==== News ==== **02.12.21**: Our `research on accountable light clients `_ has been accepted at the poster session of `Financial Cryptography 2022 `_. **01.07.21**: Jonas published a blog post about `Nominating and Validator Selection on Polkadot `_ where he stressing the importance of building and maintaining a trusting relationship between nominators and their validators and shows how various economic and socio-economic aspects can guide that process. **21.06.21**: Handan will present her paper `Coin-based Multi-party Fair Exchange `_ on `ACNS 2021 `_ **15.05.21**: Alistair and Samuel finished a `working paper `_ on front-running in the candle auction, showing that with many rounds the format essentially turns into a second-price auction. **29.01.21**: Fatemeh shared her thoughts on "Interoperability - Where are we now and what can we expect for 2021" in an online-presentation at the Bitcoin Suisse Crypto Outlook 2021. Additionally, she features an article in the corresponding `research report `_. **16.01.21**: The Web3 Foundation successfully hosted the `Workshop on Real-World Decentralized Cryptography `_ with presentations of leading experts in topics such as distributed key generation, threshold cryptography, and multiparty computation. **10.11.20**: Is slashing a good idea? Alistair `talks `_ about slashing and how to apply it to scaling in proof of stake at the DISC 2020 workshop on "Blockchain Interoperability and Sharding". **23.09.20**: Register today for `DISC 2020 `_ (October 12-16, 2020)! W3F will host a `Workshop on Blockchain Interoperability and Sharding `_. Participation is free and the conference is held online. **27.08.20**: Fatemeh has been program committee member of USENIX Security 2021. **21.08.20**: After the first `democratic vote `__ in Polkadot the community decided that the “DOT” token will undergo a redenomination (1 DOT will now hold 1e10 plancks, instead of 1e12). More information can be found `here `_. **18.08.20-20.08.20**: W3F researchers and some Parity Technology developers joined together for a 2 day workshop in Berlin discussing implementations details of Polkadot components such as the AnV and XCMP protocols. **18.08.20**: Token transferrability in Polkadot was enabled at block number 1,205,128. **10.08.20**: Alistair has developed a design for ultralight clients that can be used for Ethereum bridges. **01.08.20**: Oana joined the research team and will be working on security and privacy projects, with a focus on (ZK)snarks. **31.07.20**: Our proposal to organize a workshop on Sharding and Interoperability at `DISC 2020 `__ got accepted. **22.07.20**: Alfonso gave a talk on “Incentive Schemes and Blockchain Security” in CAS summer school organised by University of Zurich. **20.07.20** The sudo module was removed by council motion and Polkadot officially becomes a self-governed and permissionless blockchain! **02.07.20**: Alistair gave a `talk `__ in CV labs on shared security. **01.07.20**: `Jonas `_ has started an internship research position to apply insights from behavioral economics and to analyze the human interaction with the protocol. **28.06.20**: Alistair has designed a succinct GRANDPA protocol. **23.06.20**: Alfonso and Alistair came up with an efficient algorithm to test the quality of solutions that can be submitted for a validator-nominatior setup on chain. **15.06.20**: Jeff got invited to be on the program committee of the Financial Cryptography 2021 conference. **09.06.20**: Alistair has designed a succinct GRANDPA protocol. **01.06.20**: Samuel has started a part-time researcher position to analyze the theoretical properties of the auctions, which will be used to allocate parachain slots. **26.05.20**: After many years of hard work, the initial version of Polkadot has finally `launched `__ today! During this phase, we retain superuser control of the network via a “sudo module”, which can be used easily deploy runtime upgrades containing fixes. **15.05.20**: Aleixo will start his Master thesis at W3F desiging a private interoperability protocol between Polkadot and zCash. **09.05.20**: Fatemeh is giving guest lecture on Interoperability at CAS courses organised by University of Applied Science of Zurich (ZHAW). **06.05.20**: Al will give a talk at Layer One online conference titled “Polkadot’s cross-chain Messaging Protocol”. **04.05.20**: Jeff gave a talk at Layer One online conference titled “Availability & Validity on Polkadot”. **02.05.20**: The first version of the `Polkadot Overview paper `__ is ready. Have a look! **27.04.20**: Alfonso and Alistair prepared the first draft of the `NPoS paper `__. Have a look! **27.03.20**: Fatemeh is programm committee member of IWPE 2020. **05.03.20**: The interlay (http://interlay.io) project has been comissioned by Web3 Foundation to work on Bitcoin-Polkadot bridge specification. **19-20.02.20**: Alistair is going to attend the Standford Blockchain Conference 2020 and a co-located `Polkadot meetup `__ organized by Web3 Foundation. **10.02.20** Handan and Jeff attended Financial Crypto 2020 and presented their posters. **13.01.20** We published a medium blogpost on `XCMP `__ giving an overall overview of XCMP and descriping a number of design decisions. **20.12.19** We updated our `XCMP implementation considerations `_. **05.12.19** Handan has finished a paper titled: `Consensus on Clock in Universally Composable Timing Model `__. It is an updated version of Ouroboros Clepsydra that doesn’t rely on existence of some syncronized parties anymore. **03.12.19** Syed attended the `ECC workshop `__ in Bochum, Germany. **02.12.19** A poster from Jeff on incentivized mixing and a poster from Handan on consensus on clocks have been accepted at Financial Crypto 2020. **28.11.19** Alistair gave a presentation on Polkadot's governance and participated in a panel at "the Governance on blockchain systems" meetup in Geneva, Switzerland. **20.11.19** Some members of the research and HR teams will present a recruitment talk for masters and PhD students at EPFL, Switzerland. **12.11.19** Alistair presented a poster session about the Grandpa finality gadget at the Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CSS) in London. **08.11.19** Alfonso and Syed hosted a 3 hour Thinktank session about Polkadot in Paris, organized by LaBChain and hosted by Caisse des Dépôts. **30.10.19** Fatemeh gave a talk titled 'Decentralization and privacy' and Alfonso gave a talk introducing Polkadot's at a Web3 meetup. **12.10.19** Alistair will be participating in panel at an event on cross-app communication organized by Near protocol right after Devcon 5. **09.10.19** At Devcon day 1, Fatemeh will give a short presentation about Polkadot's needs for p2p. On day 4, Alistair will give a devcon talk on our availabiltiy and validity scheme. Also on day 4, Alfonso will give a short presentation about governenace. **05.10.19** Alistair gave a talk at the `NodeTokyo 2019 `__ about our NPoS solution. **17.09.19** Alistair's poster on GRANDPA has been accepted as an ACM CCS poster and will be pesented in CCS'19 in London. **16.09.19** Alistair will be giving a number of talks in China in the next two weeks. **18.08.19** Handan wrote a paper describing the relevant time technique used in Polkadot’s block production protocol BABE with the title: “Ouroboros Clepsydra: Ouroboros Praos in Universally Composable Relative Time Model” that will be shortly available online. **15.08.19** Syed and Alfonso will hold an exercise session for Polkadot’s bridge design in Copenhagen Blockchain Summer School. In addition, Alfonso will be giving a talk at the Nordic Blockchain Summit 2019. **05.08.19** Alistair, Fatemeh, and Jeff are in Berlin for our networking workshop with Parity. **22.07.19** Alistair gave a number of talks focusing on Polkadot’s Validity and Avalibility scheme in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Chengzhu during Polkadot China tour in July. **28.06.19** Fatemeh is PC member for CBT 2019.