Bio. I like breaking things: pushing systems to their limits and understanding how they fail is fundamental to making them robust. This drives my research into the economics and security of distributed systems and AI.
Do get in touch if you want to collaborate or join my lab at Georgia Tech, EcoSec. This includes undergrads looking for cool projects!
News
21 Aug 2026.I'm hiring students at all levels to join my new EcoSec lab at Georgia Tech!20 Feb 2026.Transaction Fee Mechanisms Robust to Welfare-Increasing Collusion was accepted to Games and Economic Behavior!15 Jan 2026.I'll present Inequality in the Age of Pseudonymity and Platform Building With Fake Consumers at DeFi@FC26!07 Nov 2025.Excited that Inequality in the Age of Pseudonymity was accepted to AAAI26.21 Apr 2025.Check out our new work, Insecurity Through Obscurity: Veiled Vulnerabilities in Closed-Source Contracts.27 Jan 2025.Varun Madathil and I are running Yale's Applied Crypto seminar, you're invited.06 Apr 2024.Hao Chung, Matheus VX Ferreira, Yotam Gafni & I will give a tutorial on transaction fee mechanisms at EC'24.29 Sep 2023.Invited to speak at YoungEC '24, do reach it out if you're there.
Affiliations
2027βIncoming Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, College of Computing2026βPostdoctoral Research Associate, Princeton University. Hosted by Matt Weinberg, Jaswinder Pal Singh2024β2026Postdoc Associate, Yale University. Hosted by Fan Zhang (main), Ben Fisch, Charalampos Papamanthou, Zhong Shao
π Named one of the CBER Forum's Rising Stars of '25
π Named one of the Hebrew University's 40 Under 40 Young Leaders of '25
Education
2019β2024Ph.D. (direct track) in Computer Science, Hebrew University. Advised by Aviv Zohar
π Named one of the CBER Forum's Top PhD Graduates of '23β'24
π Recipient of the merit-based Ze'ev Jabotinsky 4-year fellowship2016β2018M.Sc. in Computer Science, Hebrew University. Advised by Aviv Zohar
π Received the rector prize for ranking first in M.Sc. class2013β2016B.Sc. in Computer Science, Hebrew University
π The Hebrew University's Amirim Science excellence scholarship
Papers
AAAI'26Inequality in the Age of Pseudonymity
Authors: Aviv Yaish, Nir Chemaya, Lin William Cong, Dahlia Malkhi
In: Proceedings of the Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'26)USENIXSEC'26Perils of Parallelism: Transaction Fee Mechanisms Under Execution Uncertainty
Authors: Sarisht Wadhwa*, Aviv Yaish*, Fan Zhang, Kartik Nayak (*: equal contribution)
In: Proceedings of the 35th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIXSEC'26)CCS'26Insecurity Through Obscurity: Veiled Vulnerabilities in Closed-Source Contracts
Authors: Sen Yang, Kaihua Qin, Aviv Yaish, Fan Zhang
In: Proceedings of the 33rd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'26)EuroS&P'26Persistent BitTorrent Trackers
Authors: François-Xavier Wicht, Zhengwei Tong, Shunfan Zhou, Hang Yin, Aviv Yaish
In: Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE 11th European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P'26)
π Industry collaboration with Phala NetworkMS'26Platform Building With Fake Consumers: On Double Dippers and Airdrop Farmers
Authors: Hanna HaΕaburda, Ben Livshits, Aviv Yaish
In: minor revision, Management Science
π Industry collaboration with Matter LabsGEB'26Transaction Fee Mechanisms Robust to Welfare-Increasing Collusion
Authors: Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish
In: Games and Economic Behavior (GEB)TNSM'26SoK: DeFi Lending and Yield Aggregation Protocol Taxonomy, Empirical Measurements, and Security Challenges
Authors: Arad Kotzer, Tom Azoulay, Yoad Abels, Aviv Yaish, Ori Rottenstreich
In: IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM)2026FISSION: Label Augmentation for Bot Detection
Authors: Sen Yang, Ignacy Nieweglowski, Aviv Yaish2026Freemium Is All You Need
