What is MIT's layout in Web 3?

Author: Alex Letsas
Source: DAOrayaki

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Introduction

Is Web 3.0 "coming soon" or "already here"? It depends on who you are talking to!

Is it a buzzword, pure hype, or is there something more significant? This article will not attempt to define the still vague concept, nor will it delve into its merits, risks, and challenges. Instead, this article will start from the assumption that Web 3.0 is important, regardless of what form it ultimately takes, and that it is likely to become a breeding ground for major innovations across multiple fields in the next decade. Therefore, I believe it is worth our attention.

Like its two predecessors, the growth of third-generation internet services will not be confined to any one geographic location. Web 3.0 innovation centers will arise and thrive around the world, especially in places that embrace its core tenets (decentralization, open-source technology, user empowerment) and understand the importance of interdisciplinary thinking in shaping its future trajectory.

In my view, MIT is undoubtedly one of these innovation centers. During my time at MIT, I observed a perfect fusion of participants who are gradually transforming the university into a core player and thought leader in this rapidly emerging field of new technological opportunities. From cutting-edge research on decentralization and campus blockchain-related courses to revolutionary initiatives in AR/VR, gaming communities, and stunning new startups, MIT is brimming with innovation across the entire Web 3.0 space stack.

The cultural elements of this community are as important, if not more so, than its technological prowess. Scientists, scholars, builders, geeks, gamers, and entrepreneurs at MIT, including those dedicated to Web 3.0 innovation, embody a spirit of humility and curiosity. Far from the hype, these key stakeholders focus on long-term exploration of new technologies and transformative technologies—technologies that can meaningfully improve our lives.

Fortunately, this campus fermentation process coincides with the rise of Cambridge University as an important new center for entrepreneurship and technological innovation. Kendall Square (with the help of MIT) is dubbed "the most innovative square mile in the world," and this is no coincidence. The broader tech ecosystem of Cambridge and Boston has long been revered as a top place for biotechnology, but it is now also positioning itself as a broader tech amplifier, spanning deep tech, hard tech, and everything in between. Large tech companies are capitalizing on these trends, and impressive new unicorns are rapidly proliferating. This makes the pull for tech talent looking to build or create entirely new worlds in Web 3.0 even stronger.

Web 3.0 is related to both culture and art, as well as technology. Boston and Cambridge form a tightly-knit university cluster composed of world-leading arts and sciences institutions, including Harvard University, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern University, Emerson College, and Berklee College of Music (many of which are in close proximity), and the ability of the next generation to shape the foundations of new network edifices from these two cities can be greatly accelerated.

Inspired by what I have witnessed so far, I decided to map the current Web 3.0 ecosystem at MIT (and rising from MIT). Given the sheer volume of activity happening on and around campus every day, this list is not exhaustive, but it still comprehensively showcases the breadth and strength of this ecosystem. I have divided this article into four parts: (1) Research (2) Blockchain Courses (3) Clubs and Events (4) Startups.

1. Research

There are numerous ongoing research activities in every corner of the MIT campus. Some of the most significant ones directly or indirectly related to the Web 3.0 space include:

Decentralized Information Group (DIG). DIG, located at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), is an important research group historically led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web) and Lalana Kagal. For decades, it has paved the way for research into decentralized technologies and sciences that can make the internet more open and contribute to social change.

One of DIG's most successful projects is Solid (Social Linked Data), a web decentralization project led by Berners-Lee and developed in collaboration with MIT and partner institutions. Solid aims to give people control over their data and reconstruct a decentralized web, realizing Berners-Lee's original vision of a truly open network of shared benefits for everyone. In 2018, Berners-Lee launched a commercial project based on Solid called Inrupt, focusing on ensuring the ongoing success of the Solid specification.

Digital Currency Initiative (DCI). DCI was co-founded by Jeremy Rubin and Brian Forde in 2015 and launched at the MIT Media Lab, with the explicit goal of bringing together the brightest minds on campus to research the development of digital currencies, blockchain technology, and the open-source crypto community. DCI collaborates with other universities, research institutions, and collaborators from various sectors, working with interdisciplinary teams of faculty, students, and scientists to write research papers, run pilot use cases, and develop open-source software. DCI is currently led by Neha Narula, who has played a significant role in promoting distributed ledger technology (DLT) activities both on and off campus.

One of the most important projects DCI is involved in is Bitcoin Core development. The project currently has a team actively contributing to and maintaining Bitcoin Core. In fact, two of its members rank in the top ten globally among all core contributors by submission count.

