A blockchain project being developed by MIT researchers gained new attention this week following criticism of its alleged design elements, though the veracity of these claims has been denied by those involved.
The inciting incident came on 21st April , when Bitcoin Core developer and blockchain consultant Peter Todd posted what he positioned as "leaked copies" of documents relating to an MIT Connection Science research project called ChainAnchor .
In the post, Todd, an expert on threat analysis who has done work with bitcoin and non-bitcoin companies , denounced the project for what he concluded was its plan to "bribe" bitcoin miners by incentivizing these entities not to process transactions in which the participants are not identifiable.
"We’re talking about miners being coerced to only process transactions that have opted into a regulated scheme," Todd told CoinDesk.
The remarks led to criticism of MIT on bitcoin social media channels, and even an attempt by Bitcoin Core developer and Ciphrex CEO Eric Lombrozo to encourage miners to pledge that they would not support this type of scheme.
MIT responded to the criticism today in statements to CoinDesk that denounced the post as lacking substance.
An MIT spokesperson said: "First of all, we are glad people are interested in what we are doing. We published this months ago on a public website and keep updating it at www.mit-trust.org. [But] ChainAnchor is simply not relevant to the bitcoin discussion." The university provided a link to the ChainAnchor project, as well as an updated white paper on the effort, dated 17th April. By contrast, Todd’s slides and images were dated in February, and though similar to MIT’s, some notable changes were made.
For instance, the ChainAnchor paper positions the project as one that’s aimed to "address the issue of identity and access control within shared permissioned ledgers".Further, language in the […]
