Cryptic Labs, a blockchain research lab and accelerator, has announced the addition of two Nobel Laureates in economics, Dr. Eric S. Maskin and Sir Christopher Pissarides, to its economics advisory board.
The addition of Drs. Maskin and Pissarides will allow Cryptic Labs to offer blockchain companies insights in game theory and token economics.
The two Nobel Laureates join Cryptic Labs’ chief scientist Dr. Whitfield Diffie, the preeminent cryptographer who won the 2015 Turing Award. These experts will advise client companies on token economics and help them craft the incentive systems they need to ensure adoption and growth.
Cryptic Labs is a research lab specializing in fundamental research of cryptography and blockchain technology. It functions as an accelerator with expertise in security, privacy and trust, offering collaboration on research, talent acquisition and mentorship for companies in their accelerator. Cryptic Labs boasts a growing roster of renowned researchers both in the US and Europe.
Herman Collins, chief of human capital at Cryptic Labs, told CoinJournal:
“Cryptic Labs was founded to explore solutions for the issues that constrain the broad adoption of blockchain technology. Our initial focus has been the challenges of security and proper implementation of cryptographic methods. […] The economics of blockchain remains an important aspect of the industry that is not well understood.”
Collins cited the main challenges associated with blockchain adoption as being scalability, security, data sovereignty and demonstrable returns of blockchain economic models. “Only CrypticLabs has created such a talent pool of expert academic minds to work directly on these problems with blockchain projects and enterprises formulating their blockchain strategies,” he said.
Dr. Maskin of Harvard University, will focus on game theory and mechanism design, with an emphasis on how blockchain companies can guide user incentives at a micro level. Dr. Maskin won a Nobel Prize in 2007 for laying the foundations of mechanism design theory.
Dr. Pissarides of the London School of Economics will provide expertise on macroeconomic trends. Dr. Pissarides specializes in the economics of labor markets, macroeconomic policy, economic growth and structural change, and was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in economics for his work in the economics of markets with frictions.
“My expertise is in macroeconomics and the interaction between the economy and the financial and fiscal architecture at national and international level, and blockchain is changing that architecture,” Dr. Pissarides, told CoinJournal.
“The challenge faced by people like me is to work out what needs to be done to improve the use of blockchain, make it more secure and more widely accessible, and examine the implications that it has for trade, financial markets and economic performance. Cryptic Labs has a team that I feel I can work with to achieve those aims.”