Fan Zhang
- CV:
- Email: fanzcs.cornell.edu
- Google Scholar:
- GitHub: Follow @bl4ck5un
- PGP: EF90F9B3
Bio
I am a PhD candidate in the department of Computer Science at Cornell University. Under the able advice of Prof. Ari Juels, my research interest is in blockchains, trusted hardware, system security and applied cryptography. I'm particularly interested in understanding and building hybrid systems that enjoy the best of both blockchains and trusted hardware. I am a member of the exciting Initiative for Cryptocurrencies & Contracts (IC3). Before joining Cornell, I earned my bachelor's degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2014.
Recent News
Apr. 2019, Our paper titled Ekiden: A Platform for Confidentiality-Preserving, Trustworthy, and Performant Smart Contract Execution is accepted to EuroS&P'19!
Jan. 2019, Our paper on dynamic-committee secret sharing is now posted online.
Nov. 2018, Town Crier, a trusted hardware-based oracle for smart contracts is aquired by ChainLink!
Mar. 2018, I'm awarded the IBM PhD Fellowship Award for 2018-2020.
Mar. 2018, I presented Paralysis Proof at the 5th Bitcoin workshop @ Financial Crypto 2018 in Curacao.
Aug. 2017, I presented REM at USENIX Security 2017, Vancouver, Canada.
Aug. 2017, I was invited to present Town Crier at Silicon Valley Ethereum Meetup.
Aug. 2017, Solidus: Confidential Distributed Ledger Transactions via PVORM is accepted to CCS'17.
Jul. 2017, Intern at Intel Labs this summer.
May. 2017, Town Crier is officially live!
May. 2017, REM: Resource-Efficient Mining for Blockchains paper is accepted to USENIX Security'17. Available here.
Oct. 2016, Sealed-Glass Proofs: Using Transparent Enclaves to Prove and Sell Knowledge is accepted to EuroS&P '17.
Jul. 2016, Town Crier: An Authenticated Data Feed for Smart Contracts is accepted to ACM CCS'16.
May. 2016, Stealing Machine Learning Models via Prediction APIs is accepted to USENIX Security'16.
Awards
- 2018-2020 IBM PhD Fellowship Award
Publications
Fan Zhang, Sai Krishna Deepak Maram, Harjasleen Malvai, Steven Goldfeder and Ari Juels. DECO: Liberating Web Data Using Decentralized Oracles for TLS.
In submission.
Sai Krishna Deepak Maram,
Fan Zhang,
Lun Wang,
Andrew Low,
Yupeng Zhang,
Ari Juels and
Dawn Song. CHURP: Dynamic-Committee Proactive Secret Sharing.
In submission.
Media coverage by: MIT Tech Review China
Raymond Cheng,
Fan Zhang,
Jernej Kos,
Warren He,
Nicholas Hynes,
Noah M. Johnson,
Ari Juels,
Andrew Miller and
Dawn Song. Ekiden: A Platform for Confidentiality-Preserving, Trustworthy,
and Performant Smart Contracts.
In EuroS&P, 2019.
Media coverage by: Forbes
Fan Zhang,
Philip Daian,
Iddo Bentov and
Ari Juels. Paralysis Proofs: Safe Access-Structure Updates for Cryptocurrencies
and More.
In ACM AFT (to appear), 2019.
Media coverage by: BitcoinMagazine
Ethan Cecchetti,
Fan Zhang,
Yan Ji,
Ahmed E. Kosba,
Ari Juels and
Elaine Shi. Solidus: Confidential Distributed Ledger Transactions via PVORM.
In ACM CCS, 2017.
Florian Tramèr,
Fan Zhang,
Huang Lin,
Jean-Pierre Hubaux,
Ari Juels and
Elaine Shi. Sealed-Glass Proofs: Using Transparent Enclaves to Prove and Sell
Knowledge.
In IEEE EuroS&P, 2017.
Fan Zhang,
Ittay Eyal,
Robert Escriva,
Ari Juels and
Robbert van Renesse. REM: Resource-Efficient Mining for Blockchains.
In USENIX Security, 2017.
Media coverage by: IEEE Spectrum
Iddo Bentov,
Yan Ji,
Fan Zhang,
Yunqi Li,
Xueyuan Zhao,
Lorenz Breidenbach,
Philip Daian and
Ari Juels. Tesseract: Real-Time Cryptocurrency Exchange using Trusted Hardware.
In submission.
Fan Zhang,
Ethan Cecchetti,
Kyle Croman,
Ari Juels and
Elaine Shi. Town Crier: An Authenticated Data Feed for Smart Contracts.
In ACM CCS, 2016.
Media coverage by: Forbes , BitcoinExchangeGuide , Unhashed , CoinDesk , MIT Technology Review , ETHNews
Florian Tramèr,
Fan Zhang,
Ari Juels,
Michael K. Reiter and
Thomas Ristenpart. Stealing Machine Learning Models via Prediction APIs.
In USENIX Security, 2016.
Longqi Yang, Yin Cui, Fan Zhang, John P Pollak, Serge Belongie and Deborah Estrin. PlateClick: Bootstrapping Food Preferences Through an Adaptive Visual Interface.
In ACM CIKM, 2015.
Software
Here are some of the open-source artifacts from my research:- Star Town Crier: an SGX-based authenticated data feeds for smart contracts.
- Star mbedTLS-SGX: a port of mbedtls to the SGX environment.
- Star CHURP: dynamic-committee proactive secret sharing.
Media Coverage
- MIT Tech Review China reported on CHURP by MIT Tech Review China on Mar 27, 2019
- Cornell's Town Crier Acquired By Chainlink To Expand Decentralized Oracle Network by Forbes on Nov 1, 2018
- Chainlink Blockchain Company Acquires Cornell’s Town Crier to Bolster Native Smart Contract Network by BitcoinExchangeGuide on Nov 2, 2018
- Chainlink Acquires Town Crier, a Hardware-Based Oracle by Unhashed on Nov 3, 2018
- Big Hitter Crypto Funds Pile Into Privacy-Enhanced Smart Contract Startup Oasis Labs by Forbes on Jul 9, 2018
- Cornell IC3 Researchers Propose Solution to Bitcoin's Multisig "Paralysis" Problem by BitcoinMagazine on Jan 19, 2018
- The Ridiculous Amount of Energy It Takes to Run Bitcoin by IEEE Spectrum on Sep 28, 2017
- Trust Your Oracle? Cornell Launches Tool for Confidential Blockchain Queries by CoinDesk on May 17, 2017
- How Encrypted Weather Data Could Help Corporate Blockchain Dreams Come True by MIT Technology Review on May 11, 2017
- Town Crier Service Delivers Solid Data To Coders by ETHNews on May 11, 2017
Professional Activities
- PC Member: BITCOIN'18
- Reviewer: USENIX Security (2016), ACM Computing Surveys (2018), TCC (2019)
Teaching
- 2015 Fall, (Part Time) TA for CS 5435: Security and Privacy in the Wild
- 2015 Spring, TA for CS 5300: Large-scale Information Systems
- 2014 Fall, TA for CS 4410: Operating Systems
Contact
- fanz at cs.cornell.edu
- 2 West Loop Road, New York, NY 10044