I value the MIT Media Lab and its DCI group pretty highly. There is nothing about the Media Lab or the DCI in that first link of yours. [1]

So what were you trying to say?

What I did find in that first link of yours [1] is this gem though:

> The IOTA hash function, Curl-P, was designed to allow for practical collisions. The IOTA protocol’s security depends solely upon the one-wayness of the function, not its collision resistance. The rationale behind the design of Curl-P is a much more complicated question which we explain in detail.

This statement is alarming on so many levels.

[1] https://blog.iota.org/official-iota-foundation-response-to-t...

// edit: oops, I see now that it's a multipart post, so I'll have a look there.

// edit: yeah okay, nothing of substance in the other parts either.

Part 4 explains the Curl-P part in more detail, and it doesn't inspire any confidence. They are claiming that they intentionally inserted a known bad hash function in the open source part of the code, so that anyone "fraudulent" clones would be useless. The closed source coordinator is claimed to avoid this problem by some way, so they claim that the IOTA network is not affected.

I'm having a very hard time believing that explanation, but even if I do, it's still something that shows bad judgement in my opinion.