Cryptography on the Blockchain

The core of the blockchain research addresses questions related to the security (or insecurity) of various blockchain constructions, and/or investigates ways in which blockchains can be used as a monetary system.  Interestingly, blockchains also provide means for better cryptography. In this talk I will discuss the core cryptographic goals that blockchains achieve, and how blockchains can be used as an enabler/catalyst to improve the security of cryptographic distributed computation protocols. I will show how to distill the core functionality of blockchains in a global transaction-ledger resource and discuss how various applications can benefit from the existence of such a ledger