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BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Dinesh Shah (Bank of Canada)
DTSTART:20201203T230000Z
DTEND:20201204T003000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/1
DESCRIPTION:Title: To blockchain or not to blockchain? The Bank of
Canada’s journey into digital currency\nby Dinesh Shah (Bank of Can
ada) as part of Blockchain Research Seminar Series\n\n\nAbstract\nThe Bank
of Canada has undertaken a multi-phase experimental project\, called Jasp
er\, to critically examine the value proposition of distributed ledger tec
hnology in the financial system. Unlike most technologies blockchain is no
t value free: it attempts to organize the world with a different conceptio
n of trust. We describe our journey\, collaboration with other central ban
ks and financial institutions\, our findings and outstanding questions.\n\
nDinesh Shah is a director of Fintech research at the Bank of Canada. He l
eads a team that focuses on research on e-money and fintech. His research
interest includes the analysis of emerging and potentially disruptive tech
nologies with wide applications to financial market infrastructure and the
financial system. He also drives the five phases of Project Jasper\, whic
h was the first project globally that involves a collaboration between a c
entral bank and commercial banks to build a proof-of-concept interbank pay
ment system with distributed ledgers. He joined the Bank of Canada in 2009
as an Enterprise Architect\, then became a technical researcher focusing
on research and analysis developments in e-money and payment systems and t
heir impact on the Bank of Canada's mandate. He received an honored BSc de
gree from the University of Kent.\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/1/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Sam Blackshear (Novi Research)
DTSTART:20210128T230000Z
DTEND:20210129T003000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/2
DESCRIPTION:Title: A Safe Language for Programming with Money\
nby Sam Blackshear (Novi Research) as part of Blockchain Research Seminar
Series\n\n\nAbstract\nI will discuss the design and implementation of Move
\, a new language for programming with money and other digital assets. Mov
e allows programmers to define custom resource types with semantics inspir
ed by linear logic. We have formalized the semantics of Move and proven th
at all Move programs enjoy resource safety\, a value conservation guarante
e similar to (e.g) conservation of mass. We are using Move to implement hi
gh-assurance currency issuance\, payments\, access control\, and governanc
e in the Libra blockchain.\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/2/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:David Dill (Novi Research)
DTSTART:20210218T230000Z
DTEND:20210219T003000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/3
DESCRIPTION:Title: Formal verification of Move programs for the Li
bra blockchain\nby David Dill (Novi Research) as part of Blockchain Re
search Seminar Series\n\n\nAbstract\nThe Libra blockchain\, which was init
iated in 2018 by Facebook\, includes a novel programming language called M
ove for implementing smart contracts. The correctness of Move programs is
especially important because the blockchain will host large amounts of ass
ets\, those assets are managed by smart contracts\, and because there is a
history of large losses on other blockchains because of bugs in smart con
tracts. The Move language is designed to be as safe as we can make it\, an
d it is accompanied by a formal specification and automatic verification t
ool\, called the Move Prover. A project to specify and formally verify as
many important properties of the Move standard library is now well underwa
y.\n\nThis talk will be about the goals of the project and the most intere
sting insights we've had as of the time of the presentation. The entire bl
ockchain implementation\, including the Move language\, virtual machine\,
the Move Prover\, and near-final various Move modules are available on htt
p://github.com/libra\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/3/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Gerry Tsoukalas (University of Pennsylvania)
DTSTART:20210324T160000Z
DTEND:20210324T173000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/4
DESCRIPTION:Title: Inventory\, Speculators\, and Initial Coin Offe
rings (ICOs)\nby Gerry Tsoukalas (University of Pennsylvania) as part
of Blockchain Research Seminar Series\n\n\nAbstract\nInitial Coin Offering
s (ICOs) are an emerging form of fundraising for Blockchain-based startups
. We propose a simple model of matching supply with demand with ICOs by co
mpanies involved in production of physical products. We examine how ICOs s
hould be designed---including optimal token floating and pricing for both
the utility tokens and the equity tokens (aka\, security token offerings\,
STOs)---in the presence of product risk and demand uncertainty\, make pre
dictions on ICO failure\, and discuss the implications on firm operational
decisions and profits. We show that in the current unregulated environmen
t\, ICOs lead to risk-shifting incentives (moral hazard)\, and hence to un
derproduction\, agency costs\, and loss of firm value. These inefficiencie
s\, however\, fade as product margin increases and market conditions impro
ve\, and are less severe under equity (rather than utility) token issuance
. Importantly\, the advantage of equity tokens stems from their inherent a
bility to better align incentives\, and hence continues to hold even in un
regulated environments.\n\nGerry Tsoukalas is an assistant professor at th
e Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania\, teaching the core MBA
