DCI's Tadge Dryja interviewed by WHAT BITCOIN DID for a podcast on 'The Limitations of Lightning'
In this episode for Lightning Month, I talk with Tadge Dryja, the co-author of the Lightning Network whitepaper. We discuss the limitations of the lightning network, why Bitcoin might not be for everyone, alternative scaling ideas, fees and inflation.
DCI's Madars Virza presents: zk-SHARKs: Combining Succinct Verification and Public Coin Setup at ZKPROOF Workshop
‘zk-SHARKs: Combining Succinct Verification and Public Coin Setup’ by Madars Virza (MIT DCI)
Madars presents at ZKPROOF Workshop on his project zk-SHARKS.
Cryptanalysis of Curl-P and Other Attacks on the IOTA Cryptocurrency
By Ethan Heilman (Boston Uni), Neha Narula (MIT Media Lab), Garrett Tanzer (Harvard), James Lovejoy (MIT Media Lab), Michael Colavita (Harvard), Madars Virza (MIT Media Lab), and Tadge Dryja (MIT Media Lab)
We present attacks on the cryptography formerly used in the IOTA blockchain, including under certain conditions the ability to forge signatures. We developed practical attacks on IOTA’s cryptographic hash function Curl-P-27, allowing us to quickly generate short colliding messages. These collisions work even for messages of the same length. Exploiting these weaknesses in Curl-P-27, we broke the EU-CMA security of the former IOTA Signature Scheme (ISS). Finally, we show that in a chosen-message setting we could forge signatures and multi-signatures of valid spending transactions (called bundles in IOTA).
DCI Mentioned in BBC's 'Should Google, Amazon and Facebook fear this woman?'
Competition authorities don't like it when big companies merge to the detriment of consumer choice, which is why Sainsbury's and Asda are finding it so hard to get their proposed tie-up past the UK's Competition and Markets Authority.
Big tech, however, is a different kettle of fish.
"As it stands, it is difficult for users to switch between platforms," notes the MIT Digital Currency Initiative and the Center for Civic Media, "and most mega-platforms do not interoperate".
In other words, once you've bought into them, you're stuck.
MIT Technology Review and MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative Announce 2019 Business of Blockchain Conference on May 2
Today, MIT Technology Review announced the third annual Business of Blockchain event, which will take place on May 2, 2019 at the MIT Media Lab. The event is held in collaboration with the Digital Currency Initiative, an MIT Media Lab research group focusing on cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology, and brings together industry leaders and pioneers in this emerging field to examine the technology, ethics, and impact of blockchains.
Knowledge @ Wharton's 'How a New Technology Can Disrupt the Global Supply Chain'
An interdisciplinary team from MIT, Wharton and Boston College has created a new blockchain-based system that has the potential to disrupt the global supply chain. Called ‘b_verify,’ the system is designed to help small and medium-size enterprises — especially those in developing nations — get financing from lenders at potentially better terms while mitigating warehouse deposit fraud. The system brings greater transparency to a key part of the supply chain, which can have a big impact on global trade financing. Bverify introduces a series of blockchain technology innovations tailored to facilitate supply chain finance and operations management.
Blockchain and the Value of Operational Transparency for Supply Chain Finance
by Jiri Chod (BU), Nikolaos Trikakis (MIT), Gerry Tsoukalas (Upenn Wharton), Henry Aspegren (MIT), and Mark Weber (MIT). Nominated for an award in the Journal of Management Science. Sept 15th, 2018
In this paper, we develop a new theory that shows signaling a firm's fundamental quality (e.g., its operational capabilities) to lenders through inventory transactions to be more efficient --- it leads to less costly operational distortions --- than signaling through loan requests, and we characterize how the efficiency gains depend on firm operational characteristics such as operating costs, market size, inventory salvage value and failure probability.
SpaceMint: A Cryptocurrency Based on Proofs of Space
By Sunoo Park, Albert Kwon, Georg Fuchsbauer, Peter Gaži, Joël Alwen, and Krzysztof Pietrzak. Published in the 22nd International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (Financial Crypto 2018)
Practical Accountability of Secret Processes
By Jonathan Frankle, Sunoo Park, Daniel Shaar, Shafi Goldwasser, and Daniel J. Weitzner. Published in the 27th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 2018).
Compelled Decryption and the Fifth Amendment: Exploring the Technical Boundaries
By Aloni Cohen and Sunoo Park. Published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology (JOLT), Fall 2018 issue.
How to Subvert Backdoored Encryption: Security Against Adversaries that Decrypt
By Thibaut Horel, Sunoo Park, Silas Richelson, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan. Published in the Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science conference (ITCS 2019).
DCI's Director interviewed for Fortune's latest article: 'Zcash Discloses Vulnerability That Could Have Allowed 'Infinite Counterfeit' Cryptocurrency'
On March 1 of last year, Ariel Gabizon was tidying up a presentation he was preparing to deliver the following day at a financial cryptography conference on the Caribbean island of Curaçao when he spotted a seemingly small mathematical mistake that could, he realized, jeopardize billions of dollars in capital.
"DCI Working Groups: the blockchain sandbox at MIT" On Medium by DCI's Alin Dragos
Our MIT motto, mens et manus, is a call-to-action to be more than mere technologists and to learn (by doing!) how to be thoughtful makers of a better world. The Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) Working Group Program creates a sandbox for interdisciplinary teams of students to hack on pressing topics in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Students from the Blockchain Lab will collaborate with instructors, companies and DCI to investigate uses of blockchain technology and how to integrate it into viable business models.
Coin Rivet's 'Single Lightning Network node routes record number of Satoshis in a day'
A Lightning Network node hosted by Satoshi Labs successfully routed one Bitcoin worth of Lightning transactions in a 24-hour period
Coindesk's 'This Scaling Tech Could Let You Sync Bitcoin Straight From Your Phone' using UTreeXO created by Tadge Dryja
“Maybe we don’t have to store everything ourselves.”
That’s Tadge Dryja, cryptocurrency research scientist at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, explaining the concept behind his bitcoin scaling solution, “utreexo.”
Coindesk's 'Bitcoin at 10[years old]': From Fearing Bitcoin To Fixing Its Worst Problem: Tadge Dryja
A celebration of 10 years of Bitcoin features DCI's Tadge Dryja story:
““I thought I would go to jail.”
That’s why Tadge Dryja, one of two principal researchers who would go on to envision lightning – what has become arguably the most important innovation in the quest to bring bitcoin to the masses – kept his passion for the technology to himself when he first heard about it in 2011.”
WGBH News: More local ATMs Will Soon Dispense 'Cryptocurrencies' - Arun Rath Interviews DCI's Director Neha Narula and Others
DCI’s Director Neha Narula was interviewed by WGBH on the topic of how making cryptocurrency mainstream is beneficial to the general public, by using more tangible methods.
DCI Director interviewed for The Wall Street Journal: "Winklevosses’ Cryptocurrency Exchange Says the ‘Revolution Needs Rules’" By Nat Ives
DCI’s Director Neha Narula commented on ‘Gemini Trust ad campaign calling for new regulations’ in an article for The Wall Street Journal