Decentralized Systems Group @ Yale CS

Building the decentralized infrastructure for society's computation.

Vision

Secure Decentralized Systems (SDS) are a new generation of computer systems with strong security guarantees codified in their design and verifiable by end users. Our research aims to advance the technical foundation of SDS and expand its capacity to secure the most critical systems that power society.

Specifically, our research program consists of the following three thrusts:

  1. Securing decentralized systems: A constructive approach to addressing novel security problems that arise from decentralization (e.g., the lack of a central coordinator), openness (e.g., attackers can observe or even join the protocol), and economic incentives (e.g., bribery).
  2. Breaking decentralized systems: A destructive approach that demonstrates fundamental flaws in existing designs, through new attacks or empirical analysis of real-world dysfunctions.
  3. Bridging centralized and decentralized systems: Using decentralized protocols to strengthen incumbent centralized systems, thereby bringing SDS benefits into domains where centralization dominates due to efficiency and network effects. We also explore the converse: how to securely compose centralized components to enhance decentralized applications.

Select recent projects towards this vision are:

See the publication page for an up-to-date list of papers.

Members

Faculty

Postdoctoral Researchers

PhD students

Undergrad Advisees

Teaching

See the teaching page for a list offered by DSG.

Alums

Acknowledgments

DSG is currently supported by the generous grants and gifts from: