosophy of Bitcoin	What is consensus?	Consensus Algorithms, Blockchain Technology and Bitcoin
Soft Forks & protocol overview	On Unstoppability of Softforks	On Unstoppability of Softforks
Soft Forks & protocol overview	Upgrading the protocol
Soft Forks & protocol overview	Example soft forks	Softfork wiki page
Soft Forks & protocol overview	Forking signaling and Activation	Forks, Signaling, and Activation
Soft Forks & protocol overview	Fork categorization (soft, hard, evil, etc.)	Better Fork Terminology, Forced Soft Forks
Soft Forks & protocol overview	Flag day upgrades	UASF: User Driven Protocol Development
Soft Forks & protocol overview	IsSuperMajority signaling	BIP 65
Soft Forks & protocol overview	BIP9 signaling	BIP9: versionbits In a Nutshell, BIP 9
Soft Forks & protocol overview	BIP148 and BIP149	BIP 148, BIP 149, UASF BIP148 Scenarios and Game Theory,User Activated Soft Forks: the BIP 148 alternative
Soft Forks & protocol overview	BIP91	BIP 91
Security Models	Overview	Overview of Security Concerns,Danger! Bitcoin Threat Models Bitcoin’s Security Model: A Deep Dive, Weaknesses, Speed-Security Tradeoffs in Blockchain Protocols
Security Models	Checkpoints, assumevalid, minimumchainwork	Bitcoin's Diversity of Use-Cases and Security Models,Dave Harding Tweet on assumed valid blocks and minimum chainwork
Security Models	Defining SPV and lightclients	Light Clients
Security Models	BIP 37 (bloom filters)	BIP 37, On the Privacy Provisions of Bloom Filters in Lightweight Bitcoin Clients
Security Models	Neutrino	BIP 157, Neutrino: The Lighter Side of Lightning, Index for BIP 157 block filters, Exploring Neutrino
Security Models	Committed bloom filters	Committed bloom filters for improved wallet performance and SPV security
Security Models	Fraud proofs	Fraud Proofs (2018), Fraud Proofs: Improving the ability of SPV clients to detect invalid chains (gist), Bitcoin Wizards Fraud Proof thread, Improving SPV security with PoW fraud proofs
Security Models	Committed UTXO hashes	UTXO set commitment hash
Security Models	Assume UTXO	Assume UTXO FAQs
Mining	Poisson distribution/Progress-free-ness	The Poisson Distribution and Poisson Process Explained
Mining	Block arrivals in the Bitcoin blockchain	Block arrivals in the Bitcoin blockchain
Mining	Fee Sniping	nSequence and opt-in ReplaceByFee
Mining	Selfish Mining	On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward, Majority is not Enough: Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable, How to Mine Bitcoin Profitably - 2015, Why Bitcoin Mining Pools Aren’t Incentivized to Broadcast Blocks Quickly, Optimal Selfish Mining Strategies in Bitcoin, If There Is an Answer to Selfish Mining, Braiding Could Be It
Mining	51% attacks	Bitcoin’s Attack Vectors: 51% Attacks
Mining	BetterHash	BetterHash Mining Protocol(s)
Mining	No Reward Mining Overview	On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward
Mining	Pool overview	Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems
Mining	Pool Hopping	Pay Per Last (luck) N Shares - PPLNS
Mining	PPS As a Real-World Business Solution	Pooled mining
Mining	Trustless Pools	P2Pool
Mining	Payment Channel Payouts	Payment Channel Payouts: An Idea for Improving P2Pool Scalability
Mining	ASICBoost	AsicBoost: A Speedup for Bitcoin Mining,The Problem with ASICBOOST, Inhibiting a covert attack on the Bitcoin POW function
Mining	BCH Mining/Difficulty Adjustment	Bringing Stability to Bitcoin Cash Difficulty Adjustments, Bitcoin Cash Difficulty Adjustments, Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm Update
