The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 37 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Boneh: An operating quantum computer will likely be built within his lifetime
“I would speculate that in my lifetime, We'll probably see some sort of a, of operating quantum computer.”
Boneh: Matter Labs achieved zkEVM capability decades ahead of expectations
“Compiling Uniswap V-II solidity into you know, a snark capable circuit. We thought this was going to be decades away and you got it to work.”
Boneh predicts Bitcoin and Ethereum data will survive until year 3000
“So I think that the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains are going to be with humanity now forever, you know, in the year 3000, you know, the era of Futurama, we're still going to be looking at the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains. Maybe they won't be called that,…”
Boneh: Shift to online life drives cybersecurity focus more than Snowden
“I think Snowden might be actually a small part of it. I think the bigger issue is that more and more of our lives are going online, and as more of our data is available on computers, it's obviously, obviously also available to be hacked and stolen, and so comp…”
Boneh: Smartphone-based 2FA fails when users browse directly on their mobile devices
“Unfortunately today all second factor authentication schemes are essentially based on, well, the smartphone. And what happens if you only interact with the website through your smartphone, right? So in fact, we're hearing more and more of people that the only …”
Boneh: Security technology's ultimate goal is narrowing attacks strictly to social engineering
“Is to make it so that the only attack that's possible on you is a social engineering attack.”
Boneh: Faster computers help cryptographic defenders more than they help attackers
“And the reason is because as computers get faster we can you know, end, end user machines can actually handle larger and larger numbers. But if you just make the number, like, twice as big, Factoring it is not twice as hard. Factoring it becomes exponentially …”
Boneh: Functional quantum computers would break modern internet cryptography and Bitcoin
“All the world of crypto that we use on the internet today, and for Bitcoin as well, ah, would be well, would be broken if someone was able to build a quantum computer.”
Non-AES block ciphers cannot compete with Intel hardware acceleration
“It's gonna be really hard to promote any other block cipher, because any other block cipher is gonna have to be implemented in, in software, and there's no way it will compete with what Intel did.”
Dan Boneh: 50x blockchain speedups will unlock unimaginable new applications
“The same thing is going to happen here is that, you know, we speed things up by a factor of 50 and all of a sudden we get a whole bunch of new applications we couldn't even imagine.”
Boneh predicts the widespread emergence of fractional NFT ownership
“So that's pretty interesting, and I think we're going to be seeing things like fractional ownership of NFTs.”
Boneh predicts an aftermarket for composable NFT enhancements will emerge
“We're going to see enhancements to NFTs, so you can buy an NFT, and then there could be an aftermarket for enhancing it, like this image that you have, your background image, Ariana.”
Boneh: Blockchains will adopt quantum-resistant signatures before quantum threats emerge
“Quantum computers are ever built. Yes, they will be able to affect the signature algorithm that's used for securing assets on blockchains today, but not to worry. We have other signature algorithms that are actually quantum resistance. So even if you have a qu…”
Boneh: Cryptography uniquely bridges deep theoretical math with global real-world deployment
“It's one of the few areas, I have to say, where you can do deep mathematics, and at the same time, it would be extremely applied and deployed and used by billions of people all over the world.”
Boneh: Advanced security technology will fail to deploy without strong user interfaces
“You could have the best technology, but if it's not wrapped in a nice user interface that people have fun and, you know, they're comfortable using, it's never gonna get deployed. It's never gonna work.”
Boneh: Smartwatches are ideal 2FA mechanisms because they stay on the body
“The direction we'd like to go at, to move to, is where the second factor is something that's always on the human body. So, one of the beautiful applications for smart watches is exactly a second factor, right? My smart watch, my watch actually, is always on me…”
Boneh: Unlike passwords, compromised biometric fingerprints cannot be revoked or reset
“If your fingerprint, if you suspect that your fingerprint has been somehow compromised, there's no way for you to revoke your fingerprint.”
Boneh: The most impactful security technology operates invisibly to the user
“So the best security technology that has had the most impact in the world is security technology that is, is invisible, that people don't even know that it's there.”
Boneh: Implicit authentication false positive rates remain too high for mass adoption
“The false positive rates on that are still a little too high for it to be massively and widely used, but that is definitely a very interesting direction.”
Boneh: Stanford researchers developed a zero-knowledge solvency proof for Bitcoin exchanges
“So what we designed is basically A mechanism that allows you to prove solvency, but do it in a way that's called zero knowledge. So you can prove that you're solvent, so an exchange, can prove that the amount of bitcoins it has is more than the obligations tha…”
Boneh: Big tech security teams possess the authority to delay product launches
“In big companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google security teams in fact are involved in the process from the design phase, which is really important. And then if a product is about to ship out and a security, the security team discovers a big vulnerability, they…”
Boneh: Post-launch UI security fixes face severe user adoption friction
“Cause once your product is out there, once you build a user base, your users are used to using the product in a particular way. If it turns out that you have to make changes in the user interface because of security concerns, ah, that actually would make it ha…”
Boneh: MOOCs serve as 21st-century interactive textbooks rather than university replacements
“I now I've come to realize this MOOC is basically like a 21st century textbook. So if you take the MOOC online, you should be, it's almost the same as actually reading a textbook on crypto.”
VCs ignore pitches without "billions of dollars" on slide one
“When, ah, when you go pitch to VCs, the first thing they tell you is like, on slide number one, you're supposed to have some word, somewhere, it's where, you're supposed to have the words, billions of dollars, somewhere on slide number one, otherwise the VCs d…”
Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency to achieve working adoption
“This is the first cryptocurrency that's actually seems to work, that's actually been, being adopted.”
Blockchain is the first publicly available, append-only database
“The thing that we're excited about Bitcoin is, A, the, obviously, the currency, but what's more interesting is even the block applications of the blockchain, right? It's the first time when we have sort of an append-only database that's kind of you can put thi…”
Bitcoin exchange solvency can be proven without trusted auditors
“The beauty of Bitcoin is that you need no trust in third parties. And this proof of solvency can be done without, ah, any expense, any payments done to a third party.”
Mt. Gox insolvency would have been detected earlier with ZK proofs
“If Mt. Gox had run this protocol, their problems would have been detected much earlier than they were.”
Verifying 1% of balances exposes corrupt crypto exchanges
“It's enough to, say, one percent of the customers check, If the exchange cheats and actually does not include people's obligations, you know, if a small number of fraction of the, ah, ah, customers actually check that the proof is valid, a, ah, a corrupt excha…”
Boneh notes Hal Finney envisioned crypto trading cards in 1993
“Even in 1993, Hal Finney wrote a blog post, believe it or not, in 1993, Wrote a blog post about crypto trading cards, right?”
Boneh notes companies are enabling borrowing against NFTs as collateral
“If you own an NFT, you can borrow against that NFT as collateral. Basically, you can mortgage your NFT, and already we're seeing some companies doing that.”
Boneh: Computer science is now the largest major at Stanford University
“The computer science major at Stanford is, is exploding in the sense that we are now the largest major on campus and it's continuing to grow.”
Boneh: Computer science is a top-two major for women at Stanford
“It's kind of interesting that we're even the largest either largest or second largest major for women on campus. So if you literally count number of women, computer science is now either the largest or the second largest on campus.”
Boneh: Only 6% of Gmail users had enabled second-factor authentication in 2018
“There was just a paper published last summer that claims something like six percent of Gmail users.”
Generating a solvency proof for 500,000 customers takes 10 minutes
“So the exchange will take 10 minutes to generate the proof.”