DCI is also the author and co-author of the Lightning Network, which is one of the most promising Bitcoin scaling solutions in the world. At DCI, Dryja's research focuses on the scalability and interoperability of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts.

Another highly influential project led by DCI is the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) research. After coordinating with central bank technocrats and economists for years, the team has now developed a CBDC research agenda that brings together technical experts, user researchers, central banks, private companies, and academics for future research and design of central bank digital currencies. In 2020, DCI announced a landmark multi-year collaboration with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to conduct technical research related to central bank digital currencies.

DCI also owns and supports the influential crypto-economics system blockchain journal and conference series. The journal is open access and is also published by the MIT Press.

MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab. The Cryptoeconomics Lab, located at MIT's Sloan School of Management, aims to push the research frontier in the emerging field of cryptoeconomics. It merges modern economics and computer science to study decentralized markets and applications that can be built when cryptography is combined with economic incentives. The lab was co-founded by Christian Catalini (co-creator of Diem, former chief economist of the Libra and Diem Association) and Catherine Tucker (MIT Sloan Professor of Marketing and Pricing). Catalini and Tucker researched and co-designed the famous MIT Bitcoin Experiment conducted by the MIT Bitcoin Club in 2014, which offered $100 in Bitcoin to all MIT undergraduates. Their findings were subsequently published in the journal Science.

Note: The idea, setup, and implementation of the experiment belonged to Jeremy Rubin (then a sophomore at MIT) and Dan Elitzer (then an MBA candidate), who raised $500,000 from alumni (including Alex Morcos) and other sources to fund the experiment. Rubin, Elitzer, and Morcos play significant roles in today's blockchain and Web 3.0 space, as you will see in the fourth section (Startups) below.

MIT Media Lab AR/VR Research Group. The MIT Media Lab conducts some of the most pioneering research in the fields of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). It currently supports several related research groups, including Camera Culture, City Science, Fluid Interfaces, Viral Spread, Future Sketching, and Future Opera, all of which are involved in AR/VR projects.

In the past, the MIT Media Lab also hosted the Reality Virtual Hackathon, which brought together developers, designers, engineers, artists, coders, experts, sound designers, storytellers, students, creatives, and imaginative AR/VR enthusiasts for five days to explore the potential of VR/AR technologies in building new experiences and applications.

Arts, Culture, and Technology (ACT). The ACT program at MIT is an academic program and a center for critical artistic practices and discourse within the School of Architecture and Planning. ACT has a vibrant ecosystem of projects, centers, and labs that facilitate interactions between art, culture, technology, science, and design. ACT's focus on embedded interdisciplinary research is one of its fundamental strengths as a cross-technical project and cross-cultural innovation center.

Advanced Virtual Center. The MIT Advanced Virtual Center pioneers innovative experiences using virtual technologies, from VR to Cinematic Reality (CR), helping people create imaginative experiences in our physical world. The center's production function serves both as a studio and a lab, supporting creative projects and new research work.

MIT Nano Immersion Lab. The Immersion Lab provides an environment that connects the physical and digital—visualizing data, developing advanced tool prototypes for AR/VR, and creating new software and hardware concepts for immersive experiences. The lab serves as a platform that connects scientists and engineers with artists, musicians, and performers through interdisciplinary creative projects. This is why the lab offers open research space, meaning that professors, students, and researchers from any department at the university can utilize its tools to pursue their interests.

The Immersion Lab is responsible for a gaming project (a four-year collaboration between MIT.nano and NCSOFT, a video game development company based in South Korea) aimed at depicting how people will interact with the world and each other through hardware and software innovations in gaming technology. The lab also sponsors immersive learning, hosting monthly seminars on immersive technologies, interactive experiences, and data.

MIT Game Lab. The MIT Game Lab brings together scholars, creators, and technologists to teach, research, and develop new methods of applying game design and construction through iterative and player-centered approaches. In the past, the MIT Game Lab helped launch Play Labs, an accelerator/incubator for fun tech startups on the MIT campus, running two cohorts in the summers of 2017 and 2018.

2. Blockchain Courses

MIT offers an increasing number of blockchain-related courses, ranging from theory to technology to entrepreneurship. We can categorize them into three main types: (i) MIT student courses, (ii) courses offered for free through MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), and (iii) executive courses. Here are some of the most important examples.

