This project groups aims at designing a robust distributed system for financial transactions that could potentially be used in untrusted distributed environments. The project group consists of two parts, covering the theoretical aspects (first semester) and the practical ascpects (second semester).

For further information on motivation and a brief overview on the project group see the Project group presentation slides.

Submission of first versions of the reports: end of July

Submission of final versions of reports: August 14 (this is a firm deadline!)

The seminar itself will take place as a block seminar expected to happen at September 7-8. All participants are required to be present at the block seminar.

We expect an essay of length 12 to 20 pages written according to the standards of a scientific paper. A simple summary of the referenced literature is insufficient. We expect you to identify the important ideas and proofs of the referenced literature and present them in a correct and appropriate way. The mandatory typesetting for your thesis is LaTeX. All citations must be marked as such and referenced with their origin. Plagiarism directly leads to failure of the seminar (and thus of the PG). Note that plagiarism not only includes copies from the original literature, but also copies from other authors (e.g., other seminar theses) or translations of them.

A list of papers for the seminar can be found in PANDA along with a LaTeX-template that you are free to use for your report.

Title and Abstract

Create a brief abstract that summarizes the problem and the main results. An abstract is kept short (typically 10-20 lines). Also make up a title for your thesis (note that this is not necessarily the title of the used literature or the title from our topic list). It is important to make your own reasoning about a title that describes the thesis best from your point of view.

References

Each thesis contains a reference list that contains at least the literature used in your thesis. In the digital libraries of DBLP, ACM, IEEE, or Springer you can find detailed literature reference information. For conference proceedings or journals ALWAYS specify the pages. For journals, additionally provide volume and journal number. Do not rely on the authors to do their references correct (e.g., reference list in a paper or at the author's website). Sometimes these references are wrong are incomplete. Also do not rely on search engines like CiteSeer or Google Scholar: always verify the correctness and completeness of your references. Especially, it is insufficient if you only provide links to the papers or citations in the web.

Further Reading

For further reading we advice

• Style - 10 Lessons in Clarity an Grace
  University Library Signature: DLW1336
• Elements of Style
  Free Online Version available here
  University Library Signature: DLY1271
• Grammatically Correct
  University Library Signature: ENI2642
• Three Sins of Authors in Computer Science and Math