The purpose of CryptoNetLab is to develop and apply new cryptographic tools to secure computation and communication systems. Much of our past and current work includes designing, proving, and improving the building blocks enabling Filecoin, a decentralized storage network.

Though the group was founded to drive the creation of Filecoin, it seeks to facilitate the development and incorporation of cryptographic tools to increase security and privacy of communication, and engender new capabilities across the Web 3.0 stack.

How We Work

CryptoNetLab aims to function as a Public Good Cryptography Lab providing technological empowerment to the creators and users of Web 3.0 technologies. We prefer to work collaboratively following a distributed and permissionless research model: our goal is to become a pass-through layer to cryptography research.

To that end, we are very interested in forming collaborations with researchers and engineers working in our fields of interest, and we offer several grants and research fellowships to support these working relationships.

Research Endeavours

CryptoNetlab’s current foci are:

• Cryptographic primitives: Filecoin and other Web 3.0 technologies rely on the performance and security of cryptographic primitives. Our endeavours include Proof of Replication (PoRep), Proof of SpaceTime (PoST), SEALSTACK, SNARKs, and VDFs.
• Blockchain infrastructure: We are working to advance the state of the art of generic blockchain constructions.
• Web 3.0 protocol improvements: Our research contributes improvements to the transaction layer of the Filecoin protocol and its components, including mining, repair, security, and storage. These improvements may be generalized to other Web 3.0 technologies.

Much of CryptoNetLab’s past work is exhibited in the Filecoin Research website and GitHub repo.

Team

• Nicola Greco
• Irene Giacomelli
• Anca Nitulescu
• Luca Nizzardo
• Sarah Azouvi
• Nicolas Gailly