For example in Cryptology Eprint Archive for current year[0] majority of research papers are unrelated to blockchain and cryptocurrencies although you can find couple of dozens of such papers.
P.S. By quickly searching through the list there are around 900 papers of which around 30 are blockchain, cryptocurrency and electronic/digital cash related.
Just because the majority of a field of research is not working on a certain subfield, doesn't mean that there aren't capable people working in such subfield. As far as I can tell, you seem to be confirming that there are "real" computer scientists and cryptographers currently working on such things.
> P.S. By quickly searching through the list there are around 900 papers of which around 30 are blockchain, cryptocurrency and electronic/digital cash related.
If you just Ctrl+F'd for those terms, it is likely that you are leaving out some (many?) papers. For example: did you count these two...
"VCProof: Constructing Shorter and Faster-to-Verify zkSNARKs with Vector Oracles", by Yuncong Zhang and Ren Zhang and Geng Wang and Dawu Gu
"On Simulation-Extractability of Universal zkSNARKs", by Markulf Kohlweiss and Michał Zając
?
My point: it might not be 100% obvious whether a certain cryptographic primitive (or line of research) is "blockchain-related" or not.
As far as I can tell, whether you like the subfield or not, it does seem like there is some fundamental cryptographical research being done as a consequence of the "blockchain" craze (e.g. zero-knowledge proof systems, robust consensus mechanisms in adversarial settings, ring confidential transactions).
EDIT: if you Ctrl+F for "smart contract", for example, you'll get half a dozen more; if you Ctrl+F for "byzantine", you'll get some more; if you Ctrl+F for "zero-knowledge", you'll get 21 more; "cross-chain", "mining", etc.
zkSNARKs are not only meant and used for cryptocurrencies. They are decades old technology but ofc they can be used for all sorts of solutions including cryptocurrencies.
Maybe there are real people working on crypto problems or maybe there is some sort of Crypto winter akin to AI winter[1].
Let's take Satoshi for example a top notch computer scientist and a top notch C++ programmer. Who is even close to him? Vitalik? Kid who dropped out of college and rediscovered Satoshi's smart contract scripting language that Bitcoin had way back in 2008. Is Gavin Andresen[2] still involved? A 3D computer graphics programmer who worked in the Silicon Valley back in the 90s. These are the kind of people I am talking about.
> zkSNARKs are not only meant and used for cryptocurrencies. They are decades old technology but ofc they can be used for all sorts of solutions including cryptocurrencies.
Yes, but their current popularity (and the reason why so much effort is put into this subfield of cryptological research these days) is most likely due to their use in the context of cryptocurrencies, as far as I can tell. If I'm wrong, please let me know.
> Maybe there are real people working on crypto problems or maybe there is some sort of Crypto winter akin to AI winter[1].
Most likely, both. Once the low-hanging fruit is picked, things tend to slow down a bit (at least for a while). As you pointed out, this is common in many research fields, and not something specific to "blockchain tech".
> Let's take Satoshi for example a top notch computer scientist and a top notch C++ programmer. Who is even close to him? Vitalik? Kid who dropped out of college and rediscovered Satoshi's smart contract scripting language that Bitcoin had way back in 2008.
Just because Satoshi is a better programmer than Vitalik (I don't know if it's the case, but I'll assume it to be true), and he decided to leave the field (allegedly), it still doesn't mean that there aren't capable people out there working in the field.
> These are the kind of people I am talking about.
Fair enough. But then the argument should be that "most big-shots are not working in the field" rather than "there aren't any real computer scientists and cryptographers working in the field", as the person I replied to was saying.
I just responded because it sounded a bit like a "no true scotsman" fallacy (i.e. "a real computer scientist or cryptographer would be working on more serious things"). It's almost as if, if you are working in something blockchain-related, you must be a bad professional somehow (or, worse, a scammer).
I think you may have misinterpreted my last phrase (it was not an attempt at insulting you or calling you a scammer at all).
I'll rephrase it: "It's almost as if, if one is working in something blockchain-related, one must be a bad professional somehow (or, worse, a scammer)."
I don't disagree that the field is filled with amateurs (and, yes, scammers). It still doesn't imply that there isn't any serious cryptological research being done within the (so-called) field of "blockchain", which was the argument I originally replied to.
P.S. By quickly searching through the list there are around 900 papers of which around 30 are blockchain, cryptocurrency and electronic/digital cash related.
[0] https://eprint.iacr.org/curr/