During his PhD studies, Søren Eller Thomsen researched and devised protocols for how to effectively and securely spread a message in a hostile environment such as the public internet, where it cannot be guaranteed that a constant fraction of the parties follow a protocol, and participants may dynamically be overtaken by an adversary. Such message dissemination protocols are a core part of blockchain protocols, and any improvement to these directly thereby directly translates to an improvement of such combined protocols.

The new research findings, therefore, contribute to a solid theoretical foundation for the blockchain industry.

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 14 March 2023 at 9.30.
Place: Building 5342 Ada, room 333, Åbogade 34, 8200 Aarhus N.
Title of PhD thesis: Message Dissemination in the Nakamoto Era.

Contact information: Søren Eller Thomsen, e-mail: sethomsen@cs.au.dk.

Members of the assessment committee:
Professor Juan Garay, Department of Computer Engineering, Texas A & M University, United States.

Assistant professor Julian Loss, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany.

Professor Ira Assent (chair), Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Main supervisor:
Professor Jesper Buus Nielsen, Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Language: The PhD dissertation will be defended in English.

The defense 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.