Tuesday June 20, 2017
Interactive Video Broadcast from Gates Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
The requirements and guarantees of cryptocurrency blockchains do not match those of the FinTech world, from transaction throughput, through security primitives, to privacy. Ittay will discuss how blockchain research is closing these gaps and some of the challenges that remain open.
Time: Jun 20 2017, 2-3pm EDT. IC3 members apply here.
Cryptocurrencies have been on the rise since the introduction of Bitcoin in 2008, initially pushed by libertarian groups as currencies without central control. But in recent years, the financial technology (FinTech) industry has taken notice. What appeals to this industry is the underlying protocols, called blockchain in the context of cryptocurrencies and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in the FinTech world. The security guarantees of blockchains can allow bank-to-bank (b2b) transactions to be settled in minutes or less, rather than in days as it happens today. Moreover, banks, insurance firms, accounting firms, and others are exploring novel services that are not possible today, but can be implemented on top of a blockchain.
However, the requirements and guarantees of cryptocurrency blockchains do not match those of the FinTech world, from transaction throughput, through security primitives, to privacy. We'll discuss how blockchain research is closing these gaps and some of the challenges that remain open.
Ittay Eyal is a research associate at the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University and an associate director at the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He will join the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Technion in Fall 2017.
His research focuses on the security and scalability of distributed systems, in particular blockchain protocols and trusted execution environments. Eyal received his PhD at the department of Electrical Engineering at the Technion, supervised by Idit Keidar and Raphael Rom.