Authors: Maxim Bichuch, Aviv Yaish2026Order Auctions with Private Position Preferences
Authors: Ruijie Wang, Aviv Yaish2026Your Loss is My Gain: Low Stake Attacks on Liquid Staking Pools
Authors: Sen Yang*, Aviv Yaish*, Arthur Gervais, Fan Zhang (*: equal contribution)2026Authenticated Data Structures for Dynamic Workloads
Authors: Ziheng (Tom) Shangguan, Aviv Yaish, Dahlia Malkhi2026Modern Portfolio Theory in the Crypto-Wilderness
Authors: Ivan Vynyavskyy, Stefan Kitzler, Bernhard Haslhofer, Aviv YaishFC'25Proophi: A ZKP Market Mechanism
Authors: Wenhao Wang, Lulu Zhou, Aviv Yaish, Fan Zhang, Ben Fisch, Benjamin Livshits
In: Proceedings of Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2025 (FC'25)
π Industry collaboration with Matter Labs and Fermah2025Quantifying Inequality in Blockchain Networks
Authors: Nir Chemaya, Aviv Yaish, Shahar Yacouel, Dahlia Malkhi, Lin William Cong2025PoliFi Tokens and the Trump Effect
Authors: Ignacy Nieweglowski, Aviv Yaish, Fahad Saleh, Fan Zhang2025Advancing AI Research Assistants with Expert-Involved Learning
Authors: Tianyu Liu, Simeng Han, Xiao Luo, Hanchen Wang, Biqing Zhu, Rihao Qu, Yufeng Liu, Xinyue Cui, Yuge Wang, Keyi Li, Jiapeng Chen, Aviv Yaish, Yuhang Chen, Minsheng Hao, Chuhan Li, Kexing Li, Arman Cohan, Hua Xu, Mark Gerstein, Hongyu ZhaoEC'24Barriers to Collusion-resistant Transaction Fee Mechanisms
Authors: Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish
In: Proceedings of the 25th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'24)MARBLE'24Discrete & Bayesian Transaction Fee Mechanisms
Authors: Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish
In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy (MARBLE'24)USENIXSEC'24Speculative Denial-of-Service Attacks in Ethereum
Authors: Aviv Yaish, Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Aviv Zohar, Arthur Gervais
In: Proceedings of the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIXSEC'24)
π Awarded a Flashbots bounty
π Awarded an Ethereum Foundation bounty
π Ranked 63rd in MLSEC's Normalized Top-100 Security Papers list
π° Covered by BlockworksCBER'24Suboptimality in DeFi
Authors: Aviv Yaish, Maya Dotan, Kaihua Qin, Aviv Zohar, Arthur Gervais
In: The 4th Annual Crypto and Blockchain Economics Research Conference (CBER'24)
π Received the 4th Annual Crypto and Blockchain Economics Research (CBER) Conference's Best Paper AwardWWW'24Blockchain Censorship
Authors: Toni Wahrstatter, Jens Ernstberger, Aviv Yaish, Liyi Zhou, Kaihua Qin, Taro Tsuchiya, Sebastian Steinhorst, Nicholas Cristin, Davor Svetinovic, Mikolaj Barczentewicz, Arthur Gervais
In: Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2024 (WWW'24)WWW'24Incentives in the Ether: Practical Cryptocurrency Economics & Security
Authors: Aviv Yaish
In: Companion Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2024 (WWW'24)2024Intelligent Economic Agents, Cryptocurrencies & Distributed Ledgers
Authors: Aviv Yaish
In: Ph.D. Thesis2024Strategic Vote Timing in Elections With Public Tallies
Authors: Aviv Yaish, Svetlana Abramova, Rainer BΓΆhme2024Scheduling With Time Discounts
Authors: Yotam Gafni, Aviv YaishCCS'23Uncle Maker: (Time)Stamping Out The Competition
Authors: Aviv Yaish, Gilad Stern, Aviv Zohar
In: Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'23)
π Received the ACM CCS 2023 Distinguished Paper Award
π° Covered by International Business Times, CryptoSlate, CointelegraphDeFi@CCS'23The Vulnerable Nature of Decentralized Governance in DeFi
Authors: Maya Dotan, Aviv Yaish, Hsin-Chu Yin, Eytan Tsytkin, Aviv Zohar
In: Proceedings of the 2023 Workshop on Decentralized Finance and Security (DeFi@CCS'23)2023Airdrops: Giving Money Away is Harder than it Seems
Authors: Johnnatan Messias, Aviv Yaish, Benjamin Livshits
π Industry collaboration with Matter LabsAFT'23Correct Cryptocurrency ASIC Pricing: Are Miners Overpaying?
