I’m glad to see pushback on the “crypto means cryptography” meme, which is really just an indicator they aren’t interested in the leading cryptographic research.
Well, let's see, the technical program for this year's RealWorldCrypto conference includes...side channel attacks, symmetric cryptography, privacy, attacks on privacy, cryptography for the ads industry, messaging, post-quantum crypto, threshold crypto, and zero knowledge proofs. Funny how Blockchain did not make the cut for a popular conference on practical applications of advanced cryptography.
Looking through the CRYPTO'21 and EUROCRYPT'21 conferences, there is only one session between them involving "blockchain" and it is not even dedicated to the topic (it also includes papers related to law enforcement and privacy).
This may be hard for blockchain enthusiasts to hear, but it is not really a hot topic among cryptographers. There was a bit of interest a few years ago as people tried to figure out if any good security definitions can be developed, and the results were not very convincing. Beyond that almost all the academic interest in block chains has focused on the "permissioned" setting where security can be defined in a meaningful and useful way.
So, yes, "crypto means cryptography" and "blockchain" should refer to block cipher chaining modes.
betterunix2|4 years ago
Looking through the CRYPTO'21 and EUROCRYPT'21 conferences, there is only one session between them involving "blockchain" and it is not even dedicated to the topic (it also includes papers related to law enforcement and privacy).
This may be hard for blockchain enthusiasts to hear, but it is not really a hot topic among cryptographers. There was a bit of interest a few years ago as people tried to figure out if any good security definitions can be developed, and the results were not very convincing. Beyond that almost all the academic interest in block chains has focused on the "permissioned" setting where security can be defined in a meaningful and useful way.
So, yes, "crypto means cryptography" and "blockchain" should refer to block cipher chaining modes.