Aviv Yaish
Bio. I research the intricate relationship between the economics and security of cryptocurrencies. I am currently finishing my PhD at HUJI, where I had the pleasure of being advised by Prof. Aviv Zohar, and will soon start a postdoc at Yale, where I am grateful for being hosted by Prof. Fan Zhang, and co-hosted by Profs. Ben Fisch, Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou, and Zhong Shao. I am also a visiting researcher at the University of Innsbruck, where I am graciously hosted by Profs. Rainer Böhme and Svetlana Abramova. Previously, I was a lecturer at HUJI and received an award for my teaching. Among other honors, I was named one of the top PhD graduates of 23-24 by the CBER Forum, received the CCS Distinguished Paper award, and was generously supported by Ethereum Foundation grants, an AIANI fellowship, the Ze’ev Jabotinsky fellowship, and HUJI’s rector award for first-in-class MSc students.
Do get in touch if you want to collaborate or chat. This includes undergrads looking for cool projects.
News
Apr 6, 2024 | Hao Chung, Matheus VX Ferreira, Yotam Gafni & I will give a tutorial on transaction fee mechanisms at EC24. |
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Mar 28, 2024 | I will present Suboptimality in DeFi at the 4th Annual CBER Conference. |
Feb 20, 2024 | I was invited to and will participate at the 2024 Workshop on Algorithms for Learning and Economics (WALE). |
Selected Papers
- Uncle Maker: (Time)Stamping Out The Competition in EthereumIn Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2023🏆 Received an ACM CCS distinguished paper award
🏆 Covered by International Business Times, CryptoSlate, Cointelegraph
Click here for my full publication list
2024
2023
- Uncle Maker: (Time)Stamping Out The Competition in EthereumIn Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2023🏆 Received an ACM CCS distinguished paper award
🏆 Covered by International Business Times, CryptoSlate, Cointelegraph
2022
Click here for my CV
General Information
Full Name | Aviv Yaish |
aviv@avivyaish.com | |
Research Interests | Blockchains, Economics, Security, Decentralized Finance |
Research Positions
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Sep 2024 - Postdoctoral Researcher
Yale University - Funded by the departmental trustworthy computing postdoc gift fund
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2023 - Visiting Researcher
University of Innsbruck - Partially funded by an AIANI visiting researcher fellowship
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2023 - 2024 Research Consultant
Matter Labs -
2023 - 2023 Research Associate (Internship)
Matter Labs
Education
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2019 - Direct-to-PhD, Computer Science
The Hebrew University - Recipient of the merit-based 4-year Ze’ev Jabotinsky Fellowship
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2016 - 2018 Master of Science (M.Sc.), Computer Science
The Hebrew University - Recipient of the rector prize for ranking first in class
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2013 - 2016 Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Science
The Hebrew University - Recipient of the merit-based "Amirim science" excellence scholarship
Grants
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2023 Ethereum Foundation grant, DoS Implications of Blockchain Censorship (PI, 72,000 USD)
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2023 Ethereum Foundation grant, Blockchain Censorship - Quantitative Analysis of Censorship on Public Blockchains (Co-I, 25,000 USD)
Honors, Awards and Funding
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2023 - ACM CCS23 distinguished paper
- Ethereum Foundation bounty
- Flashbots vulnerability bounty
- AIANI visiting researcher fellowship
- AFT23 student travel funding
- ACM CCS23 travel grant
- iMentor23 travel funding
- ACM EC23 student travel funding
- Devconnect academic sponsorship (awarded, could not participate)
- Fenbushi Capital Research House Program (awarded, could not participate)
- HUJI's Diversity Unit's March 23 travel scholarship for outstanding PhD students
- HUJI's Diversity Unit's September 23 travel scholarship for outstanding PhD students
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2022 - HUJI Authority for Research Students' travel grant
- Vaad Edat Hasfaradim’s scholarship
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2021 - Award for excellence in teaching
- Ethereum Foundation bounty (awarded, didn't collect)
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2020 - Ranked 9th out of 111 teaching staff in HUJI's CS department
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2019 - Ze’ev Jabotinsky 4 year merit-based fellowship
- Zcash Foundation Zcon1 travel scholarship
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2018 - HUJI Rector's prize for ranking first in MSc class
- HUJI Dean's award for outstanding academic achievements
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2016 - First place at HUJI's annual machine learning hackathon
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2013 - Amirim science excellence scholarship for undergraduates
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2007 - Ranked in the 99th percentile in Israel's SAT equivalent (psychometric exam)
Publications
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USENIXSEC '24 Speculative Denial-of-Service Attacks in Ethereum
Aviv Yaish, Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Aviv Zohar, Arthur Gervais - In the Proceedings of the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium
- Awarded a bounty by the Ethereum Foundation
- Awarded a bounty by Flashbots
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WWW '24 Blockchain Censorship
Anton Wahrstätter, Jens Ernstberger, Aviv Yaish, Liyi Zhou, Kaihua Qin, Taro Tsuchiya, Sebastian Steinhorst, Davor Svetinovic, Nicolas Christin, Mikolaj Barczentewicz, Arthur Gervais - In the Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Web Conference
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Comp. WWW '24 Incentives in the Ether: Practical Cryptocurrency Economics & Security
Aviv Yaish - In the Companion Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Web Conference
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CCS '23 Uncle Maker: (Time)Stamping Out The Competition in Ethereum
Aviv Yaish, Gilad Stern, Aviv Zohar - In the Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications
- Received an ACM CCS distinguished paper award
- Covered by International Business Times, CryptoSlate, Cointelegraph
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AFT '23 Correct Cryptocurrency ASIC Pricing: Are Miners Overpaying?
