Cypherium, a blockchain infrastructure platform, is going into partnership with research group IC3 (the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts), a press release announced on January 16th. The joint venture is aimed at developing new scaling solutions for blockchain, in the hope that platforms based on the system will be adopted into the mainstream if scalability issues are solved.

Cypherium is to launch an ICO (initial coin offering) in the early part of 2018 and will issue its own CPH tokens. These tokens will be used to power the ledger transactions and functionality required for smart contracts, in order to run a system of deferred payments and dapps (decentralised applications).

Cypherium’s personnel includes top engineers who formerly worked for corporate giants Microsoft, Amazon and Google. IC3’s co-director, Emin Gün Sirer, also pioneered the Bitcoin-NG technology used by the company, which was designed expressly to solve blockchain scaling issues. Rather than increasing block size, Bitcoin-NG uses blocks of two different varieties.

Sirer is a professor in computer science at Cornell University, who believes Cypherium to be a \"perfect fit\" for IC3. Both parties are dedicated to solving the various technical problems connected with adopting blockchain for use in the wider community, including scaling, governance and compliance issues.