IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
2–5 May 2022 // Virtual Conference

Tutorials

Tutorial 1: Scaling Blockchains using Layer-2 Solutions

Monday 2 May 2022, 22:00-00:00 EDT (previous day)

Sushmita Ruj, UNSW Sydney

Abstract: Scalability is a major challenge in blockchains. One way is to design faster consensus algorithms (Layer-1 solutions). Another way is to introduce techniques to process transactions o -chain. The later solution is known as the Layer-2 solution. No change in the underlying protocols is needed. This makes Layer-2 solutions a preferred way to scale blockchains. However, some of the solutions work only for specic cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. In order to design scaling solutions for cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications, it is important to know currently available techniques and scope of improvement.

This tutorial will introduce the audience to payment channels and state channels and recently introduced ZK-Rollups. The Tutorial will discuss scope, limitations, attacks and countermeasures for Layer-2 scalability solutions. This will help researchers and practitioners adopt some of these techniques and design better scaling solutions.

VITA: Sushmita Ruj is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW, Sydney. Her primary research interests are in applied cryptography, blockchains, cybersecurity and data privacy. She designs practical, e cient and provably secure protocols that can be deployed in real-life applications. Her interests are in critical infrastructure including smart grids and cloud, ad hoc networks and data sharing frameworks. She served as a working group member of The National Blockchain Roadmap of Australia and a working group member of the First Blockchain initiative by Reserve bank of India. Her aim is to carry out impactful research for the bene t of the society and mentor students to be critical thinkers and leaders. She loves to work with her students and collaborates with the government, academia and industry. She has collaborated with researchers across the continents and has delivered over 80 technical lectures around the world. She has won several competitive grants like Samsung GRO Award, NetApp Faculty Fellowship, Cisco Academic Grant and IBM Research grant. She serves on the Editorial Board of Elsevier Journal on Information Security and Applications (JISA) and Elsevier Journal on Pervasive and Mobile computing (PMC).

She served as a Program Co-Chair of ACISP 2021 and Indocrypt 2019. She is a senior member of ACM and IEEE. Prior to joining UNSW, she was a Senior Research Scientist in CSIRO's Data6, Sydney, Assistant and Associate Professor at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata and an Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indore. She obtained Ph.D. and Master's Degrees in Computer Science from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata and undergraduate studies in Computer Science at Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (Erstwhile B.E. College, Shibpur).

 

Tutorial 2: Process-centric Analysis of Blockchain Data

Monday 2 May 2022, 04:00 - 06:00 EDT

Richard Hobeck, Luise Pufahl, Ingo Weber, TU Berlin

Abstract: In this tutorial, we introduce an approach to gain insights in blockchain user data from a process perspective. Second generation blockchains introduced smart contract capabilities and allow for the execution of user-defined decentralized applications (dapps) and also cross-organizational processes on-chain. During the execution of smart contracts, usage data is generated and stored within the blockchain. This execution data can be extracted and transformed to event logs, which is a common data storage format in process mining. Examining event logs through a process-oriented lens allows analysts to learn how users interact with a dapp, what typical customer journeys look like and how the dapp performs for different user groups. Knowing about user behavior also opens opportunities to compare as-is dapp task sequences and compare them to the intended (normative) behavior for and check for bugs as part of a security analysis. Similarly, changes in usage behavior – may it be 1) increasing or diverging user behavior, or 2) behavior digressing from normative models – can be detected in historic logs (drift detection) or in real-time with monitoring solutions. The tool set for gaining such insights from dapps is delivered by process mining, a family of techniques for data driven process analysis and improvement, in combination with our tools and methods.

VITA: Richard Hobeck is a research associate at SBE. In his role, Richard is involved in teaching courses in Software Engineering and Process Science, including process mining. His research interests and several of his successful publications revolve around process mining, with a special focus on blockchain data. Richard started his academic career at TU Dresden, Germany, as a student and research assistant focusing on Human-Computer Interaction in health care.

