Roger Wattenhofer is a full professor at the Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Department, ETH Zurich, Switzer­land. He received his doctorate in Computer Science from ETH Zurich. He also worked some years at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

Roger Wattenhofer’s research interests are a variety of algorithmic and systems aspects in computer science and information technology, e.g., distributed systems, positioning systems, wireless networks, mobile systems, social networks, financial networks, deep neural networks. He publishes in different communities: distributed computing (e.g., PODC, SPAA, DISC), networking and systems (e.g., SIGCOMM, SenSys, IPSN, OSDI, MobiCom), algorithmic theory (e.g., STOC, FOCS, SODA, ICALP), and more recently also machine learning (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, ACL, AAAI). His work received multiple awards, e.g. the Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing for his work in Distributed Approximation. He published the book “Blockchain Science: Distributed Ledger Technology“, which has been translated to Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.

Public Lecture

Abstract

Nakamoto’s Bitcoin protocol has taught the world how to achieve trust without a designated trusted party. However, Bitcoin’s proof-of-work solution comes at serious costs and compromises. While solving the energy problem of proof-of-work, proof-of-stake introduces some of its own problems. We relax the usual notion of consensus to extract the requirements necessary for an efficient cryptocurrency. Towards this end, we introduce a blockchain design called Cascade that is consensusless, asynchronous, scalable, deterministic, and efficient. While Cascade has its own limitations, it should serve as a nice discussion basis for a better blockchain design. Cascade is joint work with Jakub Sliwinski.

Online Event

Join us via Zoom: tuwien.zoom.us/j/96143787900

About The Lecture Series

ViSP is organizing a Distinguished Lecture Series with internationally renowned researchers from the field of Security & Privacy. Every month there will be a talk on a current research topic, followed by an open discussion.

About ViSP

ViSP, the Vienna Cybersecurity and Privacy Research Center, consists of researchers from IST Austria, TU Wien and Uni Wien. With these three institutes, Vienna offers an exceptional degree of excellence for research in the area of Security and Privacy. The mission of ViSP is to unlock the true potential of the location by fostering collaborations between different institutes in Vienna. This collaboration strives to do impactful research and advance state of the art, securing Vienna’s pioneer role in the research in Security and Privacy.

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