Jianyu Niu

Jianyu Niu

Research Associate of Computer Science & Engineering Department, Southern University of Science and Technology

Short Bios

I am currently a research assistant professor at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), working with Prof. Yinqian Zhang. I received my Ph.D. degree from The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Sep. 2021, under the supervision of Prof. Chen Feng.

[Opening] I am looking for self-motivated students (1-2 Master students) to start in fall 2025 at SUSTech

Research

My research fields include blockchain, distributed systems, and confidential computing. Below are some research projects.

Incentive and BFT Consensus Analysis: This project applies stochastic processes to analyze blockchains’ incentive design and BFT consensus algorithms. Related works include Ethereum (selfish mining, ICDCS’19), Bitcoin-NG (selfish mining, Performance’20), chained HotStuff (evaluation framework, INFOCOM’21), and Crystal (transparent mining protocol, TDSC’22).

BFT Consensus at Scale: This project aims to design scalable, simple, and secure BFT consensus. Related works include EBFT (the simplest BFT consensus, Arxiv, Homepage), Fast-HotStuff (robust chained BFT, TDSC’23), Stratus (shared mempool, ICDE’23), and Ladon (multi-BFT consensus, EuroSys’25).

Distributed Confidential Computing: This project explores integrations of confidential computing and various distributed computing techniques like blockchains and Federated Learning. Related works include Engraft (confidential consensus, CCS’22), and Narrator/Narrator-Pro (rollback-resilient systems, CCS’22/TDSC’24).

News

  • (2024/07)[Paper] Our work, Ladon, a high-performance multi-BFT protocol has been accepted to EuroSys’25.
  • (2024/03)[Paper] Our work, Narrator-Pro (an extension to Narrator), has been accepted to TDSC.
  • (2024/03)[Service] I am invited to serve on the technical program committee of IEEE GBC’24.
  • (2024/01)[Service] I am invited to serve on the technical program committee of ACM CCS’24.
  • (2023/08)[Paper] Our work, Fast-HotStuff, has been accepted to TDSC, respectively.
  • (2023/02)[Paper] Our work, SodsBC, has been accepted to TDSC.
  • (2022/10)[Paper] Our paper, “Crystal: Enhancing Blockchain Mining Transparency with Quorum Certificate”, has been accepted to TDSC.
  • (2022/08)[Paper] Our work, Narrator, has been accepted to CCS 2022.
  • (2022/08)[Paper] Our paper, “ENGRAFT: Enclave-guarded Raft on Byzantine Faulty Nodes”, has been accepted to CCS 2022.
  • (2022/08)[Paper] Our paper, “Scaling Blockchain Consensus via a Robust Shared Mempool”, has been accepted to ICDE 2023.
  • (2022/04)[Paper] Our paper, “When Power-of-d-Choices Meets Priority”, has been accepted to IWQoS 2022.
  • (2021/12)[Paper] Our paper, “Publish or Perish: Defending Withholding Attack in Dfinity Consensus”, has been selected as the best paper in MSN 2021.

Preprints

  1. Analysis of Nakamoto Consensus, Revisited
    Jianyu Niu, Chen Feng, Hoang Dau, Yu-Chih Huang, Jingge Zhu
    [Paper] [Selected as “Paper of the Week” (Issue #31) by ZK Capital]
  2. EBFT: Simplifying BFT Consensus Through Egalitarianism
    Jianyu Niu, Runchao Han, Shengqi Liu, Fangyu Gai, Ivan Beschastnikh, Yinqian Zhang, Chen Feng
    [One variant used in VeChain] [Paper] [Previous version selected as reading list by Stanford EE374]
  3. An Empirical Study on Ethereum Private Transactions and the Security Implications [Paper]
    Xingyu Lyu, Mengya Zhang, Xiaokuan Zhang, Jianyu Niu, Yinqian Zhang, Zhiqiang Lin
  4. KLOTSKI: Towards Consensus Enabled Collaborative Vehicles in Intelligent Transportation
    Yuanhang Zhou, Shubo Peng, Hanzheng Lyu, Fei Tong, Chengqiang Huang, Jianyu Niu, in submission.
  5. MERCURY: Practical Cross-Chain Exchange via Trusted Hardware
    Xiaoqing Wen, Quanbi Feng, Jianyu Niu, Yinqian Zhang, Chen Feng, in submission.

