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Dear IC3 Community,
April has been a busy month for our members! Here's a recap of new research, speaking opportunities, and media coverage that reflects on IC3’s impressive contributions to the industry.
Let's dive in.
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The Price of Interoperability: Exploring Cross-Chain Bridges and Their Economic Consequences
Blockchain interoperability is increasingly seen as a sign of maturity for decentralized ecosystems, letting users around the world interact without having to change their preferred assets. But a recent study by IC3 members found some previously unknown tradeoffs that could force a re-evaluation.
Specifically, they identified what they call the Growth–Return Paradox, which states that increased interoperability results in higher TVL, but also lower native-token returns at longer horizons, including approximately 0.4% lower 30-day cumulative returns and 1.1% lower 100-day cumulative.
They also identified an Efficiency–Fragility Trade-off. While increased interoperability lowered average gas per transaction and aggregate gas usage and fees, consistent with activity being routed toward lower-cost execution environments, it also increased fragility and resulted in stronger coupling. In one example, the researchers identified a decline of about 0.77 log points in TVL for connected chains relative to non-exposed chains. Increased interoperability also resulted in a 0.4% increase in TVL co-movement, suggesting stronger economic synchronization.
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Collectively, these contagion results carry implications for bridge security. Structural connectivity propagates economic shocks even without direct exploits, and the bridge designs most sensitive to congestion were also those most exposed to security incidents, suggesting that flow controls serve as both efficiency and security infrastructure.
Authors: Yiyue Cao, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China; Mingzhe Zheng, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China; Professor Lin William Cong, Nanyang Technological University & IC3, Singapore; Assistant Professor Siguang Li, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China; Assistant Professor Xuechao Wang, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China
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A Cross-Country Evaluation of Sentiment Toward Digital Payment Systems in Africa
Africa has long been a proving ground for payment innovation, from the 2008 launch of M-Pesa in Tanzania and Kenya to today’s CBDCs in Nigeria and Zimbabwe and high crypto adoption across the continent.
New research from our members highlights a key gap in payment industry knowledge: why users in these nations choose one payment rail over another. The answers could impact policy decisions and research trajectories.
The study, based on interviews with 90 participants equally distributed across Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, shows that while reliability and convenience drive usage, nearly all participants face usability issues, including opaque fees and limited recourse when things go wrong. Fragmentation forces users to further weigh volatility, system reliability, and data protection for each transaction.
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Ironically, while many participants said they trust governments to prevent scams, they often doubted those same governments’ ability to deliver reliable, user-friendly systems. As a result, the researchers recommended government enforced fee disclosures, government led interoperability between platforms, and better interface design and incentives to protect low digital literacy users from exploitation.
Authors: Isabel Agadagba, Carnegie Mellon University USA; Triphonia Kilasara, Carnegie Mellon University-Africa Rwanda; Takudzwa Talent Tarutira; Carnegie Mellon University USA; Noah Shumba, Carnegie Mellon University-Africa Rwanda; Professor Nicolas Christin, Carnegie Mellon University USA; Dr. Obigbemi Imoleayo Foyeke, University of Lagos Nigeria; Associate Professor Assane Gueye, Carnegie Mellon University-Africa Rwanda; Assistant Professor Edith Luhanga, Carnegie Mellon University-Africa Rwanda; Dr. Alexander Rusero, Africa University Zimbabwe; Assistant Professor Karen Sowon, University of Indiana-Bloomington USA; Associate Professor Giulia Fanti, Carnegie Mellon USA & IC3 Associate Director
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Perils of Parallelism: Transaction Fee Mechanisms under Execution Uncertainty
Modern blockchains increasingly conduct multiple transactions simultaneously, called parallel execution, to scale throughput. But IC3 research shows this shift has second-order effects. Transaction Fee Mechanisms (TFMs) face a fundamental struggle called the "Perils of Parallelism." The study demonstrates that when parallelism influences fees, adversarial manipulations become economically rational. Users can exploit the system by inserting “fake” parallel transactions to lower their own fees, while schedulers may introduce sequential transactions to artificially inflate revenue.
A central challenge the researchers identified is "execution contingency"—the uncertainty regarding actual resource consumption. This leads to a dual failure: users often overpay for unused capacity, while schedulers suffer revenue loss from idle reserved slots. By establishing an impossibility result, the researchers prove an inherent tension between minimizing risks for users versus schedulers. As a result, they introduce a new framework and optimized fee mechanisms designed for parallel execution blockchains, providing a foundation for balancing efficiency and fairness.
Authors: Sarisht Wadhwa, Duke University; Aviv Yaish, Yale University, IC3, Complexity Science Hub Vienna; Professor Fan Zhang, Yale University, IC3; Kartik Nayak, Duke University
| | Looking for more IC3 research? Head to our website for a full list of our preprint and published works | | |
It was arguably one of the most defining moments in blockchain history. The moment when the Ethereum community decided to implement a hard fork that would result in two separate chains (Ethereum and Ethereum Classic) following a hack that left roughly $60m of user funds at stake.
Emin Gün Sirer, founder & CEO of Ava Labs (also co-founder of IC3), penned an op-ed for Fortune recounting the red flags leading up to the DAO attack that prompted him and other researchers to call for a temporary moratorium a decade ago.
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Abhishek Bhattacharya, Chair of the 2026 Organizing Committee of The Programmable Economy: AI & Blockchain Redefining Markets, and Cornell Tech Professor Ari Juels, Co-Director of IC3 and Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. | |
Professor Ari Juels recently joined 1,100+ industry leaders, students, and researchers at Cornell Tech to discuss the latest research on the convergence of blockchain and AI.
The Programmable Economy: AI & Blockchain Redefining Markets featured over 90 speakers from major companies and organizations including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, NYSE, Robinhood, and Coinbase.
A special thanks to Blockchain @ Cornell Tech, Cornell Tech AI Society, Blockchain Builders Fund and Cornell Blockchain for organizing such a successful event!
| New Podcast: Proof of Research | |
Our new podcast, Proof of Research, is about to drop!
We’re excited to bring you the lead authors and researchers behind the latest IC3 papers. Join us as they dive deep into their findings, engage in spirited debate, and assess how their work is making a real-world impact.
The premiere episode, featuring IC3’s Professor Carla Reyes (SMU Dedman School of Law) and Steve Yelderman (General Counsel for Etherealize), launches May 6th.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss it.
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That's all for now. Thanks for reading!
Ashley Stanhope,
IC3 Communications & Media Relations
| | IC3: Advancing the Science and Applications of Blockchains | | | | |
