Forbes Names Papers by DCI's Madars Virza and Tadge Dryja as "Satoshi & Company: The 10 Most Important Scientific White Papers In Development Of Cryptocurrencies"
In an article by Forbes’s Nina Bambysheva on February 13th, 2021, Madars Virza’s paper “Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin” and Tadge Dryja’s “The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments” were named as one of “The 10 Most Important Scientific White Papers In Development Of Cryptocurrencies.
Madar’s Paper:
“White Paper: Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin
Authors: Eli Ben Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Ian Miers, Eran Tromer, Madars Virza
Date of publication: May 18, 2014
Breakthrough: the first widespread application of ZK-SNARKs, a novel form of zero-knowledge cryptography
Relevance: Zerocash was initially conceived by scientists at MIT, Johns Hopkins, and a few other universities as an extension of bitcoin with stronger privacy guarantees, allowing users to hide information that might later identify them.
The Zerocash privacy model pioneered the application of the zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge (“ZK-SNARK”) cryptography, which allows one party to prove to another possession of certain information without revealing that information. Zerocash uses ZK-SNARKs to prove that the conditions for a valid transaction have been satisfied without revealing any crucial information about the addresses or values involved. Thus Zerocash ensures that transaction data is posted to a public blockchain, but unlike with Bitcoin, users gain control of their information. They can remain completely anonymous or opt to disclose transaction details for regulatory compliance or audits.
According to CryptoSlate, currently 82 cryptocurrencies worth a total of $8.85 billion encrypt their transactions with zero-knowledge proofs or similar private technology.”
Tadge’s Paper:
“White Paper: The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments
Authors: Joseph Poon, Thaddeus Dryja
Date of publication: January 14, 2016
Breakthrough: solution to bitcoin’s scalability problem
Relevance: Despite the original intent of becoming the electronic payment system of the future, bitcoin has been struggling to establish itself as a fully-fledged alternative to existing online payment infrastructures. While Visa V -0.6% processes thousands of transactions per second, the bitcoin blockchain usually processes less than 10.
The Bitcoin Lightning Network was designed as a potential solution to this very problem. It adds another layer to the bitcoin blockchain, on which any two parties can create payment channels for low-value bitcoin transactions. By moving the transactions off the main ledger, the Lightning Network enables decongestion of the bitcoin blockchain and reduction in associated transaction fees.
In 2016, Bitcoin payments startup Lightning Labs, backed by Square founder Jack Dorsey and Robinhood co-founder Vlad Tenev, among others, set out to bring the idea to life and is currently building a platform similar to the Visa network on the open-source Lightning Network codebase. Lightning Labs’ CEO Elizabeth Stark contributed to the original white paper.”