Cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have grown in popularity in 2021. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, has soared again in value and picked up mainstream institutional support, even amidst continued volatility. NFTs have become hot collector’s items.
The rising acceptance of cryptocurrency and NFTs makes this a good time to examine the blockchain technologies they rely on. The recent Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2021 conference (FC21), which I mentioned in a previous article, is a good place to start. On the agenda were discussions of cryptocurrency mining attacks, poor blockchain performance and a lack of fairness in blockchain applications. Computer scientists have concerns with both blockchain’s fundamentals and its applications…