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Ethereum Proof-of-Stake Consensus Layer: Participation and Decentralization
(2023)In September 2022, Ethereum transitioned from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) during "the merge" - making it the largest PoS cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. With this work, we present a comprehensive measurement study of the current state of the Ethereum PoS consensus layer on the beacon chain. We perform a longitudinal study of the history of the beacon chain. Our work finds that all dips in network participation ...Conference Paper -
Learning Graph Algorithms With Recurrent Graph Neural Networks
(2023)Classical graph algorithms work well for combinatorial problems that can be thoroughly formalized and abstracted. Once the algorithm is derived, it generalizes to instances of any size. However, developing an algorithm that handles complex structures and interactions in the real world can be challenging. Rather than specifying the algorithm, we can try to learn it from the graph-structured data. Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are inherently ...Conference Paper -
A Limitlessly Scalable Transaction System
(2023)Lecture Notes in Computer Science ~ Data Privacy Management, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology. DPM CBT 2022We present Accept, a simple, asynchronous transaction system that achieves perfect horizontal scaling. Usual blockchain-based transaction systems come with a fundamental throughput limitation as they require that all (potentially unrelated) transactions must be totally ordered. Such solutions thus require serious compromises or are outright unsuitable for large-scale applications, such as global retail payments. Accept provides ...Conference Paper -
Divide & Scale: Formalization and Roadmap to Robust Sharding
(2023)Lecture Notes in Computer Science ~ Structural Information and Communication ComplexitySharding distributed ledgers is a promising on-chain solution for scaling blockchains but lacks formal grounds, nurturing skepticism on whether such complex systems can scale blockchains securely. We fill this gap by introducing the first formal framework as well as a roadmap to robust sharding. In particular, we first define the properties sharded distributed ledgers should fulfill. We build upon and extend the Bitcoin backbone protocol ...Conference Paper -
Abstract Visual Reasoning Enabled by Language
(2023)2023 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW)While artificial intelligence (AI) models have achieved human or even superhuman performance in many well-defined applications, they still struggle to show signs of broad and flexible intelligence. The Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC), a visual intelligence benchmark introduced by François Chollet, aims to assess how close AI systems are to human-like cognitive abilities. Most current approaches rely on carefully handcrafted ...Conference Paper -
DAVA: Disentangling Adversarial Variational Autoencoder
(2023)The Eleventh International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2023)The use of well-disentangled representations offers many advantages for down stream tasks, e.g. an increased sample efficiency, or better interpretability. However, the quality of disentangled interpretations is often highly dependent on the choice of dataset-specific hyperparameters, in particular the regularization strength. To address this issue, we introduce DAVA, a novel training procedure for variational auto-encoders. DAVA completely ...Conference Paper -
Print Your Money: Cash-Like Experiences with Digital Money
(2023)CHI EA '23: Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsThe use of digital money has become increasingly popular, but it comes with certain drawbacks. For instance, it can be challenging to make payments during power outages or internet failures. Additionally, some groups may find it difficult to use digital money. To address these concerns, we propose a design for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) similar to physical cash but also integrates with digital payment systems. This would enable ...Conference Paper -
FnF-BFT: A BFT protocol with provable performance under attack
(2023)Lecture Notes in Computer Science ~ Structural Information and Communication ComplexityWe introduce FNF-BFT, the first partially synchronous BFT protocol with performance guarantees under truly byzantine attacks during stable networking conditions. At its core, FNF-BFT parallelizes the execution of requests by allowing all replicas to act as leaders independently. Leader parallelization distributes the load over all replicas. Consequently, FNF-BFT fully utilizes all correct replicas’ processing power and increases throughput ...Conference Paper -
SoK: Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Attacks
(2023)2023 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)Within just four years, the blockchain-based Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem has accumulated a peak total value locked (TVL) of more than 253 billion USD. This surge in DeFi’s popularity has, unfortunately, been accompanied by many impactful incidents. According to our data, users, liquidity providers, speculators, and protocol operators suffered a total loss of at least 3.24 billion USD from Apr 30, 2018 to Apr 30, 2022. Given the ...Conference Paper -
DeFi Lending During The Merge
(2023)Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs) ~ 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2023)Lending protocols in decentralized finance enable the permissionless exchange of capital from lenders to borrowers without relying on a trusted third party for clearing or market-making. Interest rates are set by the supply and demand of capital according to a pre-defined function. In the lead-up to The Merge: Ethereum blockchain's transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), a fraction of the Ethereum ecosystem announced ...Conference Paper