CyLab announces fourth round of Secure Blockchain Initiative funded projects

Carnegie Mellon University's Secure Blockchain Initiative (SBI) has announced its fourth round of funded proposals, providing $120K to four groundbreaking research projects that are exploring the security and privacy of distributed ledger technology.

Through research, the CMU SBI aims to revolutionize blockchain technology within enterprise ecosystems by tackling various challenges, including enhancing consensus mechanisms and scalability, exploring cryptocurrencies and markets, advancing cryptography, implementing formal verification, and addressing regulation, policy, and governance concerns.

Led by co-directors Nicolas Christin, Elaine Shi, and Ariel Zetlin-Jones, the multi-year CyLab initiative intends to develop a suite of novel foundations and technologies focused on three key thrusts:

• Cryptoeconomics: Cryptography, Consensus, and Verification
• Applications and Implementations
• Cryptocurrencies, Tokenized Assets, and Policy

SBI Seed Funding is fueled by the generous support of our industry collaborators including Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI). We invite your organization to collaborate with our world-class researchers through the CyLab Partnership Program.

Funded Projects

Verifiably Correct Zero-Knowledge VMs

• Bryan Parno - Kavčić-Moura professor, Computer Science Department, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Improving XRPL Consensus to Achieve Best-Possible MEV-Resilience

• Elaine Shi - professor, Computer Science Department, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Improving Cross-Currency Payment Routing on the XRP Ledger

• Osman Yağan - research professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

High-Assurance Assemblers for Verified Code Generation

• Fraser Brown - assistant professor, Software and Societal Systems Department

• Bryan Parno - Kavčić-Moura professor, Computer Science Department, Electrical and Computer Engineering