2024 Curriculum Overhaul (WIP)

[adrianmcli]

Summary

PSE EcoDev had a mini off-site session in February 2024 to work on overhauling the curriculum structure for 2024. The main changes are:

1. Move easy sections to a "pre-requisite" module before program start.
2. The "Practical Track" and "Study Track" will happen in parallel to encourage coding from the start.
3. Certain concepts are "black-boxed" and links are placed in an optional section.
4. Mini-hackathon will be placed in the middle of the program.

New Structure

0️⃣ Week 0 - Pre-requisite Module

Course Info

• About This Course
• Open-Source Culture, Git, and Github
• How to ask questions, where to find help
• How to submit your assignments (PR workflow)
• Course FAQ

Knowledge

• A Primer for ZKPs
• Thought Experiments
• Use-Cases and Applications
• Supplemental materials on ZKPs [optional]
• Number Theory

1️⃣ Week 1 - Cryptographic Basics

Practical

• Getting Started with Circom (syntax + zkrepl)
• Write a circuit to prove input to hash
• Write a circuit to prove private key to public key
• Write a circuit to prove inclusion in Merkle tree
• Write a circuit to prove set membership

Study

• Symmetric vs Asymmetric Encryption (AES, RSA)
• Hash Functions, Merkle Trees
• Digital Signatures (Schnorr)
• DLP-based Public-Key Cryptography (DLP, DH, Elgamal)
• Cryptographic Commitments
• Intro to Elliptic Curve Cryptography
• BLS Signatures (keep this simple and black-boxed)
• Pairing-Based Cryptography (keep this simple and black-boxed)

2️⃣ Week 2 - More Crypto and zkSNARKs

Practical

• Circom Crash Course (build from command line; ZKU course)
• Write a circuit for a token mixer

Study

• KZG Polynomial Commitments (keep this simple and black-boxed)
• Trusted Setups (keep this simple and black-boxed; reference Inevitable Ethereum)
• SNARKs and STARKs
• SNARKs
  • From Computation to ZKPs (use only Vitalik's blog post; arithmetic circuits, R1CS, QAP)
  • Groth16 (keep this simple and black-boxed)
• STARKs (follow Vitalik's blog posts)

3️⃣ Week 3 - Hackathon Week

• Hackathon (More details to follow) #32

4️⃣ Week 4 - PLONK Week

Practical

• Rust Basics #30
• Rustlings

Study

• PLONK (follow Vitalik's blogpost)
• Publish a blogpost on PLONK and present at the end of week

5️⃣ Week 5 - The Frontier (Technologies and Applications)

Practical

• Halo2 (do 0xParc course: Intro to Circuit Ex. Part 1, 6 hrs)
• Halo2 Step by Step

Study

• FHE
• MPC
• Semaphore, Bandada
• TLSNotary
• ZKEmail

Weeks 6 to 8

These remaining 3 weeks will be purely about contributing to Good First Issues.

Reference Pictures from Off-Site

Practical Track

Study Track

[nooma-42]

Let's make it a ticket table with checkbox

[andyguzmaneth]

@adrianmcli will this be merged into the repo? It'd be nice to tag as releases the versions and see 2023 vs 2024 vs 2025 curriculum versions :)

[nooma-42]

We've reorganized the folder and make 2023 2024 separate

@adrianmcli will this be merged into the repo? It'd be nice to tag as releases the versions and see 2023 vs 2024 vs 2025 curriculum versions :)