June 2021 Impact Award Winners:
Massimo Bartoletti (@bart) is an associate professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Cagliari.
Roberto Zunino (@zunino) is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Trento where he focuses on formal techniques for cryptographic protocol analysis and with an emphasis on blockchain systems.
They have been awarded the inaugural SCRF Impact Award for their work on BitML: A Calculus for Bitcoin Smart Contracts:
Bitcoin smart contracts have historically been intentionally restricted to a small set of use cases, as its community prioritizes security and efficiency over expressiveness and feature completeness. BitML is a novel, domain-specific language for writing smart contracts which could bring greater flexibility to Bitcoin smart contracts. Its design is intended to enable the implementation of Turing-complete programs atop Bitcoin, with minimal changes to its core protocol.
You can also learn more about this work in the AMA that was done with the BitML team and SCRF’s Lead Contributing Researcher, Lucas Nuzzi (@cipherix).