Colloquium Details
Bitcoin, Payment Privacy and Beyond: Blockchains as Limited Trusted Third Parties
Speaker: Ian Miers, Cornell Tech
Location: 60 Fifth Avenue 150
Date: November 17, 2017, 11 a.m.
Host: Joseph Bonneau
Synopsis:
Bitcoin and blockchains have received large amounts of attention both inside and outside academia. Much of this work has focused on how to improve blockchains themselves either in terms of performance, features, or theoretical underpinnings. This talk will focus primarily on another question: what can blockchains do for computer security and cryptography? It will cover blockchains as a solution to preexisting problems in e-cash, fairness in MPC, and more broadly as a tool for assured communication and state-keeping in cryptographic protocols.
Speaker Bio:
Ian Miers is a postdoc at Cornell Tech working with Thomas Ristenpart and Ari Juels on applied cryptography. He earned his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University under Matthew Green. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Wired, The Economist, and denounced in at least 2 op-eds. He is one of the founders of ZCash, a privacy preserving cryptocurrency based on Zerocash.
Notes:
In-person attendance only available to those with active NYU ID cards.