Category: Digital Infrastructure & Platforms
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Historic E.U. Net Neutrality Win Shows Maturing Digital Rights Advocacy
After a 5-year long campaign by European and U.S. digital rights NGOs, today the European Parliament turned a dubious Commission proposal on its head to safeguard the principle of net neutrality. It’s a historic win, and all over the news. It also shows how digital rights advocacy is maturing.
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New research: Better wallet security for Bitcoin
[UPDATE (April 3, 2014): We’ve found an error in our paper. In the threshold signature scheme that we used, there are restrictions on the threshold value. In particular if the key is shared over a degree t polynomial, then 2t+1 players (not t+1) are required to to construct a signature. We thought that this could…
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Why Dorian Nakamoto Probably Isn't Satoshi
When Newsweek published its cover story last week claiming to have identified the creator of Bitcoin, I tweeted that I was reserving judgment on their claim, pending more evidence. At this point it looks like they don’t have more evidence to show us—and that Newsweek is probably wrong.
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Are User Identification Networks the Future of Commercial Bitcoin Transactions?
With 12.3 million bitcoins mined to date, the total value of bitcoins has reached $9.975 billion US dollars. While this may pale in comparison to the $1.23 trillion US dollars in circulation, the use of bitcoins in commerce is gaining traction. With this traction the potential exists to link users’ identities with their public bitcoin…
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Understanding Bitcoin's transaction malleability problem
In recent days, several Bitcoin exchanges have suspended certain kinds of payments due to “transaction malleability” issues. There has been a lot of talk about why this happened, and some finger-pointing. In this post, I will try to unpack what “transaction malleability” is and why it has proven to be a problem for some companies.
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Is There a Future for Net Neutrality after Verizon v. FCC?
In a decision that was widely predicted by those who have been following the case, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has invalidated the FCC’s Open Internet Rules (so-called net neutrality regulations), which imposed non-discrimination and anti-blocking requirements on broadband Internet access providers. The rules were challenged by Verizon as soon as they…
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The Internet “Access Trap” in Developing Countries
Three of five people in the world still do not have access to the Internet. From the perspective of standard economic models, this is puzzling. The supply of international connectivity has expanded dramatically since 2009, when several submarine fiber cables came online connecting even the poorest countries in Africa to the global Internet. Also, with…
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Bitcoin Research in Princeton CS
Continuing our post series on ongoing research in computer security and privacy here at Princeton, today I’d like to survey some of our research on Bitcoin. Bitcoin is hot right now because of the recent run-up in its value. At the same time, Bitcoin is a fascinating example of how technology, economics, and social interactions…
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Improve Connectivity in Rural Communities – Principle #9 for Fostering Civic Engagement Through Digital Technologies
In my recent blog posts, I have been discussing ways that citizens can communicate with government officials through the Internet, social media, and wireless technology to solve problems in their communities and to effect public policy. Using technology for civic engagement, however, should not be limited to communications with elected or appointed government officials. One…
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Game Theory and Bitcoin
In light of the back-and-forth about the recent Eyal and Sirer (“ES”) paper about Bitcoin mining, I want to take a step back and talk about what a careful analysis of Bitcoin mining dynamics would look like. (Here are some previous posts if you need backstory: 1 2 3 4 5.) The key to a…