Conference Publications (*corresponding author, _ supervised students)

  1. [EuroSys’25] Ladon: High-Performance Multi-BFT Consensus via Dynamic Global Ordering
    Hanzheng Lyu, Shaokang Xie, Jianyu Niu*, Chen Feng, Yinqian Zhang, Ivan Beschastnikh
    European Conference on Computer Systems, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Apr. 2025.
  2. [ICMC’24] SoK: AI-Powered Security Analysis of Smart Contract
    Shuo Yang, Jianyu Niu, Yinqian Zhang
    International Conference on Meta Computing, Qingdao, China, Jun. 2024.
  3. [FORTE’24] Formally Verifying a Rollback-Prevention Protocol for TEEs
    Weili Wang, Jianyu Niu, Michael K. Reiter, Yinqian Zhang
    International Conference on Formal Techniques for Distributed Objects, Components, and Systems.
  4. [SEED’24] SoK: Opportunities for Accelerating Multi-Party Computation via Trusted Hardware
    Tong Liu, Zhen Huang, Jiaao Li, Jianyu Niu, Guoxing Chen, Yinqian Zhang
    International Symposium on Secure and Private Execution Environment Design.
  5. [SecureComm’23] Byzantine Protocols with Asymptotically Optimal Communication Complexity
    Hanzheng Lyu, Shaokang Xie, Jianyu Niu, Chen Feng
    EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks.
  6. [ICDE’23] Scaling Blockchain Consensus via a Robust Shared Mempool
    Fangyu Gai, Jianyu Niu*, Ivan Beschastnikh, Chen Feng, Sheng Wang
    IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering.
  7. [CCS’22] Narrator: Secure and Practical State Continuity for Trusted Execution in the Cloud
    Jianyu Niu, Wei Peng, Xiaokuan Zhang, Yinqian Zhang
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.
  8. [CCS’22] ENGRAFT: Enclave-guarded Raft on Byzantine Faulty Nodes
    Weili Wang, Sen Deng, Jianyu Niu, Michael K. Reiter, Yinqian Zhang
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.
  9. [IWQoS’22] When Power-of-d-Choices Meets Priority
    Jianyu Niu, Chunpu Wang, Hong Xu, Chen Feng
    IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service, Virtual, Jun. 2022.
  10. [MSN’21] Publish or Perish: Defending Withholding Attack in Dfinity Consensus (Best Paper Award)
    Hanzheng Lyu, Jianyu Niu, Fangyu Gai, Chen Feng
    IEEE International Conference on Mobility, Sensing and Networking, Virtual, Dec. 2021.
  11. [ICDCS’21] Dissecting the Performance of Chained-BFT
    Fangyu Gai, Ali Farahbakhsh, Jianyu Niu, Chen Feng, Ivan Beschastnikh, Hao Duan
    IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Virtual, Jul. 2021.
  12. [INFOCOM’21] On the Performance of Pipelined HotStuff [Blogs]
    Jianyu Niu, Fangyu Gai, Mohammad Mussadiq Jalalzai, Chen Feng
    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, Virtual, May. 2021.
  13. [Performance’20] Incentive Analysis of Bitcoin-NG, Revisited
    Jianyu Niu, Ziyu Wang, Fangyu Gai, Chen Feng
    International Symposium on Computer Performance, Modeling, Measurements and Evaluation, Virtual, Nov. 2020.
  14. [ICDCS’19] Selfish Mining in Ethereum
    Jianyu Niu, Chen Feng
    IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Dallas, Texas, Jun. 2019.

