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Ron van der Meyden

Professor of Computer Science, UNSW Sydney

Ron van der Meyden is an accomplished individual with expertise in Formal Methods for Distributed Computing & Computer Security, Blockchain, Logic in Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence.

He holds a Doctor of Philosophy - PhD in Computer Science from Rutgers University, a Master of Arts - MA in Mathematics, and a Bachelor of Arts - BA in Mathematics from the University of Sydney.

Throughout his career, Ron has held various key positions in prestigious organizations such as UNSW, Stanford University, New York University, NICTA, Smart Internet CRC, University of Technology Sydney, Weizmann Institute of Science, and NTT.

He has served as a Professor and Coordinator, Visiting Professor, Visiting Associate Professor, Visiting Scholar, Program Leader, Associate Professor, Lecturer, and Visiting Scientist in the fields of Computer Science, Mathematics, and Computer Security.

Highlights

Oct 10 · linkedin

Smart(er) Simple Agreements for Future Equity - Two Talks

Ron van der Meyden (Joint work with Michael Maher)

Simple Agreements for Future Equity (SAFE) contracts are a form of investment contract, developed originally by the Silicon Valley investment fund Y Combinator, and now frequently used for early stage investments in startup companies internationally.

These two talks will present outcomes from a project we have conducted at UNSW, motivated originally by the use of SAFEs as a case study of smart contract development, but resulting also in the development of a rigorous understanding of SAFE contracts. The talks will give an overview of papers resulting from the project, available at

   https://lnkd.in/gxyCYB_H

The talks will be of interest to different audiences, so will be self-contained (with some overlap of introductory content as a result).

For online participation links, see https://lnkd.in/gm6jKa2a

Talk 1 - SAFE Contract Financial Design Issues. Date: 1pm-2pm, Tue Oct 17, 2023.  Venue: UNSW K17 B09 Innovation Hub

This talk will introduce the main terms of SAFE contracts (both Pre-Money and Post-Money versions), and then delve into various subtleties concerning the operation of these terms. In particular, we point to issues concerning to equity round investor dilution that leads to variations of the most obvious conversion method for these contracts, connections to the question of how SAFEs should be accounted for on the books of the company, and game theoretic aspects of conversion and the handling of liquidity events. The analysis identifies a number of weaknesses in the mathematical construction of the contracts. This leads us to a proposed variant of SAFE contract terms that we argue circumvents the complexities highlighted by our analysis.

This talk will be of interest to investors and entrepreneurs intending to use SAFEs, as well as researchers in finance and law.

Talk 2 - Can SAFE contracts be smart?  Date: 1-2pm, Oct 24, 2023.  Venue: UNSW K17 B09 Innovation Hub

This talk will discuss issues relating to the development of a smart contract representing SAFE contracts on a blockchain platform. Specifically, we discuss how some of the issues identified in the financial analysis from the previous talk, as well as issues arising in the translation of the natural language text of legal SAFE contracts, impact the design of the smart contract. We discuss the architecture of a set of smart contracts capturing a company using SAFE smart contracts on its cap-table, and issues arising in its evaluation. In the final analysis, we conclude that this application requires a ``smart legal contract", a hybrid of smart contract and conventional legal contract, and will present candidate legal terms for this hybrid.

This talk will be of interest to computer scientists and lawyers working in decentralised finance.

May 6 · linkedin

Congratulations to team Sahya, an interdisciplinary team of UNSW students who have won the Consensys MBA Venture Competition!

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Location

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia