During his PhD studies, Nikolaj Ignatieff Schwartzbach researched how to use blockchain technology to trade goods and services without a trusted intermediary. Such a system potentially serves as a decentralized alternative to Amazon, eBay or DBA. Nikolaj Ignatieff Schwartzbach analysed a system that uses carefully designed payments to incentivise the participants to behave honestly, in such a way that cheating is provably not profitable.
The new research findings contribute to understanding of incentives in blockchain-based systems and provides a number of new tools to design and analyse such systems.

The PhD study was completed at Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Aarhus University.

This summary was prepared by the PhD student.

Time: Tuesday, 26 September 2023 at 13:00
Place: Building 5342, room Ada-333, Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N.
Title of PhD thesis: Smart Contracts and Rationality
Contact information: Nikolaj Ignatieff Schwartzbach, e-mail: nikolaj@ignatieff.io, tel.: +45 29281163
 

Members of the assessment committee:
Professor Rafael Pass, Chair of Cryptography and Information Security, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Professor Giuseppe Persiano, Department of Computer Science, University of Salerno, Italy

Professor Claudio Orlandi (chair), Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark

Main supervisor:
Professor Ivan Bjerre Damgård, Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark

Language: The PhD dissertation will be defended in English

The defence is public.
The PhD thesis is available for reading at the Graduate School of Natural Sciences/GSNS,

Jens Baggesens Vej 53, building 5221, 8200 Aarhus N.