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Designing Trust Protocols, Society, and Web 3.0 - Helena Rong

Lecture Helena Rong

Helena Rong, assistant professor at NYU Shanghai, introduces a new course on trust experience design that examines how trust protocols function in autonomous systems and the agentic web. She frames trust as a foundational mechanism in everyday interactions (like crossing the street) and proposes a framework for designing speculative trust protocols for decentralized AI and blockchain systems.

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Lecture

Kickoff

The Protocol School 2025 kickoff session introduces a three-year research program funded by the Ethereum Foundation that studies protocols broadly across history and cultures. The organizers present their 'homecoming' challenge of connecting protocol research to the crypto ecosystem while maintaining interdisciplinary engagement, positioning protocols as invisible infrastructures (like water) that shape society but escape notice.

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Tim, Timber

Lecture

Applied Protocol Thinking - Timber Stinson-Schroff

Timber Stinson-Schroff presents Applied Protocol Thinking as a capstone course for Protocol School 2025, offering practical frameworks and literacies for participants to apply protocol analysis in their everyday lives. Drawing on nearly three years of research including his study of occupational health and safety protocols in coal mining, Stinson-Schroff shares methodologies for recognizing and analyzing how organizations use protocols to create value, manage uncertainty, and advance their missions.

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Timber Stinson-Schroff

Lecture

Beyond Consensus - Protocols as Digital Institutions - Martin Harrigan

Martin Harrigan, a lecturer and researcher in cryptography and blockchains at Southeastern Technological University, discusses integrating protocol studies into computer science education as a way to broaden students' understanding of what types of protocols can be created using blockchain and decentralized systems. He argues for placing protocol studies at the conceptual center of blockchain education, between technical infrastructure (networks, consensus) and applications (smart contracts, DeFi).

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Martin Harrigan