Cornell University shared a surprising revelation about this blockchain paper

The dissertation was written at an important moment in Bitcoin's history.

A Ph.D. dissertation On Scalability of Blockchain Technologies has become the most downloaded dissertation at Cornell University in the past eight years.

The paper was penned by Adem Efe Gencer in 2017, under the direction of computer scientists Emin Gün Sirer and Robbert van Renesse.

"Dr. Gencer's thesis represents a tour de force in the burgeoning area of blockchains and cryptocurrencies. It unveiled a brand new consensus protocol, improving upon Satoshi Nakamoto's highly successful protocol that powers Bitcoin."

He also believes that the timing could not have been better as it arrived during "The scalability debate in Bitcoin", referencing arguments over Bitcoin's block size which eventually led to the formation of Bitcoin Cash in 2017.

In his dissertation, Gencer proposed a new consensus method called Aspen - an algorithm that uses a process known as sharding to spread the workload involved in maintaining a blockchain across a peer-to-peer network.

According to Sirer, the consensus has been adopted by at least four cryptocurrencies, though the projects were left unspecified.

He does not currently appear to be involved in anything related to blockchain technology.

Sirer spent many years teaching at Cornell prior to founding his own blockchain project, Avalanche.

Similar to the principles in Gencer's dissertation, Avalanche emphasizes the importance of scaling, and uses its own unique algorithm to achieve leaderless consensus.