Aviv Yaish, Aviv Zohar - In the Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies
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DeFi@CCS '23 The Vulnerable Nature of Decentralized Governance in DeFi
Maya Dotan, Aviv Yaish, Hsin-Chu Yin, Eytan Tsytkin, Aviv Zohar - In the Proceedings of the 2023 ACM CCS Workshop on Decentralized Finance and Security
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EC '22 Blockchain Stretching & Squeezing: Manipulating Time for Your Best Interest
Aviv Yaish, Saar Tochner, Aviv Zohar - In the Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Conference on Economics & Computation
- Awarded a bounty by the Ethereum Foundation
Conference Papers
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CBER '24 Suboptimality in DeFi
Aviv Yaish, Maya Dotan, Kaihua Qin, Aviv Zohar, Arthur Gervais -
IGTC '23 Greedy Transaction Fee Mechanisms for (Non-)myopic Miners
Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish
Papers
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2024 Strategic Vote Timing in Online Elections With Public Tallies
Aviv Yaish, Svetlana Abramova, Rainer Böhme - In the 3rd Frontiers in DeFi workshop
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2024 Barriers to Collusion-resistant Transaction Fee Mechanisms
Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish -
2024 Competitive Revenue Extraction from Time-Discounted Transactions in the Semi-Myopic Regime
Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish -
2023 Airdrops: Giving Money Away Is Harder Than It Seems
Johnnatan Messias*, Aviv Yaish*, Ben Livshits - Equal contribution denoted by ^*
Teaching
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2018 - 2024 System Introduction (67100), creator and lecturer
The Hebrew University - Sole lecturer and creator, taught an average of 850 students/year
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2017 - 2023 From NAND to Tetris (67925/6), lecturer
The Hebrew University - Sole lecturer, managed a team of 7 TAs, taught an average of 500+ students/year
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2021 Award for excellence in teaching
The Hebrew University -
2020 Introduction to Cryptocurrencies (67513), co-creator and TA
The Hebrew University -
2020 Ranked 9th out of 111 teaching staff in the CS department
The Hebrew University
Undergraduate Project Supervision
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2022 - 2023 Nimrod Rak
The Hebrew University - Title: Simulating cryptocurrency networks using real clients
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2022 - 2022 Eytan Tsytkin
The Hebrew University - Title: Application of Big Data methods to cryptocurrencies
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2021 - 2022 Imri Paran
The Hebrew University - Title: An exploration of Bitcoin's attack surface
Service
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2024 - Journal referee. ACM TEAC, INFORMS MOR
- Program committee. MARBLE, EC, AFT
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2023 - Program committee. CCS DeFi Workshop
- In-person volunteer. EC
- Reviewer. CCS, EC, FC, SODA, WWW, WEIS, FC DeFi Workshop
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2022 - Reviewer. S&P, SODA, WWW
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2020 - Reviewer. AFT
Talks
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Incentives in the Ether: Practical Cryptocurrency Economics & Security
- The Web 2024 Conference Companion Promo, 2024
- HUJI's Distributed Algorithms, Networking and Security Seminar, 2024
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Speculative Denial-of-Service Attacks in Ethereum
- Syracuse University's Friday seminar (invited), 2023
- CBER Forum's Top Blockchain PhD Graduates Symposium (invited), 2023
- Yale's CS Seminar (invited), 2023
- Tokenomics, 2023
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Greedy Transaction Fee Mechanisms for (Non-)myopic Miners
- The Annual Conference of the Israeli Chapter of the Game Theory Society, 2023
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Supoptimality in DeFi
- UCSB-ECON DeFi Seminar (invited), 2024
- The Science of Decentralized Financial Stability Workshop (invited), 2023
- Schloss Dagstuhl seminar 22421 (invited), 2022
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Uncle Maker: (Time)Stamping Out The Competition in Ethereum
- The Hebrew University's EconCS seminar (invited), 2024
- The 30th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2023
- Princeton's Algorithmic Mechanism Design for Cryptocurrencies seminar (invited), 2023
- Innsbruck University's Department of Computer Science's seminar (invited), 2023
- HUJI's Distributed Algorithms, Networking and Security Seminar (invited), 2022
- The Crypto Economics Security Conference, 2022
- The Federmann Cyber Security Center's Cyber Retreat (invited), 2022
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Blockchain Stretching & Squeezing: Manipulating Time For Your Best Interest
- HUJI's Seminar on the Border of Economics and Computation (invited), 2024
- Innsbruck University's Security and Privacy Lab (invited), 2023
- Chaincode Labs' Research Seminar (invited), 2022
- The 23rd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, 2022
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Correct Cryptocurrency ASIC Pricing: Are Miners Overpaying?
- Advances in Financial Technologies, 2023
- The Crypto Economics Security Conference, 2022
- First Israeli Blockchain Research Day (invited), 2021
- The Hebrew University's Cryptocurrencies Seminar (invited), 2019
Other
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2023 Received Melabev's certificate of appreciation for outstanding volunteer services
Melabev -
2020 - 2022 Volunteered with elderly people with dementia
Melabev