class in Business Analytics\, as well as graduate and undergraduate-level
electives in mathematical modeling for finance.\n\nHis research interests
lie at the intersection of operations\, technology and finance\, with a f
ocus on fintech operations. Specific areas of application include how to o
ptimally design and operate crowdfunding and blockchain-based platforms\,
supply chain finance and portfolio management. His work has appeared in le
ading academic journals\, including Management Science\, Operations Resear
ch\, and M&SOM. He serves on the editorial board of Management Science\, a
s an Associate Editor.\n\nProfessor Tsoukalas completed his undergraduate
studies in France\, receiving degrees in Physics from the University of Pa
ris\, and Aeronautical Engineering from the Institut Supérieur de l’Aé
ronautique et de l’Espace-Supaero (2005). He completed his graduated stu
dies in the US\, receiving a Masters in Aeronautics & Astronautics from MI
T (2007) and a PhD in Economics & Finance from the Management Science & En
gineering Department at Stanford University (2009-2013). He was also previ
ously a doctoral scholar at the MIT Operations Research Center (2011-2012)
.\n\nProfessor Tsoukalas has experience working with a variety of firms in
the financial services and tech industries. Previously\, He was a structu
red products trader at Morgan Stanley in London (2007-2009). He has also c
onsulted for and advised several startups\, proprietary investment firms a
nd hedge funds\, including EvA Funds (2010-2011)\, and Weiss Asset Managem
ent (2012-2013)\, and has held stints in several international banks\, inc
luding Barclays Capital (2006) and Societe Generale (2005).\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/4/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Percy Liang (Stanford University)
DTSTART:20210308T200000Z
DTEND:20210308T210000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/5
DESCRIPTION:Title: Deep Models and on Shaping their Development\nby Percy Liang (Stanford University) as part of Blockchain Research Sem
inar Series\n\n\nAbstract\nModels in deep learning are wild beasts: they d
evour raw data\, are powerful but hard to control. This talk explores two
approaches to taming them. First\, I will introduce concept bottleneck net
works\, in which a deep neural network makes a prediction via interpretabl
e\, high-level concepts. We show that such models can obtain comparable ac
curacy with standard models\, while offering the unique ability for a huma
n to perform test-time interventions on the concepts. Second\, I will intr
oduce prefix-tuning\, which allows one to harness the power of pre-trained
language models (e.g.\, GPT-2) for text generation tasks. The key idea is
to learn a continuous task-specific prefix that primes the language model
for the task at hand. Prefix-tuning obtains comparable accuracy to fine-t
uning\, while only updating 0.1% of the parameters. Finally\, I will end w
ith a broad question: what kind of datasets should the community develop t
o drive innovation in modeling approaches? Are size and realism necessary
attributes of a dataset? Could we have made all the modeling progress in N
LP without SQuAD? As this counterfactual question is impossible to answer\
, we perform a retrospective study on 20 modeling approaches and show that
even a small\, synthetic dataset can track the progress that was made on
SQuAD. While inconclusive\, this result encourages us to think more critic
ally about the value of datasets during their construction.\n\nBio: Percy
Liang is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
(B.S. from MIT\, 2004\; Ph.D. from UC Berkeley\, 2011). His research span
s many topics in machine learning and natural language processing\, includ
ing robustness\, interpretability\, semantics\, and reasoning. He is also
a strong proponent of reproducibility through the creation of CodaLab Work
sheets. His awards include the Presidential Early Career Award for Scienti
sts and Engineers (2019)\, IJCAI Computers and Thought Award (2016)\, an N
SF CAREER Award (2016)\, a Sloan Research Fellowship (2015)\, a Microsoft
Research Faculty Fellowship (2014)\, and multiple paper awards at ACL\, EM
NLP\, ICML\, and COLT.\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/5/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Daphne Koller (Stanford University)
DTSTART:20210322T190000Z
DTEND:20210322T200000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/6
DESCRIPTION:by Daphne Koller (Stanford University) as part of Blockchain R
esearch Seminar Series\n\nAbstract: TBA\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/6/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Surya Ganguli (Stanford University)
DTSTART:20210405T190000Z
DTEND:20210405T200000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/7
DESCRIPTION:by Surya Ganguli (Stanford University) as part of Blockchain R
esearch Seminar Series\n\nAbstract: TBA\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/7/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Shakir Mohamed (DeepMind)
DTSTART:20210419T190000Z
DTEND:20210419T200000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/8
DESCRIPTION:by Shakir Mohamed (DeepMind) as part of Blockchain Research Se
minar Series\n\nAbstract: TBA\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/8/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Wen Tong (Huawei Wireless)
DTSTART:20211118T230000Z
DTEND:20211119T000000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/9
DESCRIPTION:Title: 6G-Blockchain: Open Issues and Directions\n
by Wen Tong (Huawei Wireless) as part of Blockchain Research Seminar Serie
s\n\n\nAbstract\nThe application of Blockchain technologies to real time c
ommunications networks has created many new challenges and opportunities.
