Top Blockchain University: Cornell University

Ranked 17th, Cornell is the home of the internationally famous Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3) and its groundbreaking research.

Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, boasts a deep range of blockchain courses at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level.

17
-15
Cornell University Total Score
64.0
Regional Rank
4
Courses
8

For example, its SC Johnson School of Business has offered a “Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains” course and the College of Engineering has offered “Principles and Practice of Cryptocurrencies.”

Among the eminent minds teaching blockchain courses at Cornell is Emin Gün Sirer, winner of the Ralph S. Watts and Kenneth A. Goldman ‘71 Excellence in Teaching Awards. He has been presenting his work at blockchain and crypto conferences and symposiums since 2014.

The Cornell Blockchain Club is a student group bringing together enthusiasts for seminars on the latest development in the field, some given by guests invited from industry itself. The club held its first annual conference in 2019, which hosted over 350 people and 20 speakers drawn from industry and academia. The group says its members have gone on to work for blockchain firms like Coinbase and ConsenSys, as well as mainstream technology giants like Google, IBM and Amazon Web Services.

Cornell Tech provides the home for the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3), a collaboration between researchers from Cornell and a global network of higher education institutions, including Carnegie Mellon and the University of California, Berkeley. Its ground-breaking work so far has included developing the test bed Miniature World, where experiments can be held at 15% of the size of the actual bitcoin system. It has held a blockchain summer camp for five years running, stimulating the collaboration of developers, academics and students.

Cornell research has contributed in several ways to the history of blockchain too. It identified a limitation of proof-of-work consensus protocols known as “selfish mining” and invented covenants and vaults to safeguard crypto coins at rest.


This article was originally published on Nov 25, 2021 at 1:27 a.m. UTC

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