The Berkeley Haas Blockchain Initiative funds academic research topics conducted by UC Berkeley Faculty members and Students in the following focus areas:
Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies; cryptocurrency and digital payments; cryptography; and related subject areas such as blockchain for economic development and global financial inclusion. See below for illustrative research topics.
2021-22 Ripple Blockchain
Research Funding Awardees
| Principal Investigator | Affiliation | Project Title |
| Vinod Aggarwal and Tim Marple | Department of Political Science | Global Policies and Central Bank Digital Currencies |
| Alessandro Chiesa and Siqi Liu | College of Engineering (EECS) | Post-Quantum Security of zkSNARK Construction |
| Adam Sterling and Jillian Grennan | Berkeley Law and Haas School of Business | Control and Influence in the Decentralized Economy |
| Nick Merrill and Zeke Medley | Center for Long Term Cybersecurity and College of Engineering (EECS) | Security Protocol Research for XRP Ledger |
| Christine Parlour and Uiseok Hwang | Haas School of Business | Key Success Factors of PFP (Profile Picture) NFT Projects |
| John Chuang and Ando Shah | School of Information, Climate Informatics Group | A Decentralized Framework for Accurate and Consistent Carbon Pricing |
| Christine Parlour and Dawn Song | Haas School of Business and College of Engineering (EECS) | A Systemization of Knowledge of Derivatives in Decentralized Finance |
| Adam Sterling and Shuo Chen | Berkeley Law and College of Engineering (EECS) | Valuations, Governance and Alignment of Stakeholder Incentives for Web 3.0 |
2020-21 Ripple Blockchain
Research Funding Awardees
| Principal Investigator | Affiliation | Project Title |
| Alessandro Chiesa | Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing | Zero-Knowledge Succint Arguments with A Linear-Time Prover |
| Hugh Harsono | Haas School of Business | The Digital Yuan: A Digital Currency/Electronics Payments System (DCEP) and its Role in Bypassing Data Privacy Initiatives to Enhance Information Collection Efforts |
| Jack Kolb | Department of Computer Science | A Language-Based Approach to Smart Contract Engineering |
| Principal Investigator | Affiliation | Project Title |
| Daniel Rincon | School of Information | Applying network analysis to characterize the stability and resiliency of decentralized ledger ecosystems |
| Jack Kolb | College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | A Language Approach to Robust, Verifiable Smart Contracts |
| Justine Humenansky | Haas School of Business | Central Bank Digital Currency Toolkit (contributed to report) |
| Sam Kim (Ripple Research Fellow) | Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing | Improving Speed and Security in Updatable Encryption Schemes |
2019-20 Ripple Blockchain
Research Funding Awardees
| Principal Investigator | Affiliation | Project Title |
| Richard Lyons & Ganesh Viswanath-Natraj | Haas School of Business | What Keeps Stable Coins Stable? |
| Camille Crittenden | Center for IT Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) | Considerations for Vulnerable Populations in California |
| Giovanni Compiani & Matteo Benetton | Haas School of Business | What Drives Demand for Cryptocurrencies? |
| Shafi Goldwasser | Simons Institute | Lattices: Algorithms, Complexity and Cryptography (Ripple Research Fellow) |
| Ikhlaq Sidhu | Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET) | Enhancements to Blockchain Challenge Lab – Emerging Technologies for Social Impact |
| Alessandro Chiesa | Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing | Fractal: Post-Quantum and Transparent Recursive Proofs from Holography
On the Impossibility of Probabilistic Proofs in Relativized Worlds
|
| Principal Investigator | Affiliation | Project Title |
| Daniel Rincon | School of Information | Applying network analysis to characterize the stability and resiliency of decentralized ledger ecosystems |
| Jack Kolb | College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | A Language Approach to Robust, Verifiable Smart Contracts |
| Justine Humenansky | Haas School of Business | Central Bank Digital Currency Toolkit (contributed to report) |
| Sam Kim (Ripple Research Fellow) | Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing | Improving Speed and Security in Updatable Encryption Schemes |
2018-19 Ripple Blockchain
Research Funding Awardees
| Principal Investigator | Affiliation | Project Title |
| Alberto Todeschini | UC Berkeley School of Information Operations | A Constraint-Dependency Model for Decentralized System Design and Analysis |
| Giovanni Compiani | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business | Drivers of demand for crypto-currencies among both institutional and individual investors |
| Shafi Goldwasser | Director, EECS & Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing | A Study of Fundamental Problems Related to Blockchain Technologies: Cryptographics Proofs, Large-Scale Consensus Protocols, and Blockchain-Enabled Applications |
| Xin Guo | Department of Industry Engineering and Operations Research, UC Berkeley | Management and Risk Analysis of the blockchain as an emerging (exchange, recording, and trading) system. |
| Kannan Ramachandran | EECS Department, UC Berkeley | Design of blockchain architectures suited for resource-constrained machines |
| Principal Investigator | Affiliation | Project Title |
| Bosun Adebaki | Berkeley-Haas MBA Candidate | Assessing the merits of Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) |
| Jun Aoyagi | Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Economics, UC Berkeley | Economic Implications of Blockchain Platforms |
| Angela Cordoba | Graduate Student, UC Berkeley School of Law | A Functional Analysis of Smart Contracts: How can Colombian Conflict Victims’ Rights Over Land Be Guaranteed? |
| Lauren Fu | Berkeley-Haas MBA Candidate | To assign vehicle accident liability using vehicle data from the black box and store such data on the blockchain in an auditable and tamper-evident way |
| Akash Khosla | UC Berkeley, 4th Year EECS | Techniques for Privacy over the InterLedger Protocol:Packet Encryption for Micropayments |
| Daniel Rincon | School of Information MIMS Candidate 2020 | Measuring network effects of crypto asset networks |
| Kate Tomlinson | Berkeley-Haas MBA Candidate | Blockchain in Energy: Electric Vehicle charging use case |
Illustrative Research Topics:
Proposals are welcomed on topics that include, but are not limited to:
Technical
- Given XRP’s consensus mechanism, what are the most efficient ways to scale the ledger?
- Are tokens isolated from fiat? Is there an incentive structure for cryptocurrencies that accounts for the fact that tokens aren’t isolated from one another?
- Evaluate the incentives in emerging blockchain networks (proof-of-work, Byzantine fault tolerant (XRP), etc.) on a variety of factors including: network diversity and participation, security, consolidation of decision making, etc.
Business or legal opps/smart contracts
- Blockchain use to verify and protect medical records
- Identity protection and verification, protect against voter fraud, provide immediate verifiable results
- Implications for automating contractual relationships across a value chain
Regulatory issues
- What is the overall regulatory landscape within the digital asset space and what is their impact on local/global perception of these new technologies?
- What are the potential downstream impact (on banking, exchanges, payment companies, etc.) of different regulatory stances of major economies (India, Japan, Brazil, US, etc.)?