Authors: Aviv Yaish, Aviv Zohar
In: Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT'23)EC'22Blockchain Stretching & Squeezing: Manipulating Time For Your Best Interest
Authors: Aviv Yaish, Saar Tochner, Aviv Zohar
In: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'22)
π Awarded an Ethereum Foundation bounty
Grants
2025Columbia Business School Digital Future Initiative Grant. A Theory of Staking (PI)2025Ethereum Foundation Grant. A Cryptographic Cookbook for Mechanism Designers (PI)2025Ethereum Foundation Grant. A Theory of Staking (PI)2023Ethereum Foundation Grant. DoS Implications of Censorship (PI)2023Ethereum Foundation Grant. Quantitative Analysis of Censorship (Co-PI)
Funding, Honors & Awards
2025Named one of the Hebrew University's 40 Under 40 Young Leaders2025Rochester Institute of Technology's Future Faculty Career Exploration program2025Named one of the CBER Forum's Rising Stars of '252025Edge Esmeralda scholarship2024The 4th Annual CBER Conference's Best Paper Award2024Chaincode Labs' Research Workshop travel grant2024Two papers selected for the last stage of the CSAW'24 Applied Research Competition (ARC)2024ACM EC24 travel funding2023Named one of the CBER Forum's Top PhD Graduates of '23β'242023Flashbots company's bounty2023Ethereum Foundation's bounty2023ACM CCS23 Distinguished Paper Award2023AFT23 travel funding2023ACM EC23 travel funding2023ACM CCS23 travel grant2023Austria-Israel Academic Network Innsbruck (AIANI) fellowship2023ACM CCS23 iMentor workshop travel funding2023The Hebrew University's Diversity Unit's September travel grant for outstanding PhDs2023The Hebrew University's Diversity Unit's March travel grant for outstanding PhDs2022Vaad Edat Hasfaradim's scholarship2022The Hebrew University's Authority for Research Students' travel grant2021The Hebrew University's award for excellence in teaching2021Ethereum Foundation bounty (awarded, did not collect)2020Ranked 9th out of 110 teaching staff in The Hebrew University's CS school2019Zcash Foundation's Zcon1 travel scholarship2018Merit-based Ze'ev Jabotinsky 4-year fellowship for direct-to-PhD students2018The Hebrew University's Dean prize2018The Hebrew University's Rector prize, for ranking first in M.Sc. class2016First place at the Hebrew University's Machine Learning hackathon2013The Hebrew University's Amirim Science excellence scholarship2007Ranked in the 99th percentile in Israel's SAT equivalent (psychometric exam)
Teaching
2017β2024Lecturer, System Introduction (67100), Hebrew University
Sole lecturer and creator of a MOOC on the commandline of UNIX-esque operating systems, taught 850 students/year.2017β2023Lecturer, From NAND to Tetris (67925/6), Hebrew University
Sole lecturer for a course on building a computer from the ground up, managed 7 TAs and taught +500 students/year.2021π Award for excellence in teaching from the Hebrew University's CS school2021Teaching Assistant, Metric Embedding Theory & Its Algorithmic Applications (67720), Hebrew University2020Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Cryptocurrencies (67513), Hebrew University
Co-created and co-taught a graduate course on cryptocurrencies, mentored 25 student projects.2020π Ranked 9th out of 110 teaching staff at the Hebrew University's CS school2017Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming (67125), Hebrew University2015β2017Teaching Assistant, Programming Workshop in C / C++ (67318/9, 67321/2), Hebrew University
Mentoring
