Achieving Efficiency, Security, Trustlessness and Optimality in Blockchain-Based Protocols

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Engineering


PhD Thesis Defence


Title: "Achieving Efficiency, Security, Trustlessness and Optimality in
Blockchain-Based Protocols"

By

Miss Togzhan BARAKBAYEVA


Abstract:

In this work, we solve a wide range of problems in the context of 
programmable blockchains. We design and implement novel, efficient, secure, 
trustless and optimal protocols and algorithms for decentralized random 
number generation, trustless sampling of correlated equilibria, miner revenue 
optimization, smart contract optimization, transaction admission mechanism 
design, and parallel execution of smart contracts.

Our design choices are motivated by concepts and techniques from applied 
cryptography, game theory, software engineering, and algorithms. Along with 
the groundbreaking achievements over state-of-the-art approaches, we provide 
extensive experimental results over real-world blockchain data.


Date:                   Wednesday, 9 September 2026

Time:                   2:00pm - 4:00pm

Venue:                  TBC

Chairman:               Dr. Lijian LU (ISOM)

Committee Members:      Dr. Dimitris PAPADOPOULOS (Supervisor)
                        Dr. Amir GOHARSHADY (Co-Supervisor, University of Oxford)
                        Prof. Andrew HORNER
                        Prof. Dimitris PAPADIAS
                        Dr. Rong TANG (MATH)
                        Prof. Laura RICCI (University of Pisa)