CMU Secure Blockchain Summit

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About

Despite advances, many research questions still need answering to ensure blockchain protocols and applications are ready for widespread use. As the industry continues to see more consumer applications, such as decentralized finance (DeFi), securing the fundamental research elements of the technology, especially from a security, privacy, ethics, and societal impact perspective, is of utmost importance.

Carnegie Mellon University's first-ever Secure Blockchain Summit brought together experts from academia and industry to discuss the future of blockchain research, technology, and applications, focusing on a variety of topics, including crypto-economics, applied cryptography, programming languages, security and privacy, policy and usability, ethics, and equity.
 

Schedule

Day 1: May 8th, 2023

• 8:00 - 9:00 AM - Breakfast and registration
• 9:00 - 9:15 AM - Opening remarks (Lorrie Cranor)

Session I: Crypto-economics

Moderator: Ariel Zetlin-Jones

• 9:15-10:15 AM:  (Keynote) Robert Townsend - Innovative Financial Designs Using the New Technologies: Two Key Examples and More General Considerations   (Slides | Video)
• 10:15-10:35 AM:  Matt Weinberg - Statistically Undetectable Selfish Mining   (Video)
• 10:35-10:55 AM:  Ariel Zetlin-Jones - Automated Exchange Economies   (Slides | Video)
• 10:55-11:15 AM:  BREAK
• 11:15-11:35 AM:  Hao Chung - Rapidash: Foundations of Side-Contract-Resilient Fair Exchange   (Video | Slides)
  
• 11:35-11:55 AM:  Ke Wu - What Can Cryptography Do For Decentralized Mechanism Design?   (Video | Slides)
• 11:55 AM-12:15 PM:  Agostino Capponi - Do Flashbots Relays Mitigate Frontrunning Risk and MEV?   (Video | Slides)

Lunch

• 12:15-1:50 PM

Session II: Applied Cryptography

Moderator: Elaine Shi

• 1:50-2:10 PM:  Hugo Krawczyk - You Only Speak Once - Private Computing on Public Blockchains   (Slides | Video)
• 2:10-2:30 PM:  Tal Rabin - SPRINT: Robust High Throughput Distributed Schnorr Signature   (Video | Slides)
  
• 2:30-2:50 PM:  Riad Wahby - No Silver Bullet: A brief survey of key management technology
• 2:50-3:15 PM:  BREAK
• 3:15-3:35 PM:  Lisa Masserova - Storing and Retrieving Secrets on a Blockchain   (Slides | Video)
• 3:35-3:55 PM:  Mingxun Zhou - Piano: extremely simple, single-server pir with sublinear server computation   (Video)
• 3:55-4:00 PM:  Closing remarks

Evening Events:

• 4:00-5:30 PM:  Walk in the park or BREAK
• 5:30-8:00 PM:  Dinner at The Oaklander

 

Day 2: May 9th, 2023

• 8:00-9:00 AM:  Breakfast and registration
• 9:00-9:05 AM:  Opening remarks

Session III: Programming Language

Moderator: Fraser Brown

• 9:05-9:25 AM:  Fraser Brown - CirC: Compiler infrastructure for proof systems, software verification, and more
• 9:25-9:45 AM:  Alex Ozdemir - Satisfiability Modulo Finite Fields (with applications to compilers to zero-knowledge proofs)   (Slides | Video)
• 9:45-10:05 AM:  Andrew Myers - Enforcing Integrity and Availability in a Deconstructed Blockchain   (Video)
• 10:05-10:20 AM:  BREAK
• 10:20-10:40 AM:  Jonathan Aldrich - Obsidian: A Safe, Usable Language for Smart Contracts   (Slides | Video)
• 10:40-11:00 AM:  Jan Hoffmann - Automatic Gas Bound Analysis for Smart Contracts   (Slides | Video)
• 11:00-11:20 AM:  Chandrakana Nandi - Verifying Smart Contracts Using The Certora Prover   (Video)
• 11:20-11:40 AM:  Ben Livshits - The Blockchain Imitation Game

Lunch

• 11:40 AM-12:50 PM

Session IV: Policy Panel   (Video)

