According to their research manifesto, they seem to only be interested (at least, at the moment) in blockchain-related research. I feel that there is quite a lot of promising research questions in distributed technologies more generally, so hopefully they will consider expanding their scope over time, perhaps as more funding becomes available.
It's actually anger-inducing. Blockchain and even BFT topics are a tiny tiny corner of the distributed systems landscape, neither broad nor important enough to co-opt the terminology.
Love it: you have to scroll down four sections before they get honest and talk about the fact its just another blockchain thing. Then again, the "based in Switzerland" thing sort of gave us a hint.
Strange: why is the organization based in Switzerland when it is fully staffed by USA academic personnel? Under "transparency" it links to a pdf of the Swiss civil code which has 9 pages all numbered page 210. Obscure...
Zug Switzerland has some kind of hands-off regulatory environment that crypto companies are latching on to. https://cryptovalley.swiss/why-switzerland/ I guess this allows companies to say "we're completely legal" (in some place where none of our users reside).
