Chain Inc., the company that helps financial institutions such as Nasdaq to design and build blockchain networks, has announced its partnership with the Initiative for Cryptocurrency and Contracts (IC3) – created by Cornell University, Cornell Tech, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the Technion

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IC3 was founded to advance the development of blockchain technology and smart contracts by making the academics’ expertise in cryptography, distributed systems, game theory, and programming languages available to industry partners. It’s based at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech in New York City and the IC3 faculty is the recipient of a $3 million 3-year National Science Foundation grant.

Professor Emin Gün Sirer, Co-Director of IC3 and Associate Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, said: “We are delighted to have Chain join IC3 as a Sponsor member. The Chain team shares our vision of ubiquitous blockchain-based networks that are fast, scalable, confidential and secure. We look forward to collaborating with Chain to accelerate the deployment and adoption of reliable smart contract solutions.”

Chain explains the collaboration underscores its commitment to building interoperable software that is scalable across the financial services industry.

“We are very pleased to announce this partnership and look forward to closely collaborating with IC3’s eminent research team,” said Ryan Smith, CTO and co-founder, Chain. “Modern cryptographic protocols are the foundation of secure blockchain networks. We believe that these techniques combined with robust software engineering will transform the infrastructure used for financial transactions.”

As part of this partnership, Chain will host the next IC3 Retreat for its industry partners in San Francisco February 2017. The IC3 Retreat is an invitation-only workshop where IC3 and its industry collaborators discuss current advancements in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and their vision for the field’s future, focusing on privacy, security, performance, and compliance.