2025βSofia Bonazzola, Yale University. Cryptography for Transaction Fee Mechanisms2026β2026Tom Shangguan, UC Santa Barbara. Authenticated Data Structures for Dynamic Workloads. Now graduate student, Brown University2026β2026Ruijie Wang, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Order Auctions with Private Position Preferences. Now graduate student, University of Michigan2025β2026Sarisht Wadhwa, Duke University. Perils of Parallelism: Transaction Fee Mechanisms under Execution Uncertainty. Now postdoc at UMich2025β2026Ignacy Nieweglowski, Staples High School. FISSION: Label Augmentation for Bot Detection2025β2026Sen Yang, Yale University. Insecurity Through Obscurity: Veiled Vulnerabilities in Closed-Source Contracts2024β2025Wenhao Wang, Yale University. Proophi: A ZKP Market Mechanism2024β2025Lulu Zhou, Yale University. Proophi: A ZKP Market Mechanism. Now researcher at Eigen Labs2024β2024Joel van der Boom, Hebrew University. Data-Driven Analysis of Governance2022β2023Nimrod Rak, Hebrew University High School (Leyada). Simulating Distributed Systems Using Real Clients2022β2022Eytan Tsytkin, Hebrew University. PanoptiToken: Deanonymizing Distributed System Users2021β2022Imri Paran, Hebrew University. An Exploration of Bitcoin's Attack Surface
Service
Organization
2027Chair: The 6th International Workshop on Cryptoasset Analytics (CAAW'27)2026Co-organizer: CBER 3rd Crafting the Cryptoeconomy Conference2026Co-organizer: CBER 6th Annual Conference2026Chair: The 5th International Workshop on Cryptoasset Analytics (CAAW'26)2025Co-organizer: CBER 2nd Crafting the Cryptoeconomy Conference2025Co-organizer: CBER 5th Annual Conference2025Co-organizer: Yale Symposium on Privacy, Accountability, Verification and Economics of Blockchain Systems (PAVE'25)2024Co-organizer: CBER 1st Crafting the Cryptoeconomy Conference2024Co-organizer: ACM EC'24 Tutorial on Transaction Fee Mechanism Design
Program Committees
2027AAAI2026ACM EC, ACM CCS, IEEE S&P, Tokenomics, DΒ², DeFi@FC, ACM DeFi@CCS, Easy Peasy@EC, MARBLE, AAAI2025ACM EC, ACM WWW, ACM DeFi@CCS, TLDR, SAGT, AFT, CAAW@FC, FC2024ACM EC, ACM WWW, ACM DeFi@CCS, MARBLE, AFT2023ACM DeFi@CCS
Reviewing & Refereeing
2026Econometrica, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Quantitative Finance, Information Systems Research2025Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, Information Systems Research2024Management Science, Mathematics of Operations Research, Transactions on Economics and Computation, ACM-SIAM SODA2023ACM CCS, ACM EC, ACM WWW, ACM-SIAM SODA, DeFi@FC, FC, WEIS2022ACM WWW, IEEE S&P
Invited Grant Proposal Reviewer
2026Israel Science Foundation (ISF)
Departmental Service
2025β2026Organizer: Yale's Applied Cryptography Seminar2025β2026Mentor: Yale's Undergraduate Mentoring Initiative (YUMI)2025Organizer: Yale's Faculty-Postdoc Mentoring Program2025Organizer: Yale Symposium on Privacy, Accountability, Verification and Economics of Blockchain Systems (PAVE'25)
Talks
- Title: Inequality in the Age of Pseudonymity
2026Invited: IC3 Blockchain Camp2026Invited: Frontiers in DeFi 20262026Invited: University of Michigan, Foundation of Distributed Consensus and Blockchain (CSE 598, Winter 2026)2026The 5th Workshop on Decentralized Finance (DeFi@FC26)
- Title: Deconstructing and Rebuilding Trust in Decentralized Economies
2026Invited: Tel Aviv University, Coller School of Management2026Invited: Weizmann Institute of Science, Foundations of Computer Science Seminar2026Invited: Bar Ilan University, Cryptography Seminar2026Invited: Hebrew University, School of Computer Science and Engineering2026Invited: Technion, Faculty of Computer Science2026Invited: Technion, Faculty of Electrical & Computer Engineering2026Invited: Tel Aviv University, School of Computer Science2026Invited: Georgia Tech, School of Cybersecurity and Privacy2026Invited: NTU Singapore, College of Computing and Data Science (CCDS) and Nanyang Business School (NBS)2026Invited: Tel Aviv University, School of Electrical & Computer Engineering2025Invited: University of Chicago Booth School of Business2025Invited: Yale University's CS/OR/Econ Theory Lunch2025Invited: Duke University's Blockchain Group2025Invited: Complexity Science Hub Vienna2025Invited: RIT's Future Faculty Career Exploration
- Title: Transaction Fee Mechanisms Robust to Welfare-Increasing Collusion
2025Invited: Yale's Computer Science and Economics Day
