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Dear IC3 community,
Spring has sprung, and this month we've been busy. We've published new research and welcomed two new members to the IC3 community. We've also been hard at work planning this year's IC3 Blockchain Camp, which is sure to be an unforgettable event.
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Ready Layer One: Functional Regulation for Blockchain Infrastructure
Ready Layer One examines the legal risks facing open-source blockchain developers and highlights how outdated financial regulations are being applied to decentralized technology. The authors argue that open-source Layer 1 DLT (distributed ledger technology) protocols and Layer 2 smart contract protocols function as public digital infrastructure— not financial intermediaries — and should be regulated accordingly. To bridge the gap between current policy goals and regulatory practice, Ready Layer One proposes a functional regulatory framework that targets specific activities, rather than neutral, non-custodial protocols. By treating these technologies as infrastructure, the framework aims to safeguard innovation, protect developer rights, and support U.S. leadership in emerging digital technologies.
Authors: Carla Reyes (SMU Dedman School of Law; IC3), Joseph Cutler (Perkins Coie LLP)
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Market Power and the Bitcoin Protocol
This study analyzes how Bitcoin mining pools manage block capacity to maximize fee revenue. Despite stronger user demand for transaction inclusion, blocks are often underfilled, suggesting that miners may be exercising market power by strategically limiting supply. The authors show that even without 51% control, concentrated mining power can lead to non-competitive outcomes. They provide evidence consistent with mining pools colluding or independently converging on strategies that create artificial scarcity, extracting hundreds of millions of dollars in excess fees. The findings raise concerns that decentralized finance may replicate traditional finance’s dynamics of market power and rent extraction.
Authors: Alfred Lehar (Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary), Christine A. Parlour (Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley; IC3)
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Elastic Restaking Networks
This study introduces Elastic Restaking Networks, a new approach where validators can allocate portions of their stake across multiple decentralized services (even beyond their total stake) with remaining stake stretching to cover potential slashing. This mechanism addresses the strategic risk of validators coordinating to misbehave across services while only forfeiting their stake once. The authors model the impact of partial Byzantine behavior and show that elastic restaking improves robustness and produces a synergistic security effect, enhancing the underlying blockchain’s resilience. The authors also propose an incentive design that encourages optimal stake allocations. The findings have immediate implications for securing decentralized services that collectively manage billions in staked assets.
Authors: Roi Bar-Zur (Technion; IC3), Ittay Eyal (Technion; IC3)
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Prof. Carla Reyes joined the Lawfare Daily podcast to discuss how crypto policy has evolved since the Obama era. She says the SEC has taken an aggressive approach on regulating crypto under former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, which has led to unclear guidelines and confusion. Listen to the full episode here
| | Prof. Eswar Prasad shared his thoughts with CNN Business following President Trump's inaugural crypto summit. He believes a strategic crypto reserve is neither "strategic nor sensible". Read more | | Celebrating 10 Years of IC3 | | |
IC3 is marking its 10 year anniversary! We will be celebrating this special milestone at this year's IC3 Blockchain Camp & Hackathon. It will be a packed week filled with research, academia, and notable speakers who have made an impact on the IC3 community and beyond. Be sure to stay tuned for the full agenda.
For those wanting to submit a project idea for the Hackathon, we will provide a separate form for you to fill out. We’ll send out more details in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, registration for Camp is now open. If you have any questions, you can email Oana Gherman.
WHEN: Monday, June 9th to Sunday, June 15th
WHERE: Cornell Tech Campus, Roosevelt Island, NYC
REGISTER: Online here
| | IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator | | |
The inaugural cohort of the IC3-Cornell Blockchain Accelerator continues to make great strides. Participants have been hard at work building and learning from industry leaders. This month, they have gained valuable insights from Tina He from Base, and Asta Li from Privy.
Teams will have a chance to present their projects at this year’s Cornell Blockchain Conference in April.
| In case you missed it, we welcomed two new members to the IC3 community this month! | Fan Zhang, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Yale School of Engineering has been an active contributor to IC3 and continues to produce groundbreaking research. Notable IC3 research Fan contributed to includes: CanDID: Can-Do Decentralized Identity with Legacy Compatibility, Sybil-Resistance, and Accountability, Order-Fairness for Byzantine Consensus, and DECO: Liberating Web Data Using Decentralized Oracles for TLS. | |
We are also thrilled to welcome Matt Weinberg, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University. Matt specializes in Algorithmic Mechanism Design, studying how user incentives affect blockchain systems, including consensus manipulation, fee mechanisms, and the economic impact of decentralization.
We're excited to see how their work will help drive innovation and shape the future of IC3.
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Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025) - Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - Paper submission deadline: May 28, 2025
Cornell Blockchain Conference is less than a month away— April 25, 2025. The first speakers have been announced and early bird tickets are now available. Go here to register for the event.
Thank you for reading!
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Ashley Stanhope,
IC3 Communications & Media Relations
LinkedIn | Twitter | initc3.org
| | IC3: Advancing the Science and Applications of Blockchains | | | | |