Mining	Tumblebit	TumbleBit: An Untrusted Bitcoin-Compatible Anonymous Payment Hub
Attacks	Dust attacks	Dust Attacks
Consensus approaches	Overview	On Consensus
Consensus approaches	GHOST	The GHOSTDAG protocol, Secure High-Rate Transaction Processing in Bitcoin, Modified GHOST Implementation
Consensus approaches	Braiding	Braiding the blockchain
Consensus approaches	Byzantine Fault Tolerance	Byzantine Fault Tolerance
Consensus approaches	Bitcoin-NG/PoW+BFT	Bitcoin-NG: A Scalable Blockchain Protocol
Consensus approaches	Proof of Stake	Proof of Work & Proof of Stake, Proof-of-Stake & the Wrong Engineering Mindset
Consensus approaches	Sidechains	Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains, Sidechains,Proof-of-Work Sidechains
Consensus Changes & Hard Forks	History	A complete history of Bitcoin’s consensus forks
Consensus Changes & Hard Forks	Extension blocks	Auxiliary block: Increasing max block size with softfork, How Bitcoin Extension Blocks Are Backward Compatible — and How They’re Not
Consensus Changes & Hard Forks	Hard forks: Potential dangers	Network Partitioning
Consensus Changes & Hard Forks	Replay protection	Replay Attacks Explained, How to Protect Against Replay Attacks, 2017_optin_replay code on btc1
Consensus Changes & Hard Forks	Wipeout protection
Consensus Changes & Hard Forks	Light nodes	Lightweight node wiki page
Consensus Changes & Hard Forks	Current research (spoonnet, etc)	Spoonnet: another experimental hardfork
Cryptography	The 3 Seminal Events In Cryptography	The 3 Seminal Events In Cryptography
Cryptography	An Overview of Public Key Cryptography	An Overview of Public Key Cryptography
Cryptography	Finite fields, Elliptic Curves, ECDSA, Schnorr	Finite fields, Elliptic Curves, ECDSA, Schnorr Cryptography, Elliptic Curve Cryptography Explained
Cryptography	Bitcoin, Chance and Randomness	Bitcoin, Chance and Randomness
Cryptography	libsecp	State of Cryptography
Cryptography	State of cryptography for blockchains beyond ECDSA and sha256	State of cryptography for blockchains beyond ECDSA and sha256
Cryptography	On Bitcoin Security in the Presence of Broken Crypto Primitives	On Bitcoin Security in the Presence of Broken Crypto Primitive
Cryptography	zero knowledge proofs	Introduction to SNARKs
Cryptography	Bulletproofs	How Bulletproofs Could Make Bitcoin Privacy Less Costly, Bulletproofs: Faster Rangeproofs and Much More, Bulletpoints on bulletproofs, From Zero Knowledge Proofs to Bulletproofs Paper, Building on Bulletproofs
Cryptography	Commitment schemes; pedersen commitments	Commitment schemes, Non-Interactive and Information- Theoretic Secure Verifiable Secret Sharing
Cryptography	Schnorr	Introduction to Schnorr Signatures (video), Simple Schnorr Multi-Signatures with Applications to Bitcoin, Liars, cheats, scammers and the Schnorr signature
Cryptography	Diffie-Hellman	Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange: A Non-mathematician’s explanation
Cryptography	Ring Signatures	Ring signatures
Cryptography	RSA	How RSA Works With Examples
Transactions	Understanding a Raw Bitcoin Transaction	Understanding a Raw Bitcoin Transaction
Transactions	Understanding a Raw Bitcoin Transaction the hard way	Bitcoins the hard way: Using the raw Bitcoin protocol
Transactions	Working with Transactions	Working with transactions (bitcoinj)
Transactions	Transaction format	IsMine function in Bitcoin Core
Transactions	Script	Bitcoin Developer Reference, Advanced Bitcoin Scripting: Transactions & Multisig
Transactions	Signing transactions	Why the signature is always 65 (1+32+32) bytes long?
