Coronavirus and cryptography posted March 2020

The coronavirus is shaking the world, on its multiple layers, and cryptography hasn't been spared.

The IACR announced on March 14th that multiple conferences were postponed:

FSE 2020, which was supposed to be held in Athens, Greece, during 22-26 March 2020, has been postponed to 8-12 November 2020.

PKC 2020, which was supposed to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, during 4-7 May 2020, has been postponed.

EUROCRYPT 2020, which was supposed to be held in Zagreb, Croatia, during 10-14 May 2020, has been postponed.

While some others were not:

No changes have been made at this time to the schedule of CRYPTO 2020, CHES 2020, TCC 2020, and ASIACRYPT 2020, but we will continue to closely monitor the situation and will inform members if changes are needed.

While many workplaces (including mine) are moving to a WFH (work from home) model, will conferences follow?

It seems to be the case at least for Consensus 2020, a cryptocurrency conference organized by coindesk, which is moving to an online model:

Consensus 2020 will now be a completely virtual experience, where attendees from all over the world can participate online at no charge.

On a more dramatic note it seems like several participants of EthCC, which was held in Paris almost a week ago, have contracted the virus. A google spreadsheet has been circulating in order to self-report and figure out who else could have potentially contracted the virus. Even Vitalik Buterin is rumored to have had mild COVID-19 symptoms. Nobody is out of reach.

On a lighter note, my coworker Kostas presented on proofs of solvency at the lightning talks of Real World Crypto 2020. With his merkle tree-like construction he hopes to make governments accountable when they count the number of people who counted positive to the virus.