(i) MIT Student Courses:

Blockchain Lab (15.217). The Blockchain Lab brings companies and students together to work on real-world projects using blockchain technology, digital currency research, and many other emerging technologies. Students have previously participated in very interesting projects, including the price discovery relationship between Bitcoin spot and derivatives markets and a blockchain-based KYC system for small and medium-sized enterprise clients.

Blockchain Ethics (MAS.S67). This course aims to answer a fundamental question in the blockchain space: How can we actively shape the development of cryptocurrency technology? The course explores the social impacts of blockchain technology, including cryptography, autonomous code, democratized incentive structures, and the evolution of the blockchain community.

Shared Public Ledger: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, and Other Wonders (6.892). This course focuses on the principles and core technologies of shared public ledgers, with an emphasis on Bitcoin and distributed consensus. Topics include Bitcoin, Byzantine protocols, authenticated data structures, Lightning networks, proof of stake, and new technologies for implementing shared public ledgers. More information about the course and materials can be found on the course's GitHub page.

Crypto Finance (15.492). This course explores the crypto assets behind blockchain technology. It covers topics such as crypto economics, trading, markets, tokens, and crypto derivatives. Students will gain a deep understanding and comparison of the market structures, participants, regulatory differences, and dynamics of this relatively new and volatile asset class compared to traditional finance.

(ii) MIT Free Online OpenCourseWare Courses:

Blockchain and Currency (15.235 / 15.S12). This is one of MIT's most popular blockchain courses, which was recently taught by Professor Gary Gensler before his appointment as Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The course is designed for students who want to explore the potential uses of blockchain technology to change the world of currency and finance and serves as an important introduction to the DLT space. The course videos are now among the most-watched in the entire blockchain space.

Borderless Entrepreneurs (15.395). This course explores the opportunities and challenges faced by global entrepreneurs, including those in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. It focuses on the connections between business environments, institutional frameworks, and the creation of new ventures, with particular attention to blockchain technology.

Cryptocurrency Engineering and Design (MAS.S62). A deep technical introduction to the nature of blockchain technology. This course looks at the design of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and how they operate in practice, focusing on cryptography, game theory, and network architecture. Course materials are also available on GitHub.

(iii) Executive Courses

Blockchain Technology: Business Innovation and Applications: This six-week course draws on economic theory to give participants a deep and practical understanding of blockchain technology and effectively demonstrate its meaningful capabilities in business innovation and efficiency. The course explores the similarities between blockchain technology and other general-purpose technologies, emphasizing its potential for widespread, transformative change.

Cryptocurrency: This is a short online course co-directed by the MIT Media Lab with experts from the crypto industry, economists, financial regulators, and internet entrepreneurs. It takes a comprehensive approach to explore the comparisons between cryptocurrency and traditional finance, helping participants gain insights into how startups, financial institutions, large tech companies, and central banks are adapting to its emergence.

Digital Transformation: From AI and IoT to Cloud, Blockchain, and Cybersecurity: Led by MIT faculty at the forefront of data science, participants learn about the history and applications of five of the most transformative technologies: blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cybersecurity. As part of the course, students will learn how to transact with Ether using MetaMask and deploy simple contracts to the Ethereum blockchain. This course is aimed at professionals.

3. Clubs and Events

There is a very active student scene on campus, and Web 3.0 is no exception. Although many active groups are often scattered, the cross-influence among key stakeholders is increasing, and interoperability between existing clusters is also on the rise. Some notable mentions include the following:

MIT Bitcoin Club. Founded with the help of Dan Elitzer, it is one of the earliest blockchain clubs in the world. It is run by undergraduate students at MIT, with the explicit goal of raising awareness of cryptocurrencies, improving their use cases, and helping its members understand the existence and latest innovations of blockchain technology. Over the years, the club has developed into an active MIT student community supported by loyal alumni and outstanding local talent, all of which contribute to solidifying its strong legacy. While student-run, it is open to all enthusiasts—true to its history and purpose.

At the beginning of each academic year, the club hosts a series of introductory workshops on cryptography and major cryptocurrencies, introducing new digital natives to the fundamentals of blockchain technology. In its popular weekly discussion groups, the club covers everything from the latest developments in the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to zero-knowledge proofs to new scalability solutions for Ethereum.

Since 2014, the club has organized the MIT Bitcoin Expo every year—a two-day conference (including a hackathon) focused on all things blockchain. The MIT Bitcoin Expo is one of the largest and most respected academic blockchain conferences in the world, having previously hosted many of the most influential conferences in the field. You can find videos of past events here.

