Introduction
Optimum is proud to announce that our CEO and co-founder, Professor Muriel Médard, has been awarded the 2026 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal for her groundbreaking contributions to coding for reliable communications and networking.
The IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal is one of the highest honors in information sciences, recognizing exceptional contributions to information theory, coding theory, data communication, and related fields. Professor Médard's award citation specifically honors her breakthroughs in network coding and information theory, which improve the reliability of data transmission in applications such as streaming video, wireless networks, and satellite communications.
A Legacy of Excellence
A Legacy of Excellence
The significance of this honor becomes clear when examining the medal's distinguished recipients—a lineage of innovators whose work transformed computing, networking, and information systems. Many of these foundational innovations now serve as the essential building blocks upon which blockchain technology is built.
Dennis Ritchie and Kenneth Thompson (award recipients in 1990) created the UNIX operating system and the C programming language. Today, Bitcoin Core is written in C++, Ethereum clients run on Linux systems, and virtually every blockchain node operates on UNIX-based infrastructure.
Irving S. Reed (1989) co-invented Reed-Solomon codes, which underpin data availability solutions like Celestia and EigenLayer, enable Solana's Turbine propagation protocol, and form the mathematical basis for zero-knowledge proofs. Michael G. Luby and Amin Shokrollahi (2012) developed rateless codes that power modern blockchain clients like Monad. Abraham Lempel (1995) pioneered the Lempel-Ziv compression algorithms that enable efficient blockchain data storage.
David D. Clark (1998), chief protocol architect of the Internet from 1981-1989 and a creator of TCP/IP, received the medal for his leadership in architecting the Internet as a universal information medium. His work created the protocol layer that allowed the internet to scale globally.
Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, and Ralph Merkle (2010) invented public key cryptography, introducing the digital signatures and encryption that secure every cryptocurrency transaction. Cynthia Dwork (2020) developed differential privacy and advanced cryptographic techniques increasingly crucial to blockchain applications.
From Theory to the Internet Protocol for Blockchains
While Diffie, Hellman, and Merkle solved the problem of secure key distribution, Dr. Médard's co-invention of Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) tackles an equally fundamental challenge: how to move data efficiently and reliably across decentralized networks at scale. Just as TCP/IP provided the Internet Protocol moment that enabled the modern web, Optimum is leveraging RLNC to deliver the same transformational leap for blockchain technology.
"It's an incredible honor to receive the Hamming Medal and to join the lineage of innovators whose work built the foundations of modern computing and cryptography. Network coding has been my life's work. This recognition reflects decades of collaboration with brilliant researchers, students, postdocs, and colleagues at MIT and beyond who have made this possible. Thank you all. Seeing these theoretical principles now being applied to solve real-world challenges in decentralized systems is deeply gratifying.
Just as UNIX and public key cryptography enabled new paradigms in computing, I believe network coding can provide the infrastructure layer that allows decentralized networks to achieve true internet scale," said Médard
At Optimum, Professor Médard is applying decades of coding theory research she conducted in The Research Lab of Electronics at MIT where she leads the Network Coding and Reliable Communications Group to create what we call decentralized coding—a paradigm shift that delivers 6x-20x speed improvements in blockchain data propagation. By treating data as algebraic equations rather than discrete packets, RLNC enables networks to operate with unprecedented efficiency, resilience, and speed. This isn't incremental improvement; it's the architectural foundation for Web3 to achieve the scale and performance necessary for mainstream adoption.
The Hamming Medal recognizes not just past achievements, but ongoing impact. Under Dr. Médard's leadership, Optimum is building the fastest decentralized internet protocol for blockchain networks, bringing the theoretical elegance of network coding into production systems that will power the next generation of decentralized applications.
Congratulations to Professor Médard on this well-deserved recognition. Years of innovative research are now the building blocks for the next revolution in blockchain infrastructure.
