Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Small: Accountability for Central Bank Digital Currency

如今，全球多家央行正在积极探索部署中央银行数字货币（CBDC）。 （零售）CBDC 是央行货币，其 (a) 本质上是数字化的，并且 (b) 公众可以广泛使用。 CBDC 的一些拟议好处包括实施货币政策的更大灵活性、改善金融包容性以及以更低的费用实现更高效的资金转移。然而，许多人担心 CBDC 将使网络犯罪分子更容易攻击金融系统。例如，CBDC 可能会让恶意用户通过在两个地方使用相同的数字代币更容易窃取央行资金。这些安全问题通常通过算法和加密技术的进步来解决，但通常会导致性能严重下降。该项目的新颖之处在于探索 CBDC 安全的替代方法：问责制。也就是说，如果网络犯罪分子在 CBDC 中行为不当，底层协议应该足够丰富，能够以密码学方式证明谁是罪魁祸首。该项目更广泛的意义和重要性在于，它可以影响设计安全的 CBDC 的设计和开发。  该项目研究规范 CBDC 共识层和应用层的问责制。在每一层，该项目首先修改现有算法（例如共识、反洗钱限制）以提供可证明的责任。这些修改需要分布式系统和/或密码学的创新。该项目还从理论上和实践上研究了问责制的基本绩效成本。这些算法的性能成本在实现中根据经验进行评估，并与 OpenCBDC 集成，OpenCBDC 是一种开源 CBDC 实现，由麻省理工学院数字货币计划与波士顿联邦储备银行合作开发和维护。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Today, several central banks worldwide are actively exploring the deployment of a centrally-banked digital currency (CBDC). A (retail) CBDC is central bank money that is (a) digital in nature, and (b) widely accessible to the public. Some of the proposed benefits of CBDCs include greater flexibility in implementing monetary policy, improved financial inclusion, and more efficient money transfers at lower fees. However, many fear that CBDCs will make it easier for cybercriminals to attack the financial system. For example, a CBDC might make it easier for malicious users to steal central bank money by spending the same digital token in two places. These security concerns are commonly addressed with algorithmic and cryptographic advances, often at the cost of serious performance degradations. The project’s novelty lies in exploring an alternate approach to CBDC security: accountability. That is, if a cybercriminal misbehaves in a CBDC, the underlying protocol should be rich enough to prove, cryptographically, who was the culprit. The project’s broader significance and importance is that it can impact the design and development of secure-by-design CBDCs.  The project studies accountability at the consensus and application layers of a canonical CBDC. At each layer, the project first modifies existing algorithms (e.g., consensus, anti money laundering restrictions) to provide provable accountability. These modifications require innovations in distributed systems and/or cryptography. The project also studies the fundamental performance costs of accountability, both theoretically and in practice. The performance cost of these algorithms is evaluated empirically in implementations, which are integrated with OpenCBDC, an open-source CBDC implementation that was developed and maintained by the MIT Digital Currency Initiative in collaboration with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.