[the_benno]

You can argue that it's growing and/or promising, but there is absolutely no way that the actual research funding coming out of blockchain-land can hold a candle to the big formal methods labs at major tech firms or traditional academic research funding.

[exdsq]

I’m not sure to be honest because I don’t know how much comes from major tech firms - but I do know someone who financed their own research center and have seen probably billions in the last year or two so it feels like a sizeable amount compared to standard academic funding for fairly niche stuff.

And if you look at it from a technical perspective where your options are TLA+, Coq, Agda, Isabelle, etc, I think you’ll find most of the core devs are involved in blockchain somehow nowadays. At least that’s what it feels like.

[auggierose]

Who of the Isabelle core devs is involved in blockchain?

[the_benno]

None of them -- Isabelle is developed at University of Cambridge and TU Munich by academics. The parent commenter seems to have some mistaken notions and assumptions about formal methods and PL research.

[exdsq]

Yes but a lot of academics moonlight in blockchain as consultants on their tools. Some are more public than others, such as PL guys like Philip Wadler, but just because they’re a professor at a university doesn’t mean they’re not also working on external startups.