Luise Pufahl is a postdoctoral researcher at SBE. Her current research interests are flexible business processes, process analysis and improvement, and resource management in business processes based on operations research, simulation and machine learning techniques. Her publication record includes more than 40 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, conferences and workshops. Luise has served as a program committee member at international conferences (e.g., BPM, BIS, EDOC) and was workshop and demo chair at BPM, EDOC, and ICPM. She has given lectures on Business Process Management, Process Mining, etc. and has supported the first MOOC on BPM in 2013.

Ingo Weber is a Full Professor and head of the SBE group. Ingo has published over 100 refereed papers and three books, including ”DevOps: A Software Architect’s Perspective”, Addison-Wesley, 2015, and ”Architecture for Blockchain Applications”, Springer, 2019. Ingo has served as PC co-chair for the BPM and the ICSA conferences, as reviewer for many prestigious journals, including various IEEE and ACM Transactions, and as PC member for IEEE ICBC, BPM, WWW, ICSOC, AAAI, ICAPS, IJCAI, and many other conferences and workshops. Prior to TU Berlin, Ingo worked at Data61, CSIRO (formerly NICTA), UNSW in Sydney, Australia, and at SAP Research in Germany. At CSIRO, the team under his leadership became one of the leading research groups on blockchain globally. He also was a Conjoint Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and an Adjunct Associate Professor at Swinburne University. While at SAP, he completed his PhD with the University of Karlsruhe (TH).

 

Tutorial 3: Blockchain Interoperability

Monday 2 May 2022, 07:00-09:00 EDT

Fatemeh Shirazi, Heliax AG

Abstract: In the last decade, multiple blockchain protocols targeting di erent use cases and relying on a multitude of technologies have emerged. The majority of them are not compatible and cannot interoperate, which poses the risk of isolation, fragmentation of services, and eventually failure for end-user adoption. This weakness contributes to other shortcomings of the decentralized web, such as scalability, and makes it impossible to provide a usable alternative to the centralized web, even in a setting where trusted third parties are obvious security holes. During the last couple of years, the community has realized this challenge and is set to enable interaction between di erent chains through building interoperability mechanisms. The goal of this tutorial is to review the problems that interoperability is trying to address and the state-of-the-art solutions, research, and practices of blockchain interoperability. Moreover, we will discuss existing challenges in terms of security and performance.

VITA: Fatemeh Shirazi is research scientist and lead at Heliax AG working on the Anoma project that facilitates multi-asset private transactions. Previously, she was acting CTO and research team lead at Web3 Foundation that is focusing on the design and development of the Polkadot project one of the prominent blockchain technologies addressing interoperability. Fatemeh has obtained her PhD in Electronic Engineering from KU Leuven in the renowned Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography (COSIC) group focusing on anonymous communication systems. Before going to KU Leuven, she was a research assistant and teaching assistant at TU Darmstadt, where her research focus was on measuring the resilience of anonymous communication networks against denial-of-service attacks. Fatemeh given this lectures three times in 2020 and has organized a workshop related to the topic.

 

Tutorial 4: Ripple XRP ledger: from theory to practice

Monday 2 May 2022, 10:00-12:00 EDT

Lucian Trestioreanu, Wazen Shbair, Cyril Cassagnes, Habil. Radu State, University of Luxembourg

Abstract: The XRP Ledger enhances the existing world-wide payments infrastructure and services by providing XRP tokens to ensure quick liquidity and acting as a global settlement network. XRP can act as a “bridge” asset that businesses and financial institutions can use to bridge a transfer between two different currencies. The purpose of this tutorial is to provide the audience with a detailed image of the latest developments concerning the XRP ledger through a theoretical presentation including several examples, which will be followed by a practical demo. The tutorial consolidates the most relevant information from theoretical aspects like Ripple Consensus and network gossipping mechanisms, through simple practical aspects like creating an XRP account or XRP transfer, and to ultimately creating a private XRP ledger test-bed.

VITA: Lucian Trestioreanu is a doctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, SNT, SEDAN Research Group. He received his Master's degree in Computer Science, from the University of Luxembourg, in 2018. His research centers on aspects of networking, performance, security and privacy with a focus on the XRP ledger and the Interledger protocol. Lucian joined the Service and Data Management in Distributed Systems research group, SEDAN, headed by Prof. Habil. Radu State.

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