Research

My research activities

Currently, my main research field is blockchain technology and decentralized applications. Below I provide a more detailed list of my research activities, separated by sections indicating how long I am working on those fields.

My PhD supervisors are:
- Prof. Laura Ricci, University of Pisa
- Dr. Paolo Mori, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa

Member of Pisa DLT Lab

Area of expertise

Cryptocurrency, Blockchain technology, and Decentralized applications
We investigate on the decentralization of applications with blockchain technology, with the goal of providing auditability, transparency and immutability, of data typically managed by a centralized governance. In particular, I began with Rating and Recommender systems as a benchmark application, which gives the opportunity also to study the potential of different, and competing, blockchain technologies.

My main references on this topic
Mastering Bitcoin, Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Do you need a blockchain?, Wust et al.
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies: A classification and comparison of architecture drivers, Garriga et al.
Virtual currency and reputation-based cooperation incentives in user-centric networks, Bogliolo et al.

My contribution
(2021) ICBTA, Conference - Measuring EOS.IO DApp resource allocation and costs through a benchmark application, ACM Digital Library
(2021) WETICE, Conference - DART: Towards a role-based trust management system on blockchain, IEEE
(2021) FGCS, Journal - Rewarding reviews with tokens: An Ethereum-based approach, Elsevier
(2020) ICBTA, Conference - Practical Application and Evaluation of Atomic Swaps for Blockchain-based Recommender Systems, ACM Digital Library
(2019) GECON, Conference - A smart contract based Recommender System, Springer



Current research interest

Layer-2 and interledger architectures
Blockchain technology implements decentralized architectures whose governors and validators are the peers themselves, and no a third parties. However, performance and scalability are typically sacrificed in order to maintain a secure and decentralized architecture. Layer-2 and interledger approaches aim to solve this issue by, with the former approach, binding off-chain operations with on-chain transactions in specific ways, or, with the latter approach, by connetcing multiple blockchains to delegate specific operations characterizing a use case to specific blockchains.

My main references on this topic
On or off the blockchain? Insights on off-chaining computation and data, Eberhardt et al.
Bitcoin Lightning Network, Website
Atomic Cross-Chain Swaps, Herlihy et al.
Interledger approaches, Siris et al.

My contribution
(2022) ACM TOIT, Journal - L2DART: A trust management system integrating blockchain and off-chain computation, ACM Digital Library
(2021) COMPSAC, Conference - Lightnings over rose bouquets: an analysis of the topology of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, IEEE Xplore
(2021) IEEE Access, Journal - Automated Responsible Disclosure of Security Vulnerabilities, IEEE Xplore



Related research

Self Sovereign Identity
The digital identity of an individual is scattered by many service providers, which typically ask to create accounts, and identity providers, middlemen that allow an individual to access to services using OAuth. As a consequence, an individual delegates to many third parties the responsibility to keep the data private and secure. However, this increments the number of targets for attackers.
Self Sovereign Identity brings the digital identity information back in the hands, devices, of the individual making use of two main components: Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials. An individual can create as many Decentralized Identifier as they want and receive Verefiable Credentials, digitally signed documents, stating that an Identifier benefits from some attributes, such as a certificate, that the individual can show to third parties.

My main references on this topic
Improving the Privacy of IoT with Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs), Kortesniemi et al.
DID-core, Website
Verifiable Credentials, Website

My contribution
(2022) ISCC, Conference - Selective Disclosure in Self-Sovereign Identity based on Hashed Values, **(TBD) IEEE Xplore**