MIT Sloan Blockchain Club. The MIT Blockchain Club is a graduate organization at the Sloan School that aims to cultivate knowledgeable and well-rounded future leaders in the blockchain world. The club brings together a talented group from MIT and the Greater Boston area to create and accelerate innovation in the field, foster tighter connections within the community, and provide a bridge for people exploring careers in the industry.

While rooted in the business environment, the club also focuses on the technical side. The MIT Bitcoin Club delves deeply into technology, while the MIT Sloan Blockchain Club covers a broad range of potential applications and developments. The club hosts various meetings each week on blockchain-related topics (i.e., DeFi, CBDCs, stablecoins, NFTs, wallets, and security) and frequently holds events with industry-leading speakers, domain experts, and innovative startups.

MIT VR/AR. The VR/AR Club is the hub for all things AR/VR on campus, run by students. It hosts events, workshops, and courses, helps startups, has an amazing community studio (also known as "The Cave"), and is the proud home of the world's largest XR hackathon, the renowned MIT Reality Hack.

Metaverse Interest Group. The MIG is an unofficial group of over 100 participants from the broader MIT community that began meeting regularly at the end of 2021 to discuss the latest trends at the intersection of the growing online multiverse, gaming, blockchain, decentralized applications, and Web 3.0. It includes students, lecturers, affiliates, startup founders, and investors.

Other relevant groups and events: The Sloan Fintech Club increasingly organizes events related to blockchain and open finance. It also hosts the renowned MIT Fintech Conference annually. The MIT Innovation Headquarters (iHQ) has also helped host many blockchain-related events and startups. Finally, MIT wouldn't be MIT without competitive esports, gaming competitions, historic gaming societies, and legendary live-action role-playing associations.

4. Startups

This is an exciting time for new startups and projects created in the Web 3.0 space by MIT faculty, students, affiliates, alumni, and dropouts.

At the same time, we are witnessing the rise of a new generation of young investors who are helping to usher in a new era of Web 3.0 innovation. This includes MIT alumni Matt Huang (co-founder of industry-leading Paradigm, which just raised up to $2.5 billion in a new fund) and Dan Elitzer (former founding president of the MIT Bitcoin Club, now co-founder of Nascent, a global multi-strategy investment firm focused on crypto and open finance).

Algorand. Algorand officially launched in 2019 as a permissionless, open-source decentralized network designed to solve the blockchain trilemma of achieving speed, security, and decentralization simultaneously. The development of the Algorand platform is overseen by Algorand, Inc., based in Boston, which was founded in 2017 by MIT computer science professor Silvio Micali, who received the Turing Award for his work in cryptography. In 2020, Algorand was selected as the underlying technology for the Marshall Islands digital currency experiment. Algorand currently supports decentralized application (dApp) development, and as of November 2021, its native cryptocurrency ALGO had a market capitalization of $11 billion.

Axelar. The Axelar stack provides a decentralized network, protocols, tools, and APIs that allow for simple cross-chain communication. Axelar was co-founded by MIT alumni Georgios Vlachos, a member of the Algorand founding team, and Sergey Gorbunov, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo. The company raised $25 million in Series A funding in July 2021, led by Polychain Capital.

Celo. Celo is a mobile-first platform that enables anyone with a smartphone to access financial dApps and crypto payments. It was initially co-founded by former MIT MBA Rene Reinsberg, former MIT professor and head of the Social Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab Sep Kamvar, and former MIT PhD student Marek Olszewski. cLabs is the name used by Celo since 2018 and is now one of the many contributors to the open-source project. Earlier this year, the Celo network and the mobile-first digital wallet Valora, spun out from cLabs, raised $20 million in Series A funding, led by Celo's main backer A16Z.

Chaincode Labs. Chaincode Labs is a Bitcoin research and development center located in Midtown Manhattan, New York. The team is passionate about the development of the Bitcoin network and provides resources for independent innovators in the Bitcoin ecosystem. It is privately funded and solely supports and develops Bitcoin. Chaincode Labs was co-founded in 2014 by MIT alumni Alex Morcos and Suhas Daftuar, both active supporters of the MIT blockchain ecosystem, who co-founded the global trading firm Hudson River Trading.

Creaticles. Creaticles is the first decentralized platform for requesting custom NFTs, connecting businesses and individuals with creators. The startup was co-founded by current MIT MBA candidate Trevor Keith and was selected in October 2021 as one of the eight most promising projects to participate in the recent 2021 Fall CoinList Seed Batch.

