Dear IC3 Community,
As we close out the year, we want to take a moment to reflect on some of IC3's biggest accomplishments over the past 12 months.
From publishing academic papers to co-organizing SBC in New York, hosting the annual IC3 Blockchain Camp, and launching the first IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator—we've been busy!
Here’s a recap of 2024 and a preview of what's ahead. Plus, we’re sharing important dates below you’ll want to make note of.
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The deadline for the IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator is January 15, 2025. Apply here.
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SBC 2025 will take place at UC Berkeley from August 4 to 6. Registration is now open. Submission deadline for papers is March 13, 2025 at 11:59pm PST.
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James Austgen (Cornell Tech, IC3), Andrés Fábrega (Cornell), Mahimna Kelkar (Cornell Tech, IC3), Dani Vilardell (Cornell Tech, IC3), Sarah Allen (IC3, Flashbots), Kushal Babel (IC3, Monad Labs), Jay Yu (Stanford), Prof. Ari Juels (Cornell Tech, IC3)
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Liquefaction is a wallet platform that uses Trusted Exeuction Environments (TEEs) to encumber private keys and demonstrates how cryptocurrency credentials and assets of a single end-user address can be freely rented, shared, or pooled. This is all done privately, with no direct on-chain traces. The authors point out this type of technology could have sweeping consequences for the industry and undermine the security and economic models of many different applications. They also introduce Complete Knowledge as a countermeasure, which also utilizes TEEs.
Timed Secret Sharing
Alireza Kavousi1 (University College London), Aydin Abadi (Newcastle University), and Philipp Jovanovic (University College London, IC3)
- This paper introduces Timed Secret Sharing (TSS), a scheme that defines lower and upper time bounds for reconstructing secrets in threshold secret sharing. These bounds enable time-sensitive applications, such as mitigating the public goods game problem without relying on incentive mechanisms, by using techniques like short-lived proofs or gradual share release. The proposed constructions are efficient, enhance robustness against shareholder dropout, and establish a trade-off between timing and fault tolerance.
Asynchronous Authentication
Marwa Mouallem (Technion, IC3), Prof. Ittay Eyal (Technion, IC3)
- Authentication has evolved from simple passwords to advanced multi-factor systems, yet identity theft and digital asset heists reveal the need for fundamental improvements. This research formalizes asynchronous authentication, proposing an efficient algorithm to identify optimal mechanisms, surpassing brute-force approaches. Applying this to cryptocurrency wallets shows that incorporating low-quality credentials alongside high-quality ones can significantly enhance security.
Conan: Distributed Proofs of Compliance of Anonymous Data Collection Mingxun Zhou (Carnegie Mellon University, IC3), Associate Prof. Elaine Shi (Carnegie Mellon University, IC3), Prof. Giulia Fanti (Carnegie Mellon University, IC3)
- This work introduces an efficient protocol for anonymous data collection that enforces compliance rules, ensuring users can prove compliance without revealing which data they contributed. Unlike prior methods, this approach scales efficiently with large numbers of clients, making it suitable for applications like anonymous voting and privacy-preserving federated learning. The work introduces a concrete implementation called Conan, demonstrating practical feasibility with minimal communication overhead (2.2–2.6 KB) and fast computation times (0.2–10.6 seconds per client, depending on the application).
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IC3 is gearing up for another exciting Winter Retreat in the Swiss Alps!
The retreat schedule is now available on our website. Please note that the schedule may be updated periodically, so make sure to check the website for the latest version.
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Registration for the Winter Retreat is now closed. For attendees joining us from January 6 to 8, 2025, keep an eye on your inbox for travel directions and important updates.
In the meantime, you can access highlights from our 2024 Winter Retreat.
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IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator | |
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Applications are rolling in for the inaugural IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator and we're looking forward to kicking things off in the new year.
We have a dedicated team of mentors and accelerator leads ready to guide our program participants during the first cohort that will run from February 3 to May 11, 2025.