Transactions	Standardness	Bitcoin Developer Reference, The Bitcoin Non-standard, Definition of Standardness
Transactions	0-conf transactions	Support for zero-confirmation transactions at Bitcoin ATM, Solving the 0-conf problem using forfeits
Transactions	Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions	Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (video), BIP 174, Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions, PSBT Howto for Bitcoin Core, Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction (PSBT) format
Transactions	SIGHASH_NOINPUT	BIP sighash_noinput
Transactions	Compacted Transactions	Compacted Transactions
Transactions	Mempool	How the Mempool Works, Transaction Pools, Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network
Blocks	Merkle Trees	Bitcoin Developer Reference, Weaknesses in Bitcoin’s Merkle Root Construction
Blocks	Data structures in validation	Validation costs and incentives
Blocks	Re-orgs	Handling Re-orgs & Forks
Blocks	Pruning	Block file pruning, Add autoprune functionality PR #5863
SegWit	SegWit	Understanding Segregated Witness, Segregated Witness, Bitcoin Protocol Design: Segregated Witness Revisited, Segwit, Segregated Witness Benefits, Segregated Witness Costs and Risks, The Long Road to SegWit: How Bitcoin’s Biggest Protocol Upgrade Became Reality
SegWit	SegWit and scalabilty	Segregated Witness and deploying it for Bitcoin (2015)
SegWit	Tx malleability	Transaction Malleability Explained, Transaction Malleability Explained, 2014, The Who, What, Why and How of the Ongoing Transaction Malleability Attack, Dealing with malleability, Bitcoin Transaction Malleability and MtGox
SegWit	SegWit and blocksize	Understanding Segwit Block Size
SegWit	Bech32	New address type for segwit addresses
SegWit	Wallet Development	Segregated Witness Wallet Development Guide
Wallet	HD wallet	Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets, Multi-Account Hierarchy for Deterministic Wallets, HD Wallets Explained: From High Level to Nuts and Bolts
Wallet	Wallet BerkeleyDB key value store, data file, environment, logs, flushing	Migration from Berkeley DB to LevelDB
Wallet	Wallet key types: Regular, watch-only, hd	Wallets and Accounts and Keys, Oh My!
Wallet	Wallet key management: Keypools, key metadata, address metadata	Understanding keypool in Bitcoin Core
Wallet	Wallet rescan	How to rescan / reindex wallet?
Wallet	SegWit wallet development	Segregated Witness Wallet Development Guide
Wallet	Fees, fee estimation	The Fee Market Explained, How wallets can handle transaction fees
Wallet	Replace by Fee	Opt-in Full Replace-by-Fee Signaling, Support for zero-confirmation transactions at Bitcoin ATM
Wallet	Coin selection	Coin Selection, Coin Selection (Scaling 2016), An Evaluation of Coin Selection Strategies
Wallet	Hardware wallets with Bitcoin core	Using your hardware wallet with Bitcoin Core
Scripts & Contracts	Scripting & Transactions	Scripts - general & simple
Scripts & Contracts	Scripting & Transactions - P2PKH, P2SH, P2WPKH, P2WSH, Bech32	P2PKH, P2WPKH, P2SH, P2WSH, Bitcoin Multisig and P2SH Transactions
Scripts & Contracts	Script Descriptors	Script descriptors, Support for Output Descriptors in Bitcoin Core
Scripts & Contracts	P2EP	Improving Privacy Using Pay-to-EndPoint
Scripts & Contracts	Smart Contracts on a Dumb Chain; MimbleWimble	Behind MimbleWimble
Scripts & Contracts	Smart Contracts on a Dumb Chain; scriptless scripts	ElementsProject/scriptless-scripts, Scriptless Scripts, Scriptless scripts, adaptor signatures and their applications
Scripts & Contracts	Payment Channels	Understanding Payment Channels,Bitcoin Protocol Design: Payment Channels Revisited, Bitcoin script v2.0
Scripts & Contracts	MAST	What is a Bitcoin Merklized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST)?, Merkleized abstract syntax trees (MAST), MAST Discussion
Scripts & Contracts	ZK SNARKS	SNARKS, Introduction to SNARKs, STARKs: Proofs with Polynomials
Scripts & Contracts	ZK STARKS	Scalable, transparent, and post-quantum secure computational integrity, STARKs: Thank Goodness It's FRI-day, STARKs: Into the Weeds, ZK-STARKs — Create Verifiable Trust, even against Quantum Computers
Scripts & Contracts	Discreet Log Contracts	Discreet Log Contracts, Discreet Log Contracts: invisible smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain
Scripts & Contracts	Miniscript	Miniscript, Policy to Miniscript compiler
Scripts & Contracts	State of script	The State of Script (2018)
Fungibility & Scalability	Overview	The current state of Bitcoin fungibility (2019)
Fungibility & Scalability	On Scaling Decentralized Blockchains	The fundamental tradeoff, On Scaling Decentralized Blockchains
