Building Secure Distributed Computing Systems for Blockchains, Over Blockchains with Aniket Kate

Traditionally, secure distributed computing (SDC) systems have been developed in standalone communication settings such as synchronous, partially synchronous, and asynchronous point-to-point networks. In this talk, Aniket Kate (Purdue University) explores some key SDC primitives tailored for blockchain environments from both theoretical and systems perspectives. He highlights how the blockchain’s built-in consensus (aka state machine replication) can be harnessed to enhance SDC protocols. Specifically, he demonstrates how verifiable secret sharing, DKG, MPC, and BA can achieve Byzantine fault tolerance of up to one-half, even under network asynchrony. Moreover, our performance analyses demonstrate that the proposed protocols achieve faster termination times compared to state-of-the-art standalone SDC solutions for blockchains.

About the presenter
Aniket is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and a University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University. He is also the Chief Research Officer at Supra. Aniket is an applied cryptographer and a privacy researcher. His research builds on and expands applied cryptography, distributed computing, and game theory to solve security/privacy problems in decentralized environments. His current projects focus on distributed ledgers (or blockchains) and secure computation.

About a16z crypto research
a16z crypto research is a multidisciplinary lab that works closely with our portfolio companies and others toward solving the important problems in the space, and toward advancing the science and technology of the next generation of the internet.

More about us: a16z.com/2022/04/21/announcing-a16z-crypto-research

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