Merge branch 'noethers-stanford-blockchain-conference-2019' into 'master'

Noethers: Attend Stanford Blockchain Conference 2019

See merge request monero-project/ccs-proposals!37

noethers-stanford-blockchain-conference-2019.md

+---
+layout: cp
+title: "Noethers: Attend Stanford Blockchain Conference 2019"
+author: Sarang Noether
+date: October 2, 2018
+amount: 22
+milestones:
+  - name: Milestone 1 - Costs
+    funds: 100% (22 XMR)
+    done:
+    status: finished
+payouts:
+  - date: January 4, 2019
+    amount: 22 XMR
+---
+Hi, all. Noether brothers here, with a travel funding request. You may recall that the community sent the two of us to the Stanford BPASE18 applied cryptography conference last year. This event is purely academic in nature, and is where some extremely good research and technical papers are discussed by the finest minds in this space. We learned about many fascinating results involving mining attacks, Bulletproofs optimizations, Lightning, consensus mechanisms, signature schemes, and a helluva lot more; check out the link for details if you're curious.
+
+This year's conference, renamed Stanford Blockchain Conference 2019, promises to be equally loaded with great technical information and new advances in applied cryptography, and we wish to attend. Of all the conferences we know of, this one undoubtedly provides some of the best value to the project. It's good to have Monero represented in technical and academic circles, and in-person conferences remain one of the best ways for researchers to communicate effectively.
+
+The conference is hosted by Stanford University and takes place in Palo Alto from January 30 to February 1, so we've added a travel day on each side. Here is the cost breakdown to send both Dr. Sarang Noether and Dr. Surae Noether (Brandon Goodell) to the conference, listed in USD.
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