Best Universities for Blockchain 2022: Cornell University

Cornell may have just one blockchain research center, but it is arguably the most eminent in the blockchain community. IC3, for Initiative for CryptoCurrency and Contracts, is headquartered at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech in New York City. Formed by faculty members of eight of the world’s top universities, it aims to meet “the blockchain community’s urgent need for world-class expertise in computer science.” Current research projects underway include enabling safety and compliance in Going Incognito in the Metaverse, applying blockchain to societal problems in Blockchains as Infrastructure and Semicommons, and evaluating Copyright Vulnerabilities in NFTs.

This piece is part of CoinDesk's Education Week

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The Ivy League university also has “the Cornell Blockchain club, one of the best in the world,” wrote Nick Stamm, Cornell Blockchain’s president, to CoinDesk. The club has a mission to develop “the next generation of blockchain leaders” and is well organized and extensive. Its education team – students that teach other students – teaches the course CS 1998: Intro to Blockchain, and is launching an Intro to Solidity class in the spring.

The club’s event branch organized an annual blockchain conference attended by major players in the crypto industry. The conference last April included participation from Ava Labs, dYdX, Crypto.com, Chainanalysis, Nansen.ai and more.

Cornell has more blockchain and related courses, at 38, than any other university among the 240 examined for our list. The course Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies, and Smart Contracts is taught by Ari Juels, who was named an Innovator Under 35 by MIT Technology Review. The Ivy League university also offers an online certificate program to learn about blockchain technology’s cryptographic underpinnings.

While Cornell does not have a blockchain-specific major, the Robert S. Harrison College Scholar Program allows students to “design their own interdisciplinary major, organized around a question of issue of interest, and pursue a course of study that cannot be found in an established major.” Through the program, students are able to tailor their major to focus on blockchain technology.

Significant numbers of alumni have gone to work at top blockchain organizations, like Binance, Coinbase and Consensys.