Research

The topics listed here are not exhaustive, but provide an idea of what we're interested in.

Hardware
- Open source architectures
- Secure processors
- Fault tolerance
- Wireless networking
Cryptography
- Faster and safer signature schemes
- Pairing-based crypto
- Zero Knowledge Proofs (Bulletproofs, SNARKs, STARKs, etc.)
- Post-quantum crypto
- Cryptanalysis
- Novel constructions and applications
Databases
- Authenticated data-structures
- Efficient store and retrieval of authenticated data
- Merkle trees, sets, etc.
- Merkle datastores
- Accumulators
P2P and Networking
- Gossip mechanisms
- Formalization of ad-hoc protocols
- Connectivity patterns
- DoS mitigation
- Secure networking
- Privacy preserving connections
- Mesh networks
- Provable peer behaviour
Consensus
- Scaling consensus protocols to thousands of nodes
- Application specific interactions and optimizations
- Performance improvements
- Relationship between consensus protocol and network layer
- Grand Unified Theory of Consensus
Light-Clients
- Security analysis
- Performance improvements
- Client-side state machines
Scalability
- Sharding
- Asynchronous protocols
- Parallelization
- Cryptographic techniques
Formal Methods
- Model checkers
- Theorem provers
- Correctness of real software
- Correct-by-construction protocol design
- Modeling byzantine faults and economic behaviour
Programming Languages
- Verifiability, accessibility, security
- Virtual Machine design
- Domain specific languages for non-technical professionals
- State Machines
Mechanism Design
- Proof of Stake incentive compatibility
- Decentralization
- Token economics
- Fee markets and mechanisms
- Digital property rights
- Governance structures
- Voting theory
- Governance structures
- Analyses of security & cryptoeconomics for complex multi-chain topologies, e.g. shielded pools, cross-chain validation
Application Security
- Secure language subsets
- Fuzz testing and simulations
- Code review and security audits
User Experience
- Novel methods for signing transactions securely
- Improvements to private key security
- Techniques for integrating existing commonly used infrastructure
- Cryptographic techniques which could improve accessibility and security