|
Dear IC3 community,
It’s been a busy winter. This month we filed new research, kicked off the inaugural IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator, and started planning for the 2025 IC3 Blockchain Camp.
Let’s dive in.
| |
|
Thetacrypt: A Distributed Service for Threshold Cryptography
Thetacrypt is a versatile library designed to streamline the use of threshold cryptography in distributed systems. It integrates multiple threshold schemes into a single implementation-agnostic codebase, supporting cryptographic functions like ciphers, signatures, and randomness generation.
Beyond its practical use, Thetacrypt serves as a controlled testbed for evaluating threshold cryptographic protocols under real-world conditions.
Authors: Mariarosaria Barbaraci (IC3), Noah Schmid, Michael Senn (IC3), Prof. Christian Cachin (IC3), all from the University of Bern in Switzerland.
| |
|
AUCIL: An Inclusion List Design for Rational Parties
Inclusion lists are a promising solution to improve censorship resistance in blockchains by limiting the ability of block proposers to unilaterally control transaction inclusion.
This work presents the first formal design that leverages multiple proposers to enhance fairness in transaction selection. By decentralizing transaction proposals, the approach strengthens censorship resilience while maintaining economic efficiency through a structured mechanism that prioritizes high-value transactions.
Authors: Sarisht Wadhwa (Duke University), Julian Ma (Ethereum Foundation), Thomas Thiery (Ethereum Foundation), Barnabe Monnot (Ethereum Foundation), Luca Zanolini (Ethereum Foundation), Fan Zhang (Chainlink Labs, Yale University), and Kartik Nayak (Duke University).
| |
|
NDAI
Disclosing an idea is essential for securing funding or compensation, but it risks misappropriation. NDAI presents a model where Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and AI agents can mitigate—or even eliminate—this hold-up problem. By delegating disclosure and payment decisions to tamper-proof programs, inventors can safely reveal their ideas while ensuring fair compensation, improving efficiency in innovation markets.
Even when full security is infeasible, partial disclosure mechanisms still yield better outcomes. This study suggests that cryptographic and hardware-based solutions can serve as an “ironclad NDA,” offering strong protections for inventors and reshaping policies on R&D, technology transfer, and collaboration.
Authors: Matt Stephenson (Pantera, Columbia University), Andrew Miller (Flashbots, UIUC, IC3), Xyn Sun (Flashbots), Bhargav Annem, and Rohan Parikh
Head to IC3's website to access the latest research.
| |
IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator | |
|
We kicked off the inaugural IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator earlier this month on February 3rd. The projects for Cohort 1 include: Spacecoin (spacecoin.xyz), Sparsity (sparsity.xyz), BitGPT (bitgpt.network), AgentBall, and Prinx (prinx.io).
Our accelerator leads hosted content sessions with Rushi Manche, co-founder of Movement Labs, on venture lifecycle, and Franklin Bi, General Partner at Pantera on PMF. The accelerator participants attended, asked questions, and gained insight from the industry pros.
We have some exciting new content sessions from our contributors coming up, which include talks from Emin Gün Sirer from Ava Labs, Tina He from Base, and Asta Li from Privy. We'll publish some of those sessions to our YouTube channel.
Some of the perks of being in the IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator include:
- Mentorship from IC3’s network & industry contacts
- $10,000 in seed funding for up to two projects that meet specific criteria
- Recruitment assistance to support job placement post-accelerator
- An opportunity for participants to present their projects at the Cornell Blockchain Conference in April
| |
|
PhD student James Austgen joined the Privacy Now podcast to talk about his and his team's Liquefaction research. They also released the codebase on GitHub at the end of January.
Liquefaction is a wallet platform built by IC3 that shows how cryptocurrency credentials and assets of a single end-user address can be freely rented, shared, or pooled. And it does so privately, with no direct on-chain traces.
Go here to listen to the full episode.
| |
2025 IC3 Blockchain Camp & Hackathon | |
|
Save the date: IC3 annual Blockchain Camp is making its way back to Cornell Tech's campus from June 9th to 15th.
This year we are also celebrating IC3’s 10th Anniversary! The planning committee is putting together a special agenda for the camp to acknowledge a decade of IC3 research.
We'll share more details about this year's event and how you can register soon. In the meantime, here’s a look back on 2024’s camp.
| |
The Science of Blockchain Conference (SBC 2025) - U.C. Berkeley, Berkeley, California - Paper submission deadline: March 13, 2025
Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025) - Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - Paper submission deadline: May 28, 2025
Cornell Blockchain Conference - April 25, 2025. Go here to save the date.
| |
We’d like to give a shoutout to new IC3 sponsors: Arbitrum Foundation, Anoma, and 0G Labs. Our research wouldn’t be possible without our incredible partners, so thank you.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can sponsor IC3 research, please reach out to Jim Ballingal, IC3 Executive Director.
Thank you for reading!
| |
Ashley Stanhope,
IC3 Communications & Media Relations
LinkedIn | Twitter | initc3.org
| |
IC3: Advancing the Science and Applications of Blockchains | | | | |
