Next intake in March
Open research for safer payments
We pay researchers for a year to work on the hard problems under Oriel. Every paper is open access, and every result ships with code.
Stipend
$90k a year
Length
12 months
Fellows so far
27
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Areas
Research areas we pay for
Cryptography
Shorter proofs, faster signatures and keys that survive a lost phone.
Consensus
Finality under two seconds with a validator set that keeps growing.
Privacy
Payments that hide amounts from everyone but the people involved.
Economics
Fees, staking rewards and treasury rules that hold up for decades.
Papers
Recent work by our fellows
Shorter proofs for light clients
K. Arai, L. Moreau
Fee markets for small payments
R. Osei
Two-round finality with 500 validators
D. Mercer, A. Novak
Selective disclosure for identity checks
S. Haddad
Recovering keys without a custodian
M. Tanaka
Fellows
The 2026 cohort
Lucie Moreau
Cryptography, Paris
Rashid Osei
Economics, Accra
Anna Novak
Consensus, Ljubljana
Samir Haddad
Privacy, Montreal
Hana Kim
Cryptography, Seoul
Mateo Silva
Economics, São Paulo
Join the 2027 cohort
Applications for the 2027 cohort open on 15 January. Bring a question you want answered and a plan to publish.
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