CMU Blockchain Industry Conference Speakers

Talk Title

Getting Started with Starknet

Abstract

Starknet is the zk-rollup that pioneered the use of zk STARKs for high performance without compromising on security. This talk is an overview of Starknet features and the unique opportunities that this ecosystem offers to users and developers.

Bio

David has a M.Sc. in Systems Engineering and a B.Sc. in Electronic Engineering and currently works as a Developer Advocate at the Starknet Foundation. Since making a career change from web2 to web3 a few years ago, David has been focused on writing articles, tutorials, workshops and presentations to help other developers make the same transition. David's personal mission is to "decentralize knowledge" as a stepping stone for a decentralized society and an empowered individual.

Talk Title

DeFi panel discussion

Abstract

A panel of industry experts will also discuss the concept of decentralized finance (DeFi); the types of DeFi platforms and their associated cryptocurrencies; regulations related to DeFi and how DeFi platforms might adapt to regulatory efforts; and how risk solutions for DeFi might become more prevalent.

Bio

Lucas Bruder is the CEO of Jito Labs, which builds high performance MEV infrastructure for Solana. Jito Labs' main products, Jito-Solana and the Jito Block Engine, are running on more than 27% of Solana stake. Before co-founding Jito Labs, Lucas worked on robotics control systems for self-driving bulldozers and embedded firmware at Ouster and Tesla. He has a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Talk Title

Real World Assets on Plume Network

Abstract

The talk will be introducing a new layer 2 chain focused on real world assets (RWAs) called Plume Network. Will give insights on the core smart contracts used to represent RWAs on Plume through white-glove RWA launcher app. Will show how users can easily onboard to the Plume testnet and interact with the 50+ projects deployed on our chain and how the RWA launcher lets anyone in the world launch their tokenized assets with no coding required!

Bio

Software Engineer at Plume. See my LinkedIn profile.

Talk Title

Decentralized Biobanking “de-bi”: The ethical imperative for decentralized ownership

Abstract

Forthcoming

Bio

Marielle Gross is an assistant professor of bioethics at Johns Hopkins, a rural OBGYN with Pitt/UPMC, and founder of de-bi, co., a startup advancing decentralized biobanking to unlock value, enable collaboration, and ensure equity in biospecimen research.

Talk Title

PriDe CT: Towards Public Consensus, Private Transactions, and Forward Secrecy in Decentralized Payments

Abstract

Anonymous Zether, proposed by Bunz et al. (FC, 2020) and subsequently improved by Diamond (IEEE S&P, 2021) is an account-based confidential payment mechanism that works by using a smart contract to achieve privacy (i.e. identity of receivers to transactions and payloads are hidden). In this work, we look at simplifying the existing protocol while also achieving batching of transactions for multiple receivers, while ensuring consensus and forward secrecy. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to formally study the notion of forward secrecy in the setting of blockchain, borrowing a very popular and useful idea from the world of secure messaging. Specifically, we introduce:

• FUL-Zether, a forward-secure version of Zether (Bunz et al., FC, 2020).
• PRIvate DEcentralized Confidental Transactions (PriDe CT), a much-simplified version of Anonymous Zether that achieves competitive performance and enables batching of transactions for multiple receivers.
• PRIvate DEcentralized Forward-secure Until Last update
• Confidential Transactions (PriDeFUL CT), a forward-secure version of PriDe CT.

We also present an open-source, Ethereum-based implementation of our system.

PriDe CT uses linear homomorphic encryption as Anonymous Zether but with simpler zero-knowledge proofs. PriDeFUL CT uses an updatable public key encryption scheme to achieve forward secrecy by introducing a new DDH-based construction in the standard model.

In terms of transaction sizes, Quisquis (Asiacrypt, 2019), which is the only cryptocurrency that supports batchability (albeit in the UTXO model), has 15 times more group elements than PriDe CT. Meanwhile, for a ring of N receivers, Anonymous Zether requires 6 log N more terms even without accounting for the ability to batch in PriDe CT. Further, our implementation indicates that, for N=32 even if there were 7 intended receivers, PriDe CT outperforms Anonymous Zether in proving time and gas consumption.

Bio

Harish Karthikeyan is a cryptography researcher at J.P. Morgan AI Research and J.P. Morgan AlgoCRYPT Center of Excellence. Harish completed his Ph.D. from New York University, under the supervision of Yevgeniy Dodis in 2022 and joined J.P. Morgan as a researcher following that. His research areas include cryptography and privacy with a focus on secure messaging, federated learning, and blockchain technologies.

Talk Title

DeFi panel discussion

Abstract

A panel of industry experts will also discuss the concept of decentralized finance (DeFi); the types of DeFi platforms and their associated cryptocurrencies; regulations related to DeFi and how DeFi platforms might adapt to regulatory efforts; and how risk solutions for DeFi might become more prevalent.

