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Date: Tue, Apr 29, 2025

Time: 4:15 PM - 6:15 PM

Local time: Timezone: (UTC+02:00) Central European Summer TimeDate: Apr 29 2025Time: 06:15 PM - 08:15 PM

Location: KOL-E-18, University of Zürich, Rämistrasse 74, 8006, Zürich

Website: https://www.meetup.com/uzh-blockchain-center/events/307161167/

UZH Blockchain Center Lecture Series – Fortifying Decentralized Financial Systems: A Perspective on Wallet Privacy and Cross-Chain Sandwiching

UZH Blockchain Center Lecture Series - Fortifying Decentralized Financial Systems

Join UZH Blockchain Center for an insightful lecture on “Fortifying Decentralized Financial Systems” with Dr. Christof Ferreira Torres, a leading voice in blockchain privacy and security.

🔹 Abstract:
In recent years, modern blockchains like Ethereum have seen a surge in adoption, largely due to their ability to support decentralized finance (DeFi)—a new class of open, permissionless financial tools accessible to anyone. The security of DeFi hinges on both the robustness of smart contracts and the order in which transactions are processed, while its privacy is closely tied to protections offered by user wallets. In this talk, we’ll begin with a brief overview of the blockchain architecture, then delve into the privacy implications of Web3 wallets and how cross-chain interoperability can give rise to exploitative financial behavior, such as cross-chain sandwich attacks. In the first part, we’ll examine how wallets can unintentionally expose user addresses to third parties and how they are increasingly being used to track users across the web. In the second part, we’ll analyze how asymmetries between Ethereum and its Layer-2 rollups create opportunities for malicious actors to exploit bridges and perform cross-chain sandwiching—a form of predatory price manipulation once thought limited to single-chain environments.

🔹 About the Speaker:
Christof Ferreira Torres is currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon, and a researcher at INESC-ID, where he is a member of the Distributed, Parallel and Secure Systems group. His research lies at the intersection of program analysis and software security, with a focus on improving the privacy and security aspects of blockchain systems. Before joining IST, he was a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich, where he was part of the Secure & Trustworthy Systems group. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2022 from the University of Luxembourg and the Technical University of Munich. His Ph.D. thesis focuses on the Automated Security Assessment and Improvement of Smart Contracts and has been awarded the Excellent Doctoral Thesis Award by the University of Luxembourg as well as Ripple’s UBRI Impact Award.

📬 Join us for this insightful session as we explore how to better protect users and protocols in an increasingly interconnected DeFi landscape.

📅 Tuesday, April 29, 2025
🕔 Time: 6:15 PM – 8:15 PM CEST
📍 KOL-E-18, University of Zürich
Rämistrasse 74, 8006 Zürich | Online via Zoom

✨ UZH Blockchain Center is a group for the activities of the Competence Center on Blockchain by the University of Zurich.

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