Greetings! 

Since the last research update, IC3 researchers studied strategic latency reduction, zero knowledge, mental models for layer-1 and layer-2 systems, and more! If you are an IC3 member, please register for the 2022 IC3 Blockchain Camp (Aug. 1-7) in Ithaca!

2022 IC3 Blockchain Camp: August 1-7 in Ithaca!

IC3 Faculty, Students, Alumni, Fellows, and Partners: Please join us for the 2022 IC3 Blockchain Camp in-person on the Cornell campus in Ithaca, NY! Please note that dates have shifted from the initial announcement. 

See more: IC3 Website

Register: Here

New IC3 Blog post: Strategic Latency Reduction in Blockchain Peer-to-Peer Networks

The authors present Peri, a practical strategy that selects peers with low latencies from a local view of the P2P network. They demonstrate how strategic agents can use Peri to manipulate network latency to their advantage.

Weizhao Tang, Lucianna Kiffer, Giulia Fanti, and Ari Juels

Paper: Arxiv

Gradecast in Synchrony and Reliable Broadcast in Asynchrony with Optimal Resilience, Efficiency, and Unconditional Security will be presented at PODC 2022!

The authors show protocols for gradecast (in synchrony) and reliable broadcast in (in asynchrony). Both protocols achieve statistical security and low round complexity. For messages of size L = O(n log) bits, our protocols obtain the asymptotically optimal O(nL) bit complexity.

Ittai Abraham (VMWare Research) and Gilad Asharov (Bar-Ilan University)

Tweet Thread: Ittai Abraham

Efficient and Adaptively Secure Asynchronous Binary Agreement via Binding Crusader Agreement will be presented at PODC 2022!

The authors present a new abstraction based on crusader agreement called Binding Crusader Agreement (BCA) for solving binary consensus in the asynchronous setting against an adaptive adversary.

Ittai Abraham (VMware Research) Naama Ben-David (VMware Research), Sravya Yandamuri (Duke University)

Blog: Decentralized Thoughts

IC3 Executive Director, Jim Ballingall, gave the talk “IC3, DeFi, and Social Good” at the Avalanche Summit 2022. The talk explores IC3 and its research into DeFi, consensus, transaction ordering, and more.

Patrick McCorry published the blog post “Mental models for L1 and L2” to demystify trust assumptions, system architectures, and agent participation in layer-1 and layer-2 systems.

The ACM CCS 2022 Workshop on Decentralized Finance and Security (November 11th in Los Angeles, USA) is co-chaired by IC3 Alums Fan Zhang (Yale) and Patrick McCorry (Infura). 

Paper (abstract) registration deadline: August 1, 2022

Submission deadline: August 10, 2022

IC3 Alum Mary Maller (Ethereum Foundation) was interviewed on the Zero Knowledge Podcast about trusted set-ups, lookup tables, aggregatable DKGs and what it’s like to work at the Ethereum Foundation. 

Join IC3 Partner Protocol Labs for an event designed to present different scalability approaches being pursued by projects across the blockchain space, and, in the process, to foster new ideas and new collaborations.

Virtual, June 22, 2022 - 13:00-18:00 UTC

Register: consensus-factor.io

AVAILABLE POSITIONS

IC3 Partner Protocol Labs Research is hiring for multiple positions, including a Community Manager, Social Media Manager, Events Manager, and many engineering roles. 

See more and apply via the Protocol Labs Jobs page. 

Please send any new research or presentations to sarahallen@cornell.edu to be included in the next research update.

Best wishes, 

Sarah Allen

IC3 Research Program Manager