Moderator: Ariel Zetlin-Jones 

• 12:50-1:40 PM: Featuring - Leemon Baird, Michael Madison, Giovanna Massarotto

Lightning Talks

• 1:40-1:45 PM:  Giulia Fanti - Raft-Forensics: CFT Distributed Consensus with Accountability of Byzantine Faults   (Video | Slides)
• 1:45-1:50 PM:  Osman Yagan - Analysis and Optimization of Resilience in Blockchain Peer-to-Peer Networks
• 1:50-1:55 PM:  Hanan Hibshi - Introducing Hands-on Blockchain CTF Exercises in Security Classes: Highlights and Challenges
• 1:55-2:00 PM:  Sauvik Das - Modeling Barriers to Self-Custody for Cryptocurrency Novices  (Video | Slides)
• 2:00-2:05 PM:  Zhangxiang Hu - Privacy In Decentralized Exchanges With Automated Market Maker
• 2:05-2:10 PM:  Chris Wilmer - Ledger: The world's first peer-reviewed journal for blockchain research   (Video | Slides)
• 2:10-2:15 PM:  Wenpin Tang - Mechanism design under the Proof of Stake protocol   (Video | Slides)
• 2:15-2:35 PM:  Andrew Miller - Pitfalls & Opportunities in TEE-based smart contracts
• 2:35-2:50 PM: BREAK

Session V: Ethics and Equity Panel   (Video)

Moderator: Nicolas Christin

• 2:50-3:40 PM:  Featuring - Tae Wan Kim, Martin Saint, Kyle Soska
• 3:40-3:45 PM:  Closing remarks
   

Speakers

Jonathan Aldrich Professor CMU's Computer Science Department

Leemon Baird Co-Founder Hedera Hashgraph

Fraser Brown Assistant Professor CMU's Software and Societal Systems Department

Agostino Capponi Associate Professor Columbia University

Hao Chung Ph.D. Student CMU's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Sauvik Das Assistant Professor CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute

Giulia Fanti Assistant Professor  CMU's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Hanan Hibshi Assistant Teaching Professor CMU's Information Networking Institute

Jan Hoffmann Assistant Professor  CMU's Computer Science Department

Zhangxiang Hu Cryptographer  Ripple

Tae Wan Kim Associate Professor  CMU's Tepper School of Business

Hugo Krawczyk Principal Researcher Algorand Foundation

Ben Livshits Reader Imperial College London

Michael Madison Professor University of Pittsburgh

Giovanna Massarotto Research Fellow University of Pennsylvania

Lisa Masserova Graduate Research Assistant CMU's Computer Science Department

Andrew Miller Assistant Professor University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Andrew Myers Professor Cornell University

Chandrakana Nandi Research Scientist Certora

Alex Ozdemir Ph.D. Student  Stanford University

Tal Rabin Professor University of Pennsylvania

Martin Saint Director of Academics CMU-Africa

Kyle Soska Head of Research Ramiel Capital

Wenpin Tang Assistant Professor Columbia University

Robert Townsend Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Riad Wahby Assistant Professor CMU's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Matt Weinberg Assistant Professor Princeton University

Chris Wilmer Associate Professor University of Pittsburgh

Ke Wu Ph.D. Student  CMU's Computer Science Department

Osman Yagan Research Professor CMU's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Mingxun Zhou Ph.D. Student CMU's Computer Science Department

Secure Blockchain Summit Committee

Elaine Shi Co-director Blockchain@CMU Initiative

Nicolas Christin Co-director Blockchain@CMU Initiative

Ariel Zetlin-Jones Co-director Blockchain@CMU Initiative

Fraser Brown Assistant Professor Software and Societal Systems Department

Michael Lisanti Director CyLab Partnerships

Isabelle Glassmith Project Manager CyLab Partnerships

Thank you to our inaugural Summit sponsors!

Secure Blockchain Institute Circle Sponsors

Secure Blockchain Sponsorship Opportunities

We are offering a limited number of sponsorship opportunities to companies and organizations seeking to support the CMU Secure Blockchain Initiative and Summit. For more information, please contact the CyLab partnerships team at partnerships@cylab.cmu.edu
 

 
CMU Secure Blockchain Initiative (Blockchain@CMU)

The CMU Secure Blockchain Initiative is supported by seed sponsorships from Algorand Foundation and Ripple. Our goal is to work together with industry partners to ensure that the research outputs are relevant and applicable to the challenges faced by the blockchain industry.

Learn more about partnering with Blockchain@CMU.