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, working on distributed algorithms, systems, and cryptography.
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 in "Yao Class".
Recent News
Jan 2025. "Distributed Randomness using Weighted VRFs" will appear at EUROCRYPT'25
Dec 2024. "The Latency Price of Threshold Cryptosystem in Blockchains" will appear at FC'25
Sep 2024. Will serve as PC of FC'25 and CCS'25
Sep 2024. "Verifiable Secret Sharing Simplified" will appear at S&P'25
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
Zaptos: Towards Optimal Blockchain Latency (Arxiv, blogpost), 2025
Zhuolun Xiang, Zekun Li, Balaji Arun, Teng Zhang, Alexander Spiegelman
Being deployed by AptosDeferred 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
Work Experiences
Aptos Labs
Research Scientist, Palo Alto, Aug 2022 - now
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
2025: FC, CCS
2023: CCS
Conference Reviewers
2024: PODC, AFT
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