Dark Forest. Dark Forest is a space conquest game built on Ethereum, where players can discover and conquer planets in an infinite, procedurally generated, cryptographically designated universe. Dark Forest uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) to verify game actions on Ethereum without sharing information about the actions with other players. The project was co-created by Brian Gu, a student in the MIT Mathematics Department. Brian collaborates with the Ethereum Foundation on applied zero-knowledge research and development.

Floating Point Group. FPG is a growth-stage startup born at MIT that greatly simplifies backend operations, enabling investors to deploy cryptocurrency-centric strategies at meaningful scale. The company was co-founded by MIT graduates John Peurifoy and Van Phu, along with Kevin March. FPG recently completed $10 million in Series A funding. This was the company's super-enthusiastic promotional video from early 2018, during MIT's renowned student venture accelerator MIT delta v.

FTX. One of the most famous examples of a startup founded by MIT alumni in the blockchain space is the popular cryptocurrency trading platform FTX. The company was co-founded in 2019 by MIT graduates Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and Gary Wang, achieving a valuation of over $25 billion in just two and a half years of operation. SBF was recently named one of Forbes' richest self-made newcomers in history.

Fyat Lux. Fyat Lux is an interdisciplinary project that combines AR capabilities, blockchain technology, and groundbreaking art, aiming to build worlds and storytelling through further developing NFTs, making the Metaverse more comprehensible. Fyat Lux was co-founded by AR/VR expert Umar Arshad, former MIT MBA and current EIR at the MIT Fuse Accelerator, MIT Sloan lecturer, and MIT Media Lab alumni Christian Vazquez, along with Anthony Jones and Jan-Erik Steel.

Gather. Gather helps people meet in virtual spaces for any reason, whether for classes, wedding events, or simple work meetings. Centered around fully customizable Metaverse-oriented spaces, Gather makes your time in the community as easy as in real life. The company was co-founded by MIT graduates Alex Chen, Phillip Wang, and Mohammed Kumail Jaffer. Gather raised $26 million in Series A funding in early 2021, followed by $50 million in Series B funding in early November, with Sequoia Capital and Index as their main investors.

Judica. Judica is a Bitcoin research and deployment organization aimed at helping Bitcoin realize its original promise as a peer-to-peer financial system. The project is led by former MIT student and co-founder of the MIT Bitcoin Experiment Jeremy Rubin, who and his team have been prolific developers of software in the Bitcoin ecosystem. One of Judica's most interesting recent creations is Sapio, a flexible and powerful smart contract language that enables stateful smart contracts.

Messari. Messari is a popular online database in the crypto industry that provides data insights, pricing, and research on crypto assets through an open-source information repository. The company was founded in 2018 by Ryan Selkis, a dropout from MIT Sloan, and recently raised $21 million in Series A funding.

Metrika. Metrika collaborates with the world's most advanced blockchain platforms and applications to provide performance data, insights, and monitoring. The company was founded by Nikos Andrikogiannopoulos, a former MIT master's and MIT Sloan MBA graduate (MIT PhD dropout). Metrika raised $14 million in Series A funding in September 2021.

ML Tech. ML Tech is building the next generation of trading platforms for quantitative researchers within the crypto asset space while connecting them with institutional capital. The company was co-founded by MIT MFin graduates Leo Mindyuk and Markus Leballeux. ML Tech recently raised $1.75 million in seed funding.

Opdefi. Opdefi is a DeFi startup focused on building a blockchain-based quantitative decentralized asset management system. The initial implementation will focus on combining quantitative and decentralized finance, providing complex mining portfolios on a clear, user-friendly platform. The opdefi team includes several current MIT students, aiming to open the platform to beta testers in January 2022 and planning to release a general version v1 shortly thereafter.

SCRT Labs. SCRT Labs is the driving force and founding core development team behind Secret Network, the first blockchain with default data privacy, allowing you to build and use permissionless and privacy-preserving applications. It was founded in 2016 by Guy Zyskind, an MIT Media Lab alumnus.

Recently, renowned director Quentin Tarantino announced that he would release seven novel NFTs (containing unreleased secret content) on SCRT Labs' Secret Network, making headlines.

Conclusion

This is just a brief overview of the current MIT Web 3.0 ecosystem, which has been helping to shape these ecosystems over the years.

A combination of different cultural and technological forces—a profound technical understanding of blockchain technology and interest in its applications, a community of artist-thinkers, a culture of humility and collaboration among geek makers, a continuous focus on the AR/VR capabilities at the forefront of science, and a steadfast commitment to tech startups—all indicate that the future will be a very exciting time for anyone in this promising ecosystem.