- Title: Platform Building With Fake Consumers: On Double Dippers and Airdrop Farmers
2026The 5th Workshop on Decentralized Finance (DeFi@FC26)2024The Blockchain Lab Seminar at NYU Stern School of Business
- Title: Transaction Fee Mechanisms: Theory & Practice
2025Invited: CBER Forum's Rising Stars of Cryptoeconomics2024Invited: Yale's Applied Cryptography Seminar2024Invited: Decentralised Science (DeSci) Seminar at the University of Sydney2024Invited (event canceled): Young Researcher Workshop on Economics and Computation (YoungEC24)2024Invited: Collider VC
- Title: Barriers to Collusion-resistant Transaction Fee Mechanisms
2024Invited: The 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting (INFORMS'24)
- Title: Discrete & Bayesian Transaction Fee Mechanisms
2024The 5th International Conference on Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy (MARBLE'24)
- Title: CrudiTEE: A Stick-and-Carrot Approach to Building Trustworthy Cryptocurrency Wallets with TEEs
2024The 6th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT'24)
- Title: Incentives in the Ether: Practical Cryptocurrency Economics & Security
2025Invited: The Technion's Blockchain Seminar2024The ACM on Web Conference (WWW'24)2024The ACM on Web Conference Promo (WWW'24)2024The Hebrew University's Distributed Algorithms, Networking and Security seminar
- Title: Speculative Denial-of-Service Attacks in Ethereum
2024The 21st Annual Cybersecurity Games & Conference Applied Research Competition (CSAW ARC'24)2024The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIXSEC'24)2023Invited: Yale University's CS seminar2023Invited: Syracuse University's security seminar2023Invited: The CBER Forum's PhD Symposium2023Tokenomics'23 - 5th International Conference on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols
- Title: Suboptimality in DeFi
2024Science of Blockchain Conference (SBC24)2024The 4th Annual Crypto and Blockchain Economics Research (CBER) Conference2024Invited: UCSB-ECON DeFi seminar2023Invited: Science of Decentralized Financial Stability2022Invited: Schloss Dagstuhl seminar 22421 Security of DeFi Technologies
- Title: Greedy Transaction Fee Mechanisms for (Non-)myopic Miners
2023The 12th Annual Conference of the Israeli Chapter of the Game Theory Society (IGTC'23)2022The Technion's Industrial Engineering and Management Day (IEM22)
- Title: Uncle Maker: (Time)Stamping Out The Competition
2024Invited: The Hebrew University's EconCS seminar2023The 30th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'23)2023Invited: Princeton's Mechanism Design for Cryptocurrencies seminar2023Invited: Innsbruck University's Computer Science Department's seminar2022Invited: The Hebrew University's Distributed Algorithms, Networking, and Security seminar2022The Crypto Economics Security Conference (CESC'22)2022Invited: The Federmann Cybersecurity Center's Retreat
- Title: Blockchain Stretching & Squeezing: Manipulating Time For Your Best Interest
2024Invited: The Hebrew University's seminar on the Border of Economics and Computation2023Invited: Innsbruck University's Security and Privacy lab2022Invited: Chaincode Labs' Research seminar2022The 23rd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'22)
- Title: Correct Cryptocurrency ASIC Pricing: Are Miners Overpaying?
2023The 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT'23)2022The Crypto Economics Security Conference (CESC'22)2021Invited: First Israeli Blockchain Research Day2019Invited: The Hebrew University's Cryptocurrencies seminar
Selected Media Coverage
2024Blockworks: "What would it cost me to break Ethereum?"2023CoinMarketCap: "A Look Back in Time: Ethereum"2022International Business Times: "F2Pool Boss Talks About Suspected Foul Play In Ethereum Mining System"2022CryptoSlate: "Researchers say they discovered consensus level attack on Ethereum - miners cheating the system to earn more"2022Cointelegraph: "F2Pool co-founder responds to allegations it's cheating the Ethereum POW system"