Zhuolun (Daniel) Xiang

Email:
xiangzhuolun [AT] gmail [DOT] com
daniel [AT] aptoslabs [DOT] com
Google Scholar / Github / LinkedIn / Twitter

I am a research scientist at Aptos Labs.

Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, hosted by Prof. Elaine Shi. I received my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, advised by Prof. Ling Ren and Prof. Nitin Vaidya. I obtained my bachelor's degree at Tsinghua University, where I studied computer science at "Yao Class".

I am generally interested in distributed algorithms, systems and cryptography, and recently fault-tolerant consensus (blockchain), threshold cryptography and parallel execution.

Recent News

Sep 2023. "Powers of Tau in Asynchrony" will appear at NDSS'24
July 2023. "Threshold Signatures from Inner Product Argument: Succinct, Weighted, and Multi-threshold" will appear at CCS'23 and SBC'23
Mar 2023. "On the Amortized Communication Complexity of Byzantine Broadcast" will appear at PODC'23
Mar 2023. Will serve as PC of CCS'23 (Blockchain and Distributed System track).
Feb 2023. "Long Live The Honey Badger: Robust Asynchronous DPSS and its Applications" will appear at USENIX Security'23
Jan 2023. "Practical Asynchronous High-threshold Distributed Key Generation and Distributed Polynomial Sampling" will appear at USENIX Security'23
Jan 2023. "Executing and Proving over Dirty Ledgers" will appear at FC'23
Nov 2022. "Block-STM: Scaling Blockchain Execution by Turning Ordering Curse to a Performance Blessing" will appear at PPoPP'23
Aug 2022. I joined Aptos Labs as a research scientist

Selected Publications

For the full list, see google scholar

Preprints

Distributed Randomness using Weighted VRFs (ePrint), 2024
Sourav Das, Benny Pinkas, Alin Tomescu, and Zhuolun Xiang (alphabetical order)
Deployed by Aptos as the on-chain randomness
Verifiable Secret Sharing Simplified (ePrint), 2023
Sourav Das, Zhuolun Xiang, Alin Tomescu, Alexander Spiegelman, Benny Pinkas, and Ling Ren

Parallel Execution

[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
BlockSTM is deployed by Aptos and Polygon as the parallel execution engine

Consensus

[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
[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 as the consensus protocol
[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
[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)

Threshold Cryptography

[NDSS'24] Powers of Tau in Asynchrony (ePrint)
Sourav Das, Zhuolun Xiang, Ling Ren
[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
[S&P'22] Practical Asynchronous Distributed Key Generation (ePrint, video)
Sourav Das, Thomas Yurek, Zhuolun Xiang, Andrew Miller, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias and Ling Ren
[CCS'21] Asynchronous Data Dissemination and its Applications (ePrint, video)
Sourav Das, Zhuolun Xiang and Ling Ren
Best Paper Award runner-ups

Work Experiences

- Facebook, Novi Research
  - Research Intern, Menlo Park, May 2020 - Aug 2020
    Research on Diem Blockchain with better resilience. Mentor: Dahlia Malkhi
    Publication: Strengthened Fault Tolerance (ICDCS'21)
  - Part-time Intern, Menlo Park, Aug 2020 - Dec 2020
    Research on Diem Blockchain with asynchronous fallback
    Publication: Jolteon and Ditto (FC'22)
  - Research Intern, Menlo Park, May 2021 - Aug 2021
    Research on Diem Blockchain with parallel transaction execution. Mentor: Rati Gelashvili
    Publication: Block-STM (PPoPP'23)
- Alibaba DAMO Academy
  - Research Intern, Data Analytics and Intelligence Lab (DAIL), Bellevue, May 2019 – Aug 2019
    Research on local differential privacy. Mentor: Bolin Ding
    Publication: Linear and Range Counting under Metric-based LDP (ISIT'20)

Selected Honors and Awards

Best Paper Award runner-ups, ACM CCS 2021
Chirag Foundation Graduate Fellowship in Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016
Yao Award, Tsinghua University, 2015
Scholarship of Academic Excellence, Tsinghua University, 2013-2015
Gold Medal, National Chinese Physics Olympiad (CPho), 2011

Professional Activities

Conference Program Committee

2023: CCS

Conference Reviewers

2024: PODC
2023: S&P, FC, STOC, PODC, CCS
2022: FC, CCS, ICDCS, PODC, S&P, OPODIS
2021: FC, ICDCS, PODC, DISC, TCC, SODA, SSS
2020: CCS