YACL Talk | Feb 14, 11:00am | Jiasun Li (George Mason University) - Game theory in blockchain research and my attempts to connect to cryptography
Aviv Yaish
When: Friday (Feb 14), 11:00-noon
Where: AKW200, Arthur K. Watson Hall, 51 Prospect St, New Haven, CT 06511, US
Speaker: Jiasun Li (George Mason University, currently visiting Yale)
Title: Game theory in blockchain research and my attempts to connect to cryptography
Abstract: I plan to divide the talk into two parts. In the first part, I will review my past and ongoing research on applying game theory and mechanism design to blockchain research, highlight two pieces of work: 1. The economic forces that simultaneously compromise and sustain decentralization; 2. The promise of Bitcoin mining to actually lower total carbon emission in the overall economy. In the second half, I will introduce my current interests in incorporating cryptography into mechanism design. I will explain how cryptography may enable the implementation of otherwise infeasible mechanisms, and envision how economic approaches may complement cryptography.If there is extra time (highly unlikely), I can dive in more other work that fall in the same theme.
Bio: Jiasun Li is currently visiting Yale CS while on sabbatical from associate professor of finance at the Costello College of Business, George Mason University. His research interest is at the intersection of economics and computer science, with focus on applying game theoretical modeling to various blockchain-related topics such as mining, distributed consensus, blockchain scaling, tokenomics. His broader interests encompass empirical studies of the blockchain ecosystem and the application of game theory and mechanism design to other topics such as security design, human-genAI interaction, and traffic control.Dr Li's research has appeared in leading business/finance journals including the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, and Management Science as well as computer science workshops including ACM Web (WWW) and Financial Cryptography (FC), among others. His ongoing research is supported by grants from the NSF CAREER Award and the Ethereum Foundation, among others. His past work has won the Chicago Quantitative Alliance (CQA) academic paper competition and Yihong Xia Best Paper Award, among other prizes. Besides academic talks at business schools/CS departments, he has also been invited to speak at the Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Homeland Security, and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Dr Li received his Ph.D. in Finance from UCLA Anderson School of Management and B.S. in Mathematics from Fudan University in Shanghai, China.
Livestream: https://yale.zoom.us/j/95026061881?pwd=Zqbe9ib4bjyK7YkH4sbhpFPGraTul7.1 (Password: 939578, Telephone：203-432-9666 or 646 568 7788)
More: For additional details about the talk and our seminar, see our website: https://sites.google.com/view/yacl