Costello Research Blockchain

Despite the fears of regulators and skittish investors, clear and accurate signals of cryptocurrency quality may be hidden in plain sight.

What if you could outsource any computing task to the crowd without risking an epic fail? A newly developed set of technological tools could make this a reality.

The combination of two unlikely bedfellows—cryptography, a subfield of computer science, and currency, a topic in economics—is at the heart of the transformative potential of its underlying blockchain technology. But the uniqueness of the pairing can make it very difficult for research professionals in either field to predict, let alone positively influence, blockchain’s future development. Jiasun Li, an assistant professor of finance at Mason, is among an elite group of academics who are bridging the divide by merging relevant concepts from computer science with game theory—a subfield of economics that studies the interactions of decisions made by interdependent economic actors.

“Blockchain is a kind of distributed ledger that could change how business activities are organized,” says Jiasun Li, assistant professor of finance. “It essentially provides an alternative way for economic activities to be conducted.”