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 major research projects.

Analysis of blockchain incentive and consensus: This project applies stochastic processes to analyze decentralized incentive and BFT consensus designs. Related works include Ethereum (selfish mining, ICDCS’19), Bitcoin-NG (selfish mining, Performance’20), chained HotStuff (evaluation framework, INFOCOM’21/TDSC’25), Crystal (transparent mining protocol, TDSC’22), private transactions (ACSAC’24), chained BFT (Responsiveness, Democracy)

BFT consensus at scale: This project aims to design simple and scalable BFT systems. Related works include Hermes (structured transmission, TDSC’21), EBFT (extreme simplicity, Homepage), Fast-HotStuff (robust chained BFT, TDSC’23), Stratus (shared mempool, ICDE’23), and Ladon/Orthrus (multi-BFT consensus, EuroSys’25/Arxiv).

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), Narrator/Narrator-Pro (state continuity system, CCS’22/TDSC’24), Achilles (TEE-assisted BFT, EuroSys’25), Mercury/TeeRollup (Exchange/Layer 2), and Fides (TEE-assisted DAG).

News

  • (2025/01)[Paper] Our work, Achilles, an efficient TEE-assisted BFT protocol with rollback resilient recovery has been accepted to EuroSys’25.
  • (2024/11)[Service] I am invited to serve on the technical program committee of ACM/IFIP Middleware’25.
  • (2024/11)[Paper] Our work about side-channel attacks on KV cache sharing of multi-tenant LLM serving has been accepted to NDSS’25.
  • (2024/10)[Service] I am invited to serve on the technical program committee of ACM CCS’25.
  • (2024/08)[Service] I am invited to serve on the technical program committee of AsiaCCS’25.
  • (2024/07)[Paper] Our work, Ladon, a high-performance multi-BFT protocol has been accepted to EuroSys’25.
  • (2024/01)[Service] I am invited to serve on the technical program committee of ACM CCS’24.
  • (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.
  • (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 [Paper]
    Jianyu Niu, Runchao Han, Shengqi Liu, Fangyu Gai, Ivan Beschastnikh, Yinqian Zhang, Chen Feng
    [One variant used in VeChain] [Previous version selected as reading list by Stanford EE374]
  3. Mercury: Practical Cross-Chain Exchange via Trusted Hardware [Paper]
    Xiaoqing Wen, Quanbi Feng, Jianyu Niu*, Yinqian Zhang, Chen Feng
  4. TeeRollup: Efficient Rollup Design Using Heterogeneous TEE [Paper]
    Xiaoqing Wen, Quanbi Feng, Jianyu Niu*, Yinqian Zhang, Chen Feng
  5. Orthrus: Accelerating Multi-BFT Consensus through Concurrent Partial Ordering of Transactions [Paper]
    Hanzheng Lyu, Shaokang Xie, Jianyu Niu*, Mohammad Sadoghi, Ivan Beschastnikh, Yinqian Zhang, Chen Feng. in submission.
  6. Leader Rotation Is Not Enough: Scrutinizing Leadership Democracy of Chained BFT Consensus [Paper]
    Yining Tang, Runchao Han, Jianyu Niu*, Chen Feng, and Yinqian Zhang.
  7. Fides: Scalable Censorship-Resistant DAG Consensus via Trusted Components [Paper]
    Shaokang Xie, Dakai Kang, Hanzheng Lyu, Jianyu Niu, Mohammad Sadoghi.
  8. Unraveling Responsiveness of Chained BFT Consensus with Network Delay [Paper]
    Yining Tang, Qihang Luo, Runchao Han, Jianyu Niu*, Chen Feng, and Yinqian Zhang.

Selected Conference Publications (*corresponding author, _ supervised students)

  1. [EuroSys’25] Achilles: Efficient TEE-Assisted BFT Consensus via Rollback Resilient Recovery
    Jianyu Niu*, Xiaoqing Wen, Guanlong Wu, Shenqi Liu, Jiangshan Yu, Yinqian Zhang
    European Conference on Computer Systems, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Apr 2025.
  2. [NDSS’25] I Know What You Asked: Prompt Leakage via KV-Cache Sharing in Multi-Tenant LLM Serving
    Guanlong Wu, Zheng Zhang, Weili Wang, Jianyu Niu, Yao Zhang, Ye Wu, Yinqian Zhang
    The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, San Diego, California. Feb 2025.
  3. [EuroSys’25] Ladon: High-Performance Multi-BFT Consensus via Dynamic Global Ordering [Extended]
    Hanzheng Lyu, Shaokang Xie, Jianyu Niu*, Chen Feng, Yinqian Zhang, Ivan Beschastnikh
    European Conference on Computer Systems, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Apr 2025.
  4. [ACSAC’24] Breaking the Privacy Barrier: On the Feasibility of Reorganization Attacks on Ethereum Private Transaction
    Mengya Zhang, Xingyu Lyu, Jianyu Niu, Xiaokuan Zhang, Yinqian Zhang, and Zhiqiang Lin
    Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, December 2024.
  5. [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.
  6. [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.
  7. [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.
  8. [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.
  9. [INFOCOM’21] On the Performance of Pipelined HotStuff [Blogs]
    Jianyu Niu, Fangyu Gai, Mohammad M. Jalalzai, Chen Feng
    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, Virtual, May. 2021.
  10. [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.
  11. [ICDCS’19] Selfish Mining in Ethereum
    Jianyu Niu, Chen Feng
    IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Dallas, Texas, Jun. 2019.

Selected Journal Publications

  1. [TDSC] Chained HotStuff under Performance Attack
    Minjie Wang, Jianyu Niu*, Fangyu Gai, Mohammad M. Jalalzai, Yinqian Zhang, Chen Feng
    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2025.
  2. [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.
  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. [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.
  5. [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.

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)

Undergraduate Students (Thesis):

  • Qiyuan Huang (2024.9-)
  • Qihang Luo (2024.9-)
  • Dahui Li (2024.9-)
  • Shaokang Xie (2023.9-2024.6, next position: PhD at UC Davis)
  • Quanbi Feng (2023.9-2024.6, next position: MSc at SUSTech)
  • Shubo Peng (2023.9-2024.6, next position: MSc at SUSTech)
  • Hang Huang (2023.9-2024.6, next position: Huawei 2012 Lab)
  • Shengqi Liu (2023.9-2024.6, next position: MSc at UIUC)

Research Assistants & Interns:

  • Yinan Mi (2023.9-2024.10)
  • Hongyan Sun (2024.4-2024.6)

Visting Students:

  • Yuanhang Zhou (2023.6-2024.01, MSc at SEU, next position: PhD at HKBU)
  • Shuo Yang (2023.10-2024.8, MPhil at CUHK, next position: PhD at CityU)

Professional Activities

Program Committee Member

  • ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference (Middleware) 2025
  • ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2024, 2025
  • IEEE International Conference on Mobility, Sensing and Networking (MSN) 2021
  • ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS) 2025

Journal & Conference Reviewer

  • IEEE Network, 2023.
  • ELSP Blockchain, 2024.
  • IEEE Transactions on Computer (TC), 2023.
  • IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoTJ), 2024.
  • IEEE Communications Letters (CL), Exemplary Reviewers (2019), 2019.
  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2024.
  • 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: 2025/02.