MIT Digital Currency Initiative (DCI)
Higher Education - Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
MIT Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) Employees
MIT Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) Details
DCI's team of independent open-source developers and experts in distributed systems, cryptography, security, and economics conduct the research necessary to advance the security, scalability, and privacy of digital currency systems. DCI serves as a neutral convener for governments, nonprofits, open-source developers, and the private sector. Current research priorities include cryptocurrency and central bank digital currency.Bitcoin and CryptocurrencyDCI's engineering team includes Bitcoin Core developers, the co-author of libsnark, the co-inventor of the Lightning Network, and a host of experts in distributed systems, cryptography, economics, and policy. We're currently focused on solving fundamental problems in cryptocurrency technology to make it ready for use by billions of users. We foster ecosystem trust by contributing to and increasing the security of the bitcoin network, developing infrastructure that strengthens Layer 1, and creating tools that can be used by open source developers to identify vulnerabilities.Central Bank Digital CurrencySince 2016, DCI has been engaging with central banks around the world in an effort to understand their considerations and address them in our research when possible. Central banks regularly undertake research papers with external academics in a particular field. Our work is in that tradition and, as with all academic research, does not imply endorsement of any policy position. DCI's current CBDC research brings together technologists, user researchers, central banks, private companies, and academics to design central bank digital currency. The initiative seeks to design, implement, and test CBDC open source software, bringing the benefits of programmability to CBDC without compromising security. Ultimately, DCI aims to architect CBDCs technical landscape in service of a more accessible, trusted, fair, and resilient economy.
