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Dear IC3 Community,
Time flies and somehow, July has come and gone in a flash! This month, we've published new research and kept busy co-organizing The Science of Blockchain Conference (SBC).
Let's dig in.
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This paper explores the growing interest in granting AI agents access to cryptocurrencies and smart contracts. It argues that doing so could introduce entirely new vectors of harm. The authors identify three specific risks they call Autonomy, Anonymity, and Automaticity, each stemming from the unique properties of blockchain systems when combined with autonomous agents.
The authors highlight how these dynamics could enable AI systems to act unpredictably or maliciously at scale. The researchers conclude by calling for new technical work aimed at mitigating these risks before further integration of AI and crypto occurs.
Authors: Ari Juels (IC3, Cornell Tech), Bill Marino (University of Cambridge)
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The authors hightlight a critical gap in the security model of Confidential Virtual Machines (CVMs), noting that current Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) attestations do not account for physical attacks or reveal the identity of the infrastructure operator. As a result, users must still rely on cloud providers’ trustworthiness, which undermines the isolation guarantees CVMs are meant to provide.
The authors propose extending TEE attestations, potentially using mechanisms like the Protected Platform Identifier (PPID) to explicitly bind CVMs to their host providers. They emphasize that addressing these limitations will require coordinated efforts among hardware manufacturers, cloud providers, and researchers to deliver robust end-to-end security.
Authors: Andrew Miller (IC3, Flashbots), Filip Rezabek (Technical University of Munich, Flashbots), Jonathan Passerat-Palmbach (Imperial College London, Flashbots), Frieder Erdmann (Flashbots), Moe Mahhouk (Flashbots)
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This paper proposes a new privacy-preserving payment scheme that tackles the persistent problem of storage overhead in anonymous cryptocurrencies, where privacy features cause the ledger of unspent outputs to grow indefinitely. Their approach uses random partitioning of unspent outputs into fixed-size bins, allowing for efficient pruning of transaction data without compromising privacy or integrity.
This design not only addresses scalability and resilience against flooding attacks, but also formalizes the security and privacy notions needed for such systems. The authors' evaluations demonstrate that this scheme significantly reduces storage needs while maintaining strong privacy guarantees, offering a robust solution to both ledger growth and graph-based attacks.
Authors: Christian Cachin (IC3, University of Bern), Francois-Xavier Wicht (IC3, University of Bern)
Check out our website for more research.
| | Whitepaper Readings at SBC | | |
Cornell Tech Ph.D. student and IC3 member James Austgen will join a special session of The Whitepaper Reading Club during SBC. He will present Liquefaction, a wallet platform that shows how cryptocurrency credentials and assets of a single end-user address can be freely rented, shared, or pooled. Private keys are encumbered in TEEs, which can attach rich, multi-user policies to their use.
The Whitepaper Reading Club is an open seminar series that brings researchers, developers, and Web3 innovators together to discuss technical papers that shape the blockchain ecosystem.
Space is limited to be sure to sign up today!
Details:
Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2025
Time: 11am-3pm PDT
Register here
| | Stanford Blockchain Accelerator | | |
The Stanford Blockchain Accelerator is hosting the Blockchain Application Stanford Summit (BASS) ahead of SBC on August 3, 2025 at UC Berkeley. This in-person event will bring together academics, innovators, and developers to dive deep into the latest ideas shaping the blockchain space.
Register to attend.
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Ethereum NYC is a curated week of events (August 11–17, 2025) designed to connect core parts of the Ethereum ecosystem with institutions across finance, academia, and the arts.
ETH NYC will focus on high-signal, topic-specific gatherings that showcase Ethereum’s technical maturity, and its readiness for real-world adoption at scale.
NextFin NYC
IC3 is partnering with ETH NYC on several events including NextFin NYC on
August 12, 2025. The one-day event will explore global blockchain adoption by financial institutions, regulators, and innovators, and Ethereum’s readiness for the path ahead.
The event will feature leaders from Wall Street, prominent crypto builders, policymakers shaping the regulatory landscape, and senior leadership from the Ethereum Foundation and Etherealize.
Register to attend.
Ethereum Research Funding Forum
The Ethereum Research Funding Forum, co-hosted by IC3 and Columbia Ethereum Research Center, will gather researchers, developers, and thought leaders on August 13, 2025 for a day of discussion around research priorities in Ethereum. The public symposium will include insightful talks, collaborative sessions, and networking opportunities.
Speakers include:
- Harry Kalodner, Co-Founder and CTO, Offchain Labs
- Fan Zhang, IC3, Yale University
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Mahimna Kelkar, Ph.D. student, Cornell Tech, IC3
- Sreeram Maram, Founder and CEO, EigenLayer
Registration is subject to approval.
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ETHGlobal is extending an invite to the IC3 community who may be interested in building, experimenting, and collaborating with developers during ETH NYC. This event provides a platform to directly engage with peers, while also providing the opportunity to apply and demonstrate technical skills in a dynamic, fast-evolving environment.
Date: August 15-17, 2025
Location: Metropolitan Pavilion, NYC
Format: In-person event
Application deadline is tomorrow: August 1, 2025
Note: You are required to stake 0.01 ETH in order to participate in the hackathon. This will be refunded upon project submission. You can read more about the details here.
Anyone who is interested in participating can reach out to me, and I'd be happy to put you in touch with the organizers.
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IC3's Eswar Prasad spoke with Bloomberg after Congress passed the GENIUS Act - the first major piece of U.S. crypto legislation focused on regulating stablecoins.
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IC3's James Austgen and Dani Vilardell joined the Governance Futures podcast for a look into Liquefaction and Dark DAOs. You can listen to the full episode here.
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Prof. Ari Juels presented Liquefaction and Take My Ape at this month's Web3 Summit in Berlin, Germany.
Take My Ape lets anyone temporarily and inexpensively assume full ownership of a Bored Ape. TMA is powered by Liquefaction research on Oasis Sapphire.
Check it out!
| Congratulations to IC3 alum Weizhao Tang, who was named a finalist for the Best Paper Award at SIGMETRICS 2025 for his research on game-theoretic liquidity provisioning in AMMs. The paper, Liquidity Provision in Automated Market Makers: A Game-Theoretic Analysis, was Weizhao’s final project before graduating. | And congratulations to IC3 alum Mahimna Kelkar who has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University for the 2026 school year. | |
Thanks for reading!
Gina Chung,
IC3 Communications & Media Relations
LinkedIn | Twitter | initc3.org
| | IC3: Advancing the Science and Applications of Blockchains | | | | |
