ABSTRACT:

One of the most successful applications of modern cryptography has been its use in electronic and digital payment systems. In traditional systems, a trusted authority handles all payments (e.g., a bank or a credit card company). More recently, blockchain systems have emerged as a trust-free and increasingly popular alternative.

In a blockchain system, users jointly emulate the trusted authority by running a distributed protocol to agree on the transaction history of users (i.e., the blockchain). Making blockchain systems a secure and scalable environment poses many new and fascinating challenges that require solutions from both cryptography and distributed computing. In my talk, I will explain the different areas of my research and their importance as components that make up a blockchain system. For each of these areas, I will also list some of the open questions that I plan to work on in the near future.

BIO:

Julian Loss obtained his MSc in computer science from ETH Zurich in 2016 and his Ph.D. from the Ruhr University of Bochum in 2019. He is currently a postdoc at the University of Maryland in the group of Jonathan Katz. His interests include classic cryptographic primitive,s such as digital signatures and multi-party computation, as well as blockchain/consensus protocols.

JOIN THE TALK HERE: https://bluejeans.com/821585375