DeCenter Seminar: Privacy Preserving Smart Contracts

April 3, 2024 4:30 pm

Computer Science Building, 105

Speaker: Andrew Miller

Abstract: While smart contracts have catalyzed an exciting burst of permissionless innovation, they are held back by their inability to operate on private data. Fortunately there are several techniques for addressing this, including hardware (TEEs) and cryptography (MPC, FHE, ZKP). I’ll explain all of these and how they fit together to build private smart contracts, including how they’re used in upcoming projects, Flashbots SUAVE and Cycles credit network.

Bio: Andrew Miller is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in Electrical and Computer Engineering and affiliate in Computer Science. He is also an Associate Director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3) and a board member of the Zcash Foundation. Andrew received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland Cybersecurity Center. Additionally, he is the Director of the Decentralized Systems Lab at UIUC! His research interests are broadly in computer security, and focused on the design of secure decentralized systems and cryptocurrencies. He combines techniques from programming languages, cryptography, and distributed computing.