One of the objectives for 6G wireless is to create a real-time and massive
Blockchain system as a foundational platform for the trustworthiness of n
etwork operations\, hence\, the 6G-Blockchain will be the basis for the tr
aceable PoW (proof-of-work) mechanism to ensure the trust\, such that ever
y real-time data session\, and every real-time signaling operation will be
recorded on the public ledger\, such as permission based hyper-ledger. In
this talk\, firstly we discuss the challenges of 6G-Blockchain to connect
trillions of the IoT devices with good faith of security\, integrity and
privacy\; secondly\, we discuss the fundamental real-time challenges for t
he 6G-Blockchain with respect to the its latency\, its throughput and its
scalability\; thirdly\, we propose a comprehensive zero-knowledge verifica
tion system\, a.k.a. zk-Faric system\, for providing a real-time privacy p
reserving framework to improve the usability and scalability of the 6G-Blo
ckchain\; Lastly \, we propose a computational trust-metric model as the c
onsensus mechanism for the 6G-Blockchain.\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/9/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Lewis Gudgeon (Imperial College London)
DTSTART:20211209T220000Z
DTEND:20211209T230000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/10
DESCRIPTION:Title: DeFi: Finance 2.0?\nby Lewis Gudgeon (Impe
rial College London) as part of Blockchain Research Seminar Series\n\n\nAb
stract\nDecentralized Finance (DeFi)\, a blockchain powered peer-to-peer f
inancial system\, is mushrooming. One and a half years ago the total value
locked in DeFi systems was approximately 700m USD\, now\, as of November
2021\, it stands at around 100bn USD. The frenetic evolution of the ecosys
tem has created challenges in understanding the basic principles of these
systems and their security risks.\n\nIn this talk\, I delineate the DeFi e
cosystem along the following axes: its primitives\, its operational protoc
ol types and its security. I distinguish between technical security\, whic
h has a healthy literature\, and economic security\, which is largely unex
plored\, connecting the latter with new models and thereby synthesizing in
sights from computer science\, economics and finance. Finally\, I turn to
the open research challenges in the ecosystem\, and try to answer the ques
tion: is this Finance 2.0?\n\nBio: Lewis Gudgeon is a fourth year PhD Cand
idate in the Computer Science Department at Imperial College London\, supe
rvised by Professor William Knottenbelt. His background is primarily in Ec
onomics\, having first studied Philosophy\, Politics and Economics as an u
ndergraduate followed by a MPhil in Economics Research at the University o
f Cambridge. His work focuses on DeFi systems\, particularly the design\,
behaviour and risks of protocols for borrowing and saving (Protocols for L
oanable Funds) and stablecoins.\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/10/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Christine Parlour (Haas School of Business at the University of Ca
lifornia\, Berkeley)
DTSTART:20220203T230000Z
DTEND:20220204T000000Z
DTSTAMP:20260404T110914Z
UID:Blockchain_Research_Seminar/11
DESCRIPTION:by Christine Parlour (Haas School of Business at the Universit
y of California\, Berkeley) as part of Blockchain Research Seminar Series\
n\nAbstract: TBA\n
LOCATION:https://stable.researchseminars.org/talk/Blockchain_Research_Semi
nar/11/
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