Fungibility & Scalability	Why fungibility is important	Fungibility And Scalability, Fungibility overview, Fungibility as an Attack Vectors:
Fungibility & Scalability	Privacy	Different Approaches to Privacy on the Blockchain, Privacy, Privacy,How much privacy is enough? Threats, scaling, and trade-offs in blockchain privacy protocols, Privacy surrounding the Blockchain
Fungibility & Scalability	Chain analysis	Chainalysis Live Demo, Let's talk about ChainAnalysis, The Bitcoin Big Bang
Fungibility & Scalability	Wallet fingerprinting	Wallet Fingerprinting (wiki)
Fungibility & Scalability	Transaction origin analysis	A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names
Fungibility & Scalability	Coinjoin	Coinjoin wiki page
Fungibility & Scalability	Confidential Transactions	Confidential Transactions,Bitcoins with Homomorphic Value,Confidential Transactions,A Primer to Confidential Transactions, Finessing Commitments
Fungibility & Scalability	Tumblebit	TumbleBit: An Untrusted Bitcoin-Compatible Anonymous Payment Hub, Tumblebit, Tumblebit for the Tumble Curious
Fungibility & Scalability	Coin Jumble	Coin Jumble
Fungibility & Scalability	Schnorr	Schnorr Signatures for Bitcoin - BPASE '18, Flipping the scriptless script on Schnorr, Schnorr Signatures
Fungibility & Scalability	Bellare-Neven	Multi-Signatures in the Plain Public-Key Model and a General Forking Lemma
Fungibility & Scalability	Threshold Schemes	Threshold cryptosystem, Threshold signatures and accountability
Fungibility & Scalability	Signature aggregation	Signature aggregation for improved scalablity, Schnorr signatures and signature aggregation, BLS Multi-Signatures With Public-Key Aggregation
Fungibility & Scalability	MuSig	Key Aggregation for Schnorr Signatures, MuSig: A New Multisignature Standard, Simple Schnorr Multi-Signatures with Applications to Bitcoin
Fungibility & Scalability	Taproot	Taproot and Policy (video), Taproot and graftroot, Taproot: SegWit version 1 output spending rules
Fungibility & Scalability	Graftroot	Graftroot: Private and efficient surrogate scripts under the taproot assumption
The P2P Network	Overview of the p2p network	Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network
The P2P Network	Transaction propagation	On Bitcoin and Red Balloons (incentives)
The P2P Network	Headers-first sync'ing	Headers-First Sync (wiki)
The P2P Network	Advances in Block propagation	Advances in block propagation
The P2P Network	Compact blocks	Compact Blocks FAQ, Compact Block Relay
The P2P Network	Relay networks, FIBRE	Relay networks, The Future of The Bitcoin Relay Network, What is FIBRE?
The P2P Network	Deanonymization in the Bitcoin P2P Network	Deanonymization in the Bitcoin P2P Network
The P2P Network	Dandelion	Dandelion: Redesigning the Bitcoin Network for Anonymity, Dandelion++: Lightweight Cryptocurrency Networking with Formal Anonymity Guarantees, What is the tradeoff between privacy and implementation complexity of Dandelion?
The P2P Network	Peer discovery	Network Discovery
The P2P Network	Topology Discovery	Discovering Bitcoin’s Public Topology and Influential Nodes,TxProbe: Discovering Bitcoin's Network Topology Using Orphan Transactions
The P2P Network	Peer connectivity
The P2P Network	BGP Hijack	Hijacking Bitcoin: Routing Attacks on Cryptocurrencies
The P2P Network	Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin’s Peer-to-Peer Network (2015)	Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin’s Peer-to-Peer Network, Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin’s Peer-to-Peer Network (video)
The P2P Network	Denial-of-Service concepts	Denial of Service (DoS) attacks wiki, Network Splits, "High horsepower" attacks
The P2P Network	Denial-of-Service Prevention	Denial of Service (DoS) Prevention, DoS countermeasures may facilitate network fragmentation attacks
The P2P Network	SPV nodes	Future of SPV tech
The P2P Network	MiniSketch	Minisketch: Reducing Bitcoin Node Bandwidth Requirements, Minisketch: an optimized library for BCH-based set reconciliation
Chain Forks and Failures	BIP 66 Fork and spy mining	Strict DER signatures, What is SPV mining, and how did it (inadvertently) cause the fork after BIP66 was activated?
Bitcoin Core Architecture	Architecture overview	An overview of Bitcoin Core architecture (video)
Bitcoin	Learning-Bitcoin-from-the-Command-Line	Programming with Bitcoin Core and Lightning
Bitcoin Core Contribution	Contributing to Core	Contributing to Bitcoin Core, Introduction to Bitcoin Development, Contributing to Bitcoin Core, a personal account
Bitcoin Core Contribution	Debugging Bitcoin Core	Debugging Bitcoin Core (video)