CMU hosts researchers and industry experts for the third annual Secure Blockchain Summit

Despite advances, many research questions still need to be answered to ensure blockchain protocols and applications are ready for widespread use. As the industry continues to see more consumer applications, such as decentralized finance (DeFi), securing the fundamental research elements of the technology, especially from a security, privacy, ethics, and societal impact perspective, is of utmost importance.

To address these research challenges, Carnegie Mellon University’s Secure Blockchain Initiative (SBI) brought together leading blockchain researchers and industry experts for the third annual Secure Blockchain Summit.

Held October 7 on the Carnegie Mellon campus and co-located with seventh international conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025), the event featured four sessions and more than 20 speakers and panelists across industry and academia who presented groundbreaking research and best practices on topics such as economic and security risks for cryptocurrencies; decentralized finance; AI, identity, and trust; and more.

The agenda featured researchers from top universities, including USC, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Washington, with areas of expertise ranging from computer science and economics to public policy and human-computer interaction.

The summit also featured presentations by leaders from a diverse range of nonprofit, corporate, and government organizations such as Ava Labs, Intel Labs, and Bain Capital Crypto.

Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. students shared their most recent web3 research, including Mark Dong, Benny Jiang, Shuang Liu, and Taro Tsuchiya.

The Secure Blockchain Summit also featured a networking social to give experts from around the world an opportunity to share their research and discuss the future of distributed ledger technology and its applications.

The Secure Blockchain Summit was made possible thanks to the generous support of this year’s sponsors, Ava Labs and Ripple, and a grant by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Security, Privacy, and Trust in Cyberspace (SaTC 2.0) program.

Interested in supporting the Secure Blockchain Initiative? Reach out to Michael Lisanti, CyLab senior director of partnerships, at mlisanti@cmu.edu or 412-268-1870.