Mahimna Kelkar

📣Excited to announce that I will start as an Assistant Professor @PurdueCS in Fall 2026! I plan to recruit multiple PhD students for a broad range of cryptography and blockchain topics. More details soon. For the next year, I'll be a postdoc at Columbia with @Tim_Roughgarden.

"Defunding NSF means defunding scientists in the U.S. - including those leading crypto innovation." In a new @CoinDesk op-ed, leading American researchers @danboneh, @josephbonneau, @giuliacfanti, @benafisch, @AriJuels, @socrates1024, @FKoushanfar, @dntse, @ciamac, and…

Take My Ape is out! Try it at takemyape.com. Own a Bored Ape for 15 minutes with one Ethereum transaction. Ownership ≠ rental. It means copyright license, access to BAYC spaces, and your address on chain as owner. TMA's goal? To demo the power of Liquefaction.

NEW: IC3 researchers present Liquefaction — a wallet platform that redefines private key control in crypto. Liquefaction allows private key access to be shared, rented, or pooled, supporting multi-user policies around crypto assets without direct on-chain traces. Trusted…

Prof. @ittayeyal, @mskd96, and @_mahimna also evaluate other authentication mechanisms and propose solutions to enhance security, including for India’s largest bank. initc3org.medium.com/improving-digi…

Without decentralization, a DAO is just an AO. But what does decentralization really mean for a DAO? New blog post: The ‘D’ in DAO? We’ve All Been Getting It Wrong. w/ J. Austgen A. Fábrega @sarahalle_ @KushalBabel @_mahimna initc3org.medium.com/the-d-in-dao-w…

Our new paper on DAOs has two main findings: (1) Common ways to measure decentralization today leave DAOs flying blind. A new metric, Voting-Block Entropy (VBE), surfaces key lessons about how to decentralize DAOs. (2) Dark DAOs are practical and a realistic threat. They enable…

Increasingly complex DeFi means increasingly complex MEV risks. Lanturn, led by @KushalBabel and @mojan_jp, uses adaptive learning to get accurate MEV estimates w/o heuristics: eprint.iacr.org/2023/1338.pdf. It has even discovered two interesting new MEV-extraction strategies. 1/5

TEEs / trusted hardware are in theory a perfect complement to blockchains. But security concerns have slowed adoption. The Sting Framework (SF) is a new defensive layer for TEEs and other systems that enforce secrecy. See our blog post initc3org.medium.com/the-sting-fram… or the TLDR below.

New Research！TEEs are a growing part of block-building supply chains in today's #blockchains, but past vulnerabilities raise concerns. IC3's new work The Sting Framework offers powerful protective layer for TEE-based systems and other that needs secrecy. link.medium.com/AMttHrUvzAb

The next iteration of PROF blog post is out. We believe PROF is a simple, promising way to combat harmful MEV and get fair ordering (for your favorite notion of "fair"). We're exploring ways to make it happen. @KushalBabel @iseriohn42 @_mahimna initc3org.medium.com/prof-fair-tran…

#ePrint Complete Knowledge: Preventing Encumbrance of Cryptographic Secrets: M Kelkar, K Babel, P Daian, J Austgen, V Buterin, A Juels ia.cr/2023/044

We introduce new notion in cryptography of *Complete Knowledge* (CK) in blog post and paper released today. @KushalBabel @VitalikButerin @phildaian @_mahimna Blog post: initc3org.medium.com/complete-knowl…. Paper: arijuels.com/wp-content/upl….

This needs to be highlighted. Yes, there is no single notion of "fairness." But the hard truth is that *any* definition proposed so far results in fundamentally better security than existing systems.

New IC3 Blog Post- Order-Fair Consensus: Reducing MEV at the Consensus Layer by @_mahimna This is the first in a series of posts discussing MEV, transaction-order manipulation, and order-fairness. initc3org.medium.com/order-fair-con…

Session 1.3 - Stronger Security Themis: Fast, Strong Order-Fairness in Byzantine Consensus by @_mahimna, @crypto_gakusei, @dailinsubjam, @AriJuels, @sreeramkannan Paper: to be released

Decentralized Finance 🤝 Formal Methods Excited to release, Clockwork Finance: Automated Analysis of Economic Security in Smart Contracts, joint work w/ @phildaian @_mahimna and @AriJuels Full Paper: eprint.iacr.org/2021/1147 1/6

All I'll say is wait for a couple weeks for some new work🤫