Tech titan Microsoft has joined the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3) to advance blockchain-based solutions and infrastructure.

Based at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech in New York, IC3 is an initiative of faculty members at Cornell University, Cornell Tech, UC Berkeley, UIUC and the Technion. With this partnership, Microsoft is joining other leading finance and technology companies to make financial systems much more flexible, transparent, efficient, and secure.

“As we continue our journey in blockchain, we have watched and read the work of the IC3 team and are impressed with their thinking and the perspective they bring to the community. We are very aligned with the approaches IC3 blockchain experts are taking to address scale, simplification, and other topics of interest for enterprise adoption. The synergies in their research fit well with our visions for enterprise scale blockchain solutions,” said Yorke E. Rhodes III, Global Blockchain Business Strategist, Microsoft. “We are excited to work more closely with IC3 through this membership.”

IC3’s existing members includes the likes of IBM, Fidelity Labs, Intel, and blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings. It offers world-class expertise in computer science that spans cryptography, distributed systems, game theory, programming languages, and system security techniques.

“IC3 was founded to advance blockchain science, technology and applications,” said Ari Juels, co-Director of IC3 and a professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech in New York City. “We’re delighted to work more closely with Microsoft’s blockchain experts, who share our vision of blockchain-based solutions for next generation financial services.”

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