Support the show, consider donating:
BTC: 1CD83r9EzFinDNWwmRW4ssgCbhsM5bxXwg
ETH: 0x8cdb49ca5103Ce06717C4daBBFD4857183f50935
When the Bitcoin Foundation fell apart and funding for Bitcoin core development was needed, the MIT founded the Digital Currency Initiative to step in. In the years since, the DCI has evolved into a vibrant center of cutting edge research on some of the most difficult challenges around blockchain technology.
DCI Director Neha Narula joined us to discuss the DCI’s position between academia and industry, their policy on conflicts of interest, and their most fascinating research topics.
Topics covered in this episode:
How her interest in distributed systems and scaling lead led her to the blockchain spaceThe mission and history of the MIT’s Digital Currency InitiativeHow cryptocurrency might evolve over time as an academic fieldThe DCI’s project on digital fiat currencyHow zkLedger could enable privacy-preserving auditing for distributed ledgersWhy sharding is unlikely to succeed in the short- and medium termWhy Neha is most optimistic about layer 2 approaches to scaling like lightning networkThe story of discovering and writing about IOTA’s vulnerabilityHow DCI handles conflicts of interest and strives for neutrality Episode links:
MIT Digital Currency Initiative Neha Narula Personal Website What’s New at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative The Importance of Layer 2 Cryptographic vulnerabilities in IOTA zkLedger | the future of audit zkLedger Whitepaper Neha Narula: The future of money | TED Talk This episode was hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture, and is availble on YouTube, SoundCloud, and our website.