Bio

Industry after industry, there is a proven track record of success in building, accelerating and delivering revenue and value to the companies I work for and customers I have the pleasure of working with. I help teams achieve these goals by customer-centric business development, focused sales and marketing collaboration, and relentless emphasis on streamlining business processes.

Talk Title

DeFi panel discussion

Abstract

A panel of industry experts will also discuss the concept of decentralized finance (DeFi); the types of DeFi platforms and their associated cryptocurrencies; regulations related to DeFi and how DeFi platforms might adapt to regulatory efforts; and how risk solutions for DeFi might become more prevalent.

Bio

Lucas Bruder is the CEO of Jito Labs, which builds high performance MEV infrastructure for Solana. Jito Labs' main products, Jito-Solana and the Jito Block Engine, are running on more than 27% of Solana stake. Before co-founding Jito Labs, Lucas worked on robotics control systems for self-driving bulldozers and embedded firmware at Ouster and Tesla. He has a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Talk Title

Governance panel discussion and DeFi panel discussion

Abstract

A group of industry experts will discuss major topics associated with governance, including the role of governance as it relates to public blockchains (and their crypto-assets) and examples of effective governance.

A second panel of industry experts will also discuss the concept of decentralized finance (DeFi); the types of DeFi platforms and their associated cryptocurrencies; regulations related to DeFi and how DeFi platforms might adapt to regulatory efforts; and how risk solutions for DeFi might become more prevalent.

Bio

Liliana Reasor is the CEO and founder of SupraFin, a pioneer in crypto-asset risk having built crypto risk frameworks since 2018. SupraFin offers crypto investment and risk intelligence solutions (crypto risk scores/ratings, crypto risk analysis reports and crypto wealthtech) for businesses and regulators to help assess and reduce cryptocurrency risk, comply with regulations, and generate alpha. Liliana has 27 years of experience in FinTech and investment banking from financial and fintech institutions like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America and Moody's Analytics. Liliana has an M.S. in Computational Finance from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MBA from UCLA Anderson.

Talk Title

DeFi panel discussion

Abstract

A panel of industry experts will also discuss the concept of decentralized finance (DeFi); the types of DeFi platforms and their associated cryptocurrencies; regulations related to DeFi and how DeFi platforms might adapt to regulatory efforts; and how risk solutions for DeFi might become more prevalent.

Bio

Abhishek (Abhi) Srivastava currently serves as Associate Vice President of the DeFi and Digital Assets (DFDA) team at Moody's Ratings. His role entails the comprehensive analysis of emerging digital assets landscape, digital financial products and services, as well as publishing researches that can help traditional financial entities have clarity on the digital transformation underway. His team has also been a part of ratings of some of the biggest blockchain-based digital assets recently issued.

Abhi has a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master's in financial risk management. He began his career by leading back-end teams on a variety of data analysis and machine learning projects for some of the biggest banks in India. He also was part of teams designing and executing digital transformation plans for financial institutions. His experience in these roles provided a solid foundation in both technological innovation and risk management.

After his graduate program in the U.S., Abhis worked as a quantitative researcher for boutique credit risk research firms before joining Moody's, where he has been working for close to six years now. His present role helps leverage both his technology and financial risk assessment experiences to help financial institutions navigate the dynamic landscape of blockchain and digital assets.

Abhi is an FRM certification holder and has completed an intensive certificate program on Fintech and blockchain at Columbia University.

Talk Title

Governance panel discussion

Abstract

A group of industry experts will discuss major topics associated with governance, including the role of governance as it relates to public blockchains (and their crypto-assets) and examples of effective governance.

Bio

I lead research at Metagov. I’m also a doctoral student in computer science at Oxford, studying under Samson Abramsky and Bob Coecke. Previously, I held fellowships at Stanford (at the Digital Civil Society Lab), Princeton (in the CS department), and MIT (in the math department). I completed my master’s in pure math at the Courant Institute at NYU, where my research involved applications of geometry and topology to artificial intelligence. For my thesis, I’ve been exploring different ways of applying category theory and sheaf theory to computational learning theory. I also conduct more applied research on collective intelligence and the governance of online communities.

Talk Title

DeFi panel discussion

Abstract

A panel of industry experts will also discuss the concept of decentralized finance (DeFi); the types of DeFi platforms and their associated cryptocurrencies; regulations related to DeFi and how DeFi platforms might adapt to regulatory efforts; and how risk solutions for DeFi might become more prevalent.

Bio

• Founding Engineer @ Jito Labs
• Crypto class of 2021
• CMU class of 2019