Fan Zhang
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.
- Email: fanzcs.cornell.edu
- GitHub: Follow @bl4ck5un
- Google Scholar:
- CV:
Update
Past News
11/01/18: Town Crier, a trusted hardware-based oracle for smart contracts is aquired by ChainLink!
03/30/18: I'm awarded the 2018 IBM PhD Fellowship Award
03/02/18: I presented Paralysis Proof at the 5th Bitcoin workshop @ Financial Crypto 2018 in Curacao.
08/18/17: I presented REM at USENIX Security 2017, Vancouver, Canada.
08/13/17: I was invited to present Town Crier at Silicon Valley Ethereum Meetup.
08/02/17: Solidus: Confidential Distributed Ledger Transactions via PVORM is accepted to CCS'17.
07/10/17: Intern at Intel Labs this summer.
05/15/17: Town Crier is officially live!
05/11/17: REM: Resource-Efficient Mining for Blockchains paper is accepted to Security'17. Available here.
10/17/16: Sealed-Glass Proofs: Using Transparent Enclaves to Prove and Sell Knowledge is accepted to EuroS&P '17.
07/22/16: Town Crier: An Authenticated Data Feed for Smart Contracts is accepted to ACM CCS'16.
05/13/16: Stealing Machine Learning Models via Prediction APIs is accepted to USENIX Security'16.
Media Coverage
- Cornell's Town Crier Acquired By Chainlink To Expand Decentralized Oracle Network by Forbes on Nov 1, 2018, featured Town Crier
- Chainlink Blockchain Company Acquires Cornell’s Town Crier to Bolster Native Smart Contract Network by BitcoinExchangeGuide on Nov 2, 2018, featured Town Crier
- Chainlink Acquires Town Crier, a Hardware-Based Oracle by Unhashed on Nov 3, 2018, featured Town Crier
- Cornell IC3 Researchers Propose Solution to Bitcoin's Multisig "Paralysis" Problem by BitcoinMagazine on Jan 19, 2018, featured Paralysis Proof
- The Ridiculous Amount of Energy It Takes to Run Bitcoin by IEEE Spectrum on Sep 28, 2017, featured REM
- Trust Your Oracle? Cornell Launches Tool for Confidential Blockchain Queries by CoinDesk on May 17, 2017, featured Town Crier
- How Encrypted Weather Data Could Help Corporate Blockchain Dreams Come True by MIT Technology Review on May 11, 2017, featured Town Crier
- Town Crier Service Delivers Solid Data To Coders by ETHNews on May 11, 2017, featured Town Crier
Awards
- 2018 IBM PhD Fellowship Award
Publications
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ManuscriptEkiden: A Platform for Confidentiality-Preserving, Trustworthy, and Performant Smart Contract Execution . Cheng, R. and Zhang, F. and Kos, J. and He, W. and Hynes, N. and Johnson, N. and Juels, A. and Miller, A. and Song, D.. In arXiv:1804.05141.
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ManuscriptParalysis Proofs: Safe Access-Structure Updates for Cryptocurrencies and More . Fan Zhang, Philip Daian, Iddo Bentov and Ari Juels. In Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2018/096.
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ManuscriptTesseract: Real-Time Cryptocurrency Exchange using Trusted Hardware . Iddo Bentov, Yan Ji, Fan Zhang, Yunqi Li, Xueyuan Zhao, Lorenz Breidenbach, Philip Daian and Ari Juels. In Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2017/1153.
- Solidus: Confidential Distributed Ledger Transactions via PVORM . Ethan Cecchetti, Fan Zhang, Yan Ji, Ahmed Kosba, Ari Juels and Elaine Shi. In ACM CCS 2017.
- REM: Resource-Efficient Mining for Blockchains . Fan Zhang, Ittay Eyal, Robert Escriva, Ari Juels and Robbert van Renesse. In USENIX Security 17.
- Sealed-Glass Proofs: Using Transparent Enclaves to Prove and Sell Knowledge . Florian Tramèr, Fan Zhang, Huang Lin, Jean-Pierre Hubaux, Ari Juels and Elaine Shi. In EuroS&P'17.
- Town Crier: An Authenticated Data Feed for Smart Contracts . Fan Zhang, Ethan Cecchetti, Kyle Croman, Ari Juels and Elaine Shi. In ACM CCS'16.
- Stealing Machine Learning Models via Prediction APIs . Florian Tramer, Fan Zhang, Ari Juels, Michael Reiter and Thomas Ristenpart. In USENIX Security'16.
- PlateClick: Bootstrapping Food Preferences Through an Adaptive Visual Interface . Longqi Yang, Yin Cui, Fan Zhang, John P Pollak, Serge Belongie and Deborah Estrin. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM International on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management.
Professional Activities
- PC Member: BITCOIN'18
- Reviewer: ACM Computing Surveys
Software
I'm enthusiastic about open-source software and trying earnestly to contribute to greater communities. Here are some of my projects:- Star Town Crier: an SGX-based authenticated data feeds for smart contracts.
- Star mbedTLS-SGX: a port of mbedtls to be used as an SGX library.
- Star hybrid-enc: ECDH + AES-256 encryption based on mbedtls.
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
- CV
- 2 West Loop Road, New York, NY 10044
- youcanbook.me