Decentralized Systems and Network Services Research Group
Under the term "Decentralized Systems and Network Services" we understand distributed and networked technical systems that span over more than one administrative domain. Hence, their operation depends on more than one party. Our research focuses on:
- Blockchains, broadcast and consensus algorithms and smart contracts
- P2P-networks and network monitoring
- Decentralized messaging at the example of Matrix
- Identity Management and Access Control Systems
- Secure and privacy-aware computing in partially trustworthy environments.
News | News Archive
We presented our new publication "Price Oracle Accuracy Across Blockchains: A Measurement and Analysis" at this year's "Workshop on Cryptoasset Analytics". Using the example of Chainlink, the paper examines how accurately price data from centralized trading venues is mapped on different blockchain systems and which trade-offs result from configurations of heartbeat and threshold.
We have presented our new publication “Proof-Carrying CRDTs allow Succinct Non-Interactive Byzantine Update Validation” on this year's Workshop on Principles and Practice of Consistency for Distributed Data. In this work, Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) are combined first-time with non-interactive cryptographic proofs, as they are known from the zero-knowledge field. The article is freely available as Open Acces under CC-BY.
The ROBUST Workshop on Byzantine Fault Tolerance und State Machine Replication takes place with us at KIT in Karlsruhe this year. This workshop aims to bring together leading minds in our field to explore and discuss current and preliminary work with open questions in substantial depth. The event on March 17 and 18, 2025 is planned from lunch to lunch so that there is time to arrive and depart on the same days. The Call for Contributions as well as additional information is found on: ROBUST 2025
Florian Jacob, a member of our research group, was a guest on the latest episode of the Matrix Salon podcast, where he talked about his research on the security and resilience of the Matrix network and his life as a Ph.D. student.