A distributed ledger is a tamperproof sequence of data that can be read and augmented by everyone. Distributed ledgers stand to revolutionize the way a democratic society operates. They secure all kinds of traditional transactions — such as payments, asset transfers, titling — in the exact order in which they occur; and enable totally new transactions — such as cryptocurrencies and smart contracts. They can remove intermediaries and usher in a new paradigm for trust. As currently implemented, however, distributed ledgers cannot achieve their enormous potential.
Algorand is an alternative, democratic, and efficient distributed ledger. Unlike prior ledgers based on "proof of work," it dispenses with "miners." Indeed, Algorand requires only a negligible amount of computation. Moreover, its transaction history does not "fork" with overwhelming probability: i.e., Algorand guarantees the finality of all transactions.
Silvio Micali recieved his Laurea in Mathematics from the University of Rome, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Since 1983, he has been on the faculty of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT.
Silvio’s research interests are cryptography, zero knowledge, pseudo-random generation, secure protocols, mechanism design, and distributed ledgers.
Silvio is the recipient of the ACM A.M. Turing Award (in computer science), the Gödel Prize (in theoretical computer science), and the RSA prize (in cryptography). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Academia dei Lincei.
