Keynote 1: The road to a Universal Internet Machine (Demystifying Blockchain Protocols)

Rachid Guerraoui (EPFL)

Biography: Rachid Guerraoui has been affiliated with Ecole des Mines of Paris, the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique of Saclay, Hewlett Packard Laboratories and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has worked in a variety of aspects of distributed computing, including distributed algorithms and distributed programming languages. He is most well known for his work on (e-)Transactions, epidemic information dissemination and indulgent algorithms.

This talk will discuss what it would mean to build the abstraction of a widely distributed universal computer. In the process, the talk will revisit blockchain protocols through the lenses of first distributed computing principles and present simpler alternative protocols.

Lăcrămioara Astefănoaei, Pierre Chambart, Antonella Del Pozzo, Thibault Rieutord, Sara Tucci, Eugen Zalinescu

Vicente Cholvi Juan, Antonio Fernandez Anta, Chryssis Georgiou, Nicolas Nicolaou, Michel Raynal, Antonio Russo

Shreyas Bhat, Ayten Kahya, Rohit Kumar, Bhaskar Krishnamachari

Lucas Massoni Sguerra, Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias, Pierre Jouvelot, Gérard Memmi, Fabien Coelho

Ayten Kahya, Bhaskar Krishnamachari

Keynote 2: Game-Theoretically Secure Protocols Inspired by Blockchains

Elaine Shi (CMU, Cornell)

Biography: Elaine Shi is an Associate Professor in CMU. Her research focuses on cryptography, algorithms, security, distributed systems, and foundations of blockchains. She is the recipient of a Packard Fellowship, an ONR YIP award, a Sloan Fellowship, the NSA Best Scientific Cybersecurity Award, and numerous other awards. She obtained her Ph.D. from CMU. Before joining CMU, she was an Assistant Professor at UMD and an Associated Professor at Cornell. She was also a Member of the Research Staff at PARC.

Suppose that n parties want to run a protocol to jointly toss a coin. It is well-known that when half of the parties can be corrupt, strong fairness is impossible, i.e., the corrupt coalition can always misbehave and bias the outcome. Inspired by blockchain applications, we ask, is it possible to achieve a *game theoretic* notion of fairness under corrupt majority? I will talk about how to formulate game theoretic security, the overall possibility/impossibility of game-theoretically secure coin toss and leader election in the presence of majority coalitions, as well as the round complexity.

Aritra Mitra, Christian Gorenflo, Lukasz Golab, Srinivasan Keshav

Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Qi Feng, Eugenio Grippo

15:00 - 15:05 : Intro to BAF

Cameron Dennis, President and Founder of BAF

15:05 - 15:15 : BAF Wallet

Sebastien La Suca and Lev Stambler, Blockchain at CMU

15:15 - 15:25 : Alchedemia, a Decentralized Learning Management System

Piergiacomo Palmisani, Grants and Research at BAF

15:25 - 15:30 : Ethereum Teacher Training Program

Jacob Lindahl, Blockchain at University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

15:30 - 15:40 : Token Delegation and DeFi Governance

David Zheng, Blockchain at UCLA

15:35 - 15:45 : Solace, a Decentralized Insurance Protocol

Nikita Buzov, Blockchain at UCSB

15:45 - 15:55 : BoLT, Building on Local Trust

Navo Emmanuel and Soham Kalva, Blockchain at CMU

15:55 - 16:00 : BAF’s Next Steps

Cameron Dennis, President and Founder of BAF