Journal Publications

  1. [TDSC] Ensuring State Continuity for Confidential Computing: A Blockchain-based Approach
    Wei Peng, Xiang Li, Jianyu Niu*, Xiaokuan Zhang, Yinqian Zhang
    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2024.
  2. [TDSC] A Privacy-Preserving Incentive Mechanism for Mobile Crowdsensing based on Blockchain
    Fei Tong, Yuanhang Zhou, Kaiming Wang, Guang Cheng, Jianyu Niu, Shibo He
    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2024.
  3. [TDSC] Fast-Hotstuff: A Fast and Resilient Hotstuff Protocol
    Mohammad Jalalzai, Jianyu Niu, Chen Feng, Fangyu Gai
    [Paper] [Selected as reading list by Stanford EE374] [Used in Deso and Zilliqa 2.0]
    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2023.
  4. [IoTJ] A Secure Sidechain for Decentralized Trading in Internet of Things
    Fangyu Gai , Jianyu Niu*, Mohammad M. Jalalzai , Seyed Ali Tabatabaee, Chen Feng
    IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2023.
  5. [TDSC] SodsBC: A Practical Post-quantum by Design Asynchronous Blockchain Framework
    Shlomi Dolev, Bingyong Guo, Jianyu Niu, Ziyu Wang (Alphabetically ordered)
    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2023.
  6. [TDSC] Crystal: Enhancing Blockchain Mining Transparency with Quorum Certificate
    Jianyu Niu, Fangyu Gai, Runchao Han, Ren Zhang, Yinqian Zhang, Chen Feng
    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2022.
  7. [TDSC] The Hermes BFT for Blockchains
    Mohammad Jalalzai, Chen Feng, Costas Busch, Golden, Richard III, Jianyu Niu
    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2021.
  8. [PEVA] Incentive Analysis of Bitcoin-NG, Revisited
    Jianyu Niu, Ziyu Wang, Fangyu Gai, Chen Feng
    Elsevier journal Performance Evaluation （Fast tracked from Performance’20), 2020.

Mentoring Students

Ph.D. Students:

  • Hanzheng Lyu (2021.9-, UBCO, co-advised with Prof. Chen Feng)
  • Xiaoqing Wen (2022.11-, UBCO, co-advised with Prof. Chen Feng)

Master Students:

  • Yining Tang (2022.11-, SUSTech, co-advised with Prof. Yinqian Zhang)
  • Tong Liu (2024.6-, SUSTech, co-advised with Prof. Yinqian Zhang)
  • Quanbi Feng (2024.9-, SUSTech)
  • Shubo Peng (2024.9-, SUSTech)

Research Assistants & Interns:

  • Yinan Mi (2023.9-)
  • Hongyan Sun (2024.4-2024.6)

Undergraduate Students (Thesis):

  • Shaokang Xie (2022.6-2024.6, next position: PhD student at UC Davis)
  • Quanbi Feng (2022.9-2024.6, next position: Master student at SUSTech)
  • Shubo Peng (2022.9-2024.6, next position: Master student at SUSTech)
  • Shengqi Liu (2023.1-2024.6, next position: Master student at UIUC)
  • Hang Huang (2023.3-2024.6, next position: Huawei 2012 Lab)

Visting Students:

  • Yuanhang Zhou (2023.6-2023.10, Master student at SEU, next position: PhD student at UW)
  • Shuo Yang (2023.10-2024.8, Master student at CUHK, next position: PhD student at CityU)

Professional Activities

Program Committee Member

  • IEEE Global Blockchain Conference (GBC) 2024
  • ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2024
  • International Conference on Mobility, Sensing and Networking (MSN) 2021

Journal & Conference Reviewer

  • IEEE Communications Letters (CL), Exemplary Reviewers (2019), 2019.
  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2024.
  • IEEE Transactions on Computer (TOC), 2023.
  • IEEE Network, 2023.
  • IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.
  • Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS), 2024.
  • International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS), 2024.

Last updated: 2024/07.