Head to our website to learn more about the program and who's involved. We also hosted an information session that you can watch on our YouTube channel. Stay tuned for further updates in January.
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Recent PhD graduate Kushal Babel presented his research "PROF: Protected Order Flow in a Profit-Seeking World". Go here to access his paper. | |
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Over 1,200 academic researchers, developers, investors, and entrepreneurs gathered for the annual Science of Blockchain Conference (SBC), held this year at Columbia University.
The conference featured groundbreaking research from some of the brightest minds in the industry, including Ed Felten (Offchain Labs), Sreeram Kannan (EigenLayer), and Ethan Buchman (Informal Systems). A fireside chat with Stanford Prof. Dan Boneh and a16z’s Chris Dixon was another highlight of this year's event.
This was SBC’s first year in New York City, and it delivered an outstanding lineup of research presentations spanning cryptography, decentralized protocols, consensus mechanisms, privacy, and more.
Aside from PROF (see photo above), other IC3 research was presented including:
Visit the SBC 2024 website to explore the full talk schedule and catch all the presentations on our YouTube channel.
| IC3 Blockchain Camp & Hackathon | |
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We were back at Cornell Tech's campus on Roosevelt Island for a week of learning, networking, and hacking this past June. This year’s Camp included research talks about traditional finance's approach to crypto, regulation, cryptography, infrastructure, scalability, and more.
The team behind Boquila claimed the top spot at this year’s hackathon with their innovative proof-of-concept. Their project introduces using multiple public keys to validate users while obscuring identifiable information from third-party websites.
Read our blog for an exclusive interview with two of the team members, Mariarosaria and Jayamine, who share insights on their work and how their idea came to life.
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Boquila team members: Giannis Kaklamanis (Yale University), Vivian Jeng (Ethereum Foundation), Jayamine Alupotha (IC3, University of Bern), Mariarosaria Barbaraci (IC3, University of Bern), Abhimanyu Rawat (UPF Barcelona) | |
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IC3 Research Program Manager Sarah Allen spoke at Devcon in Bangkok on Dark DAOs and Private Coordination. While TEEs offer enhanced security, they can also pose challenges for the industry.
Read the full paper on Dark DAOs here.
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Prof. Ari Juels and PhD student James Austgen spoke with Olga Kharif from Bloomberg about their latest research, Liquefaction: Privately Liquefying Blockchain Assets, and the far-reaching impact it could have on the industry. | |
IC3 researchers penned an op-ed about centralization problems affecting DAOs and proposed VBE (pronounced "Vibe") as a solution. This opinion piece was inspired by IC3 research.
VBE is a family of metrics that doesn't just measure token holdings in individual wallet addresses, but also takes into account clusters of token holders that exhibit similar voting patterns.
| Optimism recently announced it will be applying VBE to Retro Funding data to study vote clustering and potential collusion. You can access the public VBE dashboard that IC3 researchers built to support their research. | |
The intersection of AI and crypto has become a hot topic in academia, as an increasing number of startups explore ways to merge these technologies.
Prof. Ari Juels appeared on CNBC to discuss the "misleading" narratives surrounding the integration of AI and blockchain. He delved into potential concerns that could arise from combining these systems, drawing on insights from his own research.
These themes also inspired his latest thriller novel, The Oracle, released in February.
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This summer, we partnered with The Defiant to release a mini series exploring the intersection of academic research and blockchain R&D.
The series titled "DYOR" featured many of our current and former students and faculty, alongside industry trailblazers such as: Phil Daian (Flashbots), Justin Drake (Ethereum Foundation), Steven Goldfeder (Offchain Labs), Ben Fisch (Espresso Systems), Joe Andrews (Aztec), Eli Ben-Sasson (StarkWare), and SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce.
We tackled a wide range of topics, including mitigating MEV, advancing L2 interoperability, scaling privacy on-chain, regulatory challenges, and much more.
You can catch all the episodes on our YouTube channel.
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Follow us on X and LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on IC3 events and research.
Thanks for reading! Wishing you a safe and happy holiday season.
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The Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3)
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