The following open letter was written by Dan Boneh (Stanford), Joseph Bonneau (NYU), Giulia Fanti (Carnegie Mellon), Ben Fisch (Yale), Ari Juels (Cornell), Farinaz Koushanfar (U.C. San Diego), Andrew Miller (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), Ciamac Moallemi (Columbia), David Tse (Stanford), Pramod Viswanath (Princeton).
Here’s a multiple choice question.
Algorand, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Axelar, Babylon, Cardano, Cosmos, Eigenlayer, Espresso, Flashbots, Oasis, Starkware, Sui.
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Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols, digital signatures, formal verification, maximal extractable value (MEV), public-key cryptography, proof of work, rollups, trusted execution environments (TEEs) used in blockchain systems, verifiable random functions (VRFs), zero-knowledge proof systems.
Which of the following is true of the companies, projects, and concepts listed above?
A) They were invented / created by researchers employed at or with deep roots in academic institutions.
B) They have fueled and transformed the crypto / blockchain industry.
C) They demonstrate how essential academic innovation is to the crypto / blockchain industry.
D) All of the above.
The answer is D. The lion’s share of these innovations happened at universities, largely in the United States.
Both the White House and Congress are working to support and accelerate innovation and bolster U.S. dominance in the crypto economy and the blockchain technologies that power it. The White House has established the Presidential Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, while two major pieces of legislation, the GENIUS and STABLE bills, are pending in Congress. There is a crying need for regulatory and legislative reforms that prioritize and support innovation in crypto while enforcing robust protections for consumers. Efforts to accomplish these things sensibly are to be applauded.
At the same time, though, we are on the brink of seeing massive cuts to academic research funding in the United States. The White House budget proposal for 2025 includes a cut of 55% for the National Science Foundation (NSF). In the meantime, China increased its budget by 10% last year. NSF is the source of most federal funding for research in computer science at U.S. universities. It’s the main source of funding that has driven crypto innovations like those in the list above. Companies provide little funding for academic research because it’s not product-specific. So defunding NSF means defunding scientists in the U.S.—including those leading crypto innovation.
We are academic researchers in the field of crypto, representing five U.S. universities. Alongside our teaching, we conduct research and train PhD students.
While market cap is a short-term indicator of the crypto industry’s health, the number of PhD students studying blockchain is a long-term one: it reflects the depth of future scientific leadership. That pipeline is already thinning. Several of us could not take on new PhD students this year due to the uncertain U.S. funding climate. And we are not alone.
Several of the companies in the list above were co-founded by former members of our academic groups or by us. If future members of our groups vanish alongside scientific funding, so will successful future founders of crypto companies in the U.S. And PhD students don’t just start companies. They are also the engine that powers academic and ultimately industry research, doing the brain- and labor-intensive work behind the technical innovations that lead to faster, more secure blockchains. PhD students in our groups played a key role in creating or advancing in many of the concepts in the second list above. If they vanish, so will the breakthroughs they would have brought to the industry.
When we’re funded to do research and stay on the cusp of innovation in crypto, we’re also better teachers—able to equip students with the latest advances. That means stronger technical leaders educated in the U.S.
Better regulation and legislation could be a boon to crypto. But U.S. leadership in crypto won’t be secured by policy alone. At the forefront of crypto innovation is science—and U.S. universities have long been its powerhouse.
If you’re a farmer trying to ensure a strong harvest, it’s wise to upgrade your equipment and expand your fields. But if you stop planting seedcorn, no amount of machinery will save the crop.
If you care about U.S. leadership in crypto, contact your congressional representatives and senators. Urge them to support the research funding that has made American universities the seedbed of global scientific and technical leadership—blockchain technology included.
Authors:
Dan Boneh is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, and advises a16z crypto and several projects in the blockchain space.
Joseph Bonneau is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at New York University. He has served as an advisor for Zcash, Algorand, Chia, O(1) labs and Espresso Systems and as a Research Partner at a16z crypto.
Giulia Fanti is the Angel Jordan Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a co-director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3), a member of Department of Commerce Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board (ISPAB), and a member of the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Synthetic Data Expert Group (SDEG).
Ben Fisch is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Yale University. He is a co-founder of Espresso Systems and has advised several prominent crypto projects, including Chia and Filecoin.
Ari Juels is the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor at Cornell Tech and a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University. He is also a co-director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3), Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs, and author of crypto thriller novel The Oracle.
Farinaz Koushanfar is the Nemat-Nasser Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego. She is also the founding co-director of the UCSD Center for Machine Intelligence, Computing, and Security (MICS), and a Research Scientist at Chainlink Labs. She is a fellow of ACM, IEEE, and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).
Andrew Miller is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He is also a co-director of Flashbots[X], a co-director of Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3), and a board member of Zcash Foundation. He has been an advisor to Cycles, Chainlink, Inco, Clique, and Pi2.
Ciamac Moallemi is William von Mueffling Professor of Business and the director of the Briger Family Digital Finance Lab at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. He is also an advisor to several firms in the blockchain and fintech space.
David Tse is the Thomas Kailath and Guanghan Xu Professor of Engineering at Stanford University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a recipient of the Claude E. Shannon Award in 2017 and the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal in 2019. He is also a co-founder of the Babylon Bitcoin staking protocol, currently ranked 8th in TVL (total value locked) among all DeFi protocols.
Pramod Viswanath is the Forrest G. Hamrick Professor of Engineering at Princeton University. He is a core contributor to Sentient.
