Zhuolun (Daniel) Xiang

Selected Publications

For the full list, see google scholar

Preprints

• Raptr: Prefix Consensus for Robust High-Performance BFT (Arxiv, blogpost), 2025
  Andrei Tonkikh*, Balaji Arun*, Zhuolun Xiang, Zekun Li, Alexander Spiegelman (shared first author)
  Being deployed by Aptos

• Zaptos: Towards Optimal Blockchain Latency (Arxiv, blogpost), 2025
  Zhuolun Xiang, Zekun Li, Balaji Arun, Teng Zhang, Alexander Spiegelman
  Being deployed by Aptos

• Deferred Objects to Enhance Smart Contract Programming with Optimistic Parallel Execution (Arxiv, blogpost), 2024
  George Mitenkov, Igor Kabiljo, Zekun Li, Alexander Spiegelman, Satyanarayana Vusirikala, Zhuolun Xiang, Aleksandar Zlateski, Nuno P. Lopes, Rati Gelashvili
  Deployed by Aptos to parallelize sequential workload in BlockSTM

2025

• [EUROCRYPT'25] Distributed Randomness using Weighted VRFs (ePrint), 2024
  Sourav Das, Benny Pinkas, Alin Tomescu, and Zhuolun Xiang (alphabetical order)
  Deployed by Aptos for on-chain randomness

• [FC'25] The Latency Price of Threshold Cryptosystem in Blockchains (Arxiv)
  Zhuolun Xiang, Sourav Das, Zekun Li, Zhoujun Ma, Alexander Spiegelman
  Deployed by Aptos for on-chain randomness

• [S&P'25] Verifiable Secret Sharing Simplified (ePrint)
  Sourav Das, Zhuolun Xiang, Alin Tomescu, Alexander Spiegelman, Benny Pinkas, and Ling Ren

2024

• [NDSS'24] Powers of Tau in Asynchrony (ePrint)
  Sourav Das, Zhuolun Xiang, Ling Ren

2023

• [PPoPP'23] Block-STM: Scaling Blockchain Execution by Turning Ordering Curse to a Performance Blessing (Arxiv, code, blog post, video)
  Rati Gelashvili*, Alexander Spiegelman*, Zhuolun Xiang*,George Danezis, Zekun Li, Dahlia Malkhi, Yu Xia, Runtian Zhou (shared first author)
  BlockSTM is deployed by Aptos, Polygon, Sei, Starknet as the parallel execution engine

• [CCS'23] Threshold Signatures from Inner Product Argument: Succinct, Weighted, and Multi-threshold (ePrint)
  Sourav Das, Philippe Camacho, Zhuolun Xiang, Javier Nieto, Benedikt Bunz, and Ling Ren

• [USENIX Security'23] Long Live The Honey Badger: Robust Asynchronous DPSS and its Applications (ePrint)
  Thomas Yurek, Zhuolun Xiang, Yu Xia, Andrew Miller

• [USENIX Security'23] Practical Asynchronous High-threshold Distributed Key Generation and Distributed Polynomial Sampling (ePrint)
  Sourav Das, Zhuolun Xiang, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Ling Ren
  Deployed by Arcana Network

• [PODC'23] On the Amortized Communication Complexity of Byzantine Broadcast (ePrint)
  Atsuki Momose, Ling Ren, Elaine Shi, Jun Wan, and Zhuolun Xiang (alphabetical order)

• [FC'23] Executing and Proving over Dirty Ledgers (ePrint)
  Christos Stefo, Zhuolun Xiang, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias

2022

• [S&P'22] Practical Asynchronous Distributed Key Generation (ePrint, video)
  Sourav Das, Thomas Yurek, Zhuolun Xiang, Andrew Miller, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias and Ling Ren
  Deployed by Arcana Network

• [PODC'22] Balanced Byzantine Reliable Broadcast with Near-Optimal Communication and Improved Computation  (ePrint)

• [PODC'22] Brief Announcement: Asynchronous Verifiable Information Dispersal with Near-Optimal Communication (ePrint)
  Nicolas Alhaddad, Sourav Das, Sisu Duan, Ling Ren, Mayank Varia, Zhuolun Xiang  and Haibin Zhang (alphabetical order)

• [FC'22] Jolteon and Ditto: Network-Adaptive Efficient Consensus with Asynchronous Fallback  (Arxiv, code, slides)
  Rati Gelashvili, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, Alexander Spiegelman and Zhuolun Xiang (alphabetical order)
  Jolteon is deployed by Aptos, Flow, Monad, Gravity, Diem as the consensus protocol

2021

• [CCS'21] Asynchronous Data Dissemination and its Applications (ePrint, video)
  Sourav Das, Zhuolun Xiang and Ling Ren
  Best Paper Award runner-ups

• [PODC'21] Good-case Latency of Byzantine Broadcast: A Complete Categorization (Arxiv, blog post1, 2, 3, slides, video)
  Ittai Abraham, Kartik Nayak, Ling Ren and Zhuolun Xiang (alphabetical order)
  Companion short note on SMR: Fast Authenticated Byzantine Consensus (Arxiv, blog post)

• [OPODIS'21] Good-case and Bad-case Latency of Unauthenticated Byzantine Broadcast: A Complete Categorization (Arxiv, blog post, slides)
  Ittai Abraham, Ling Ren and Zhuolun Xiang (alphabetical order)

• [ICDCS'21] Strengthened Fault Tolerance in Byzantine Fault Tolerant Replication (Arxiv, slides)
  Zhuolun Xiang, Dahlia Malkhi, Kartik Nayak and Ling Ren

2020

• [DISC'20] Improved Extension Protocols for Byzantine Broadcast and Agreement (Arxiv, slides, video)
  Kartik Nayak, Ling Ren, Elaine Shi, Nitin H. Vaidya and Zhuolun Xiang (alphabetical order)