Date Posted: 3/04/2016

The Cornell/Cornell Tech-led Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3, co-directed by Ari Juels, Elaine Shi, and Emin Gün Sirer) is featured as a key player in a Nature News article on "The Future of Cryptocurrencies".

In the article, Juels says, "Cryptocurrencies are unlike many other systems, in that extremely subtle mathematical bugs can have catastrophic consequences.  And I think when weaknesses surface there will be a need to appeal to the academic community where the relevant expertise resides." And

Elaine Shi notes that one approach to warding off problems with mining pools is to "[enlist] a helpful kind of theft" : "We are cryptographically ensuring that pool members can always steal the reward for themselves without being detected", reducing the incentive to join a pool.

Shi and Juels' new currency proposal Permacoin also gets a nod in the article.

http://www.nature.com/news/the-future-of-cryptocurrencies-bitcoin-and-beyond-1.18447