CV

Education

  • 2019 - 2024 Ph.D. (direct track) in Computer Science, Hebrew University. Advisor: Prof. Aviv Zohar
  • 2016 - 2018 MS.c. in Computer Science, Hebrew University. Advisor: Prof. Aviv Zohar
    🏆 Received the rector prize for ranking first in MS.c. class
  • 2013 - 2016 BS.c. in Computer Science, Hebrew University

Research Experience

  • 2024 - 2024 Postdoctoral Associate. Yale University. Hosts: Profs. Fan Zhang, Ben Fisch, Charalampos Papamanthou, Zhong Shao
  • 2023 - 2024 Visiting Researcher. University of Innsbruck, Austria. Host: Prof. Rainer Böhme
  • 2023 - 2024 Research Consultant. Matter Labs. Host: Prof. Benjamin Livshits
  • 2023 - 2023 Research Associate. Matter Labs. Host: Prof. Benjamin Livshits

Papers

Proceedings

  1. USENIXSEC’24 Speculative Denial-of-Service Attacks in Ethereum
    Authors: Aviv Yaish, Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Aviv Zohar, Arthur Gervais
    In: Proceedings of the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIXSEC’24) A*
    🏆 Awarded a Flashbots bounty
    🏆 Awarded an Ethereum Foundation bounty
    🏆 Ranked 63rd in MLSEC’s Normalized Top-100 Security Papers list
    đź“° Covered by Blockworks
  2. EC’24 Barriers to Collusion-resistant Transaction Fee Mechanisms
    Authors: Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish
    In: Proceedings of the 25th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC’24) A*
  3. MARBLE’24 Discrete & Bayesian Transaction Fee Mechanisms
    Authors: Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish
    In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy (MARBLE’24)
  4. WWW’24 Blockchain Censorship
    Authors: Toni Wahrstatter, Jens Ernstberger, Aviv Yaish, Liyi Zhou, Kaihua Qin, Taro Tsuchiya, Sebastian Steinhorst, Nicholas Cristin, Davor Svetinovic, Mikolaj Barczentewicz, Arthur Gervais
    In: Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2024 (WWW’24) A*
  5. WWW’24 Incentives in the Ether: Practical Cryptocurrency Economics & Security
    Authors: Aviv Yaish
    In: Companion Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2024 (WWW’24)
  6. CCS’23 Uncle Maker: (Time)Stamping Out The Competition
    Authors: Aviv Yaish, Gilad Stern, Aviv Zohar
    In: Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS’23) A*
    🏆 Received the ACM CCS 2023 Distinguished Paper award
    đź“° Covered by International Business Times, CryptoSlate, Cointelegraph
  7. DeFi@CCS’23 The Vulnerable Nature of Decentralized Governance in DeFi
    Authors: Maya Dotan, Aviv Yaish, Hsin-Chu Yin, Eytan Tsytkin, Aviv Zohar
    In: Proceedings of the 2023 Workshop on Decentralized Finance and Security (DeFi@CCS’23)
  8. AFT’23 Correct Cryptocurrency ASIC Pricing: Are Miners Overpaying?
    Authors: Aviv Yaish, Aviv Zohar
    In: Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT’23)
  9. EC’22 Blockchain Stretching & Squeezing: Manipulating Time For Your Best Interest
    Authors: Aviv Yaish, Saar Tochner, Aviv Zohar
    In: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC’22) A*
    🏆 Awarded an Ethereum Foundation bounty

Conference Papers

  1. SBC’24 Suboptimality in DeFi
    Authors: Aviv Yaish, Maya Dotan, Kaihua Qin, Aviv Zohar, Arthur Gervais
    In: The Science of Blockchain Conference 2024 (SBC’24) Acceptance rate: 14%
    🏆 Received the 4th Annual Crypto and Blockchain Economics Research (CBER) Conference’s best paper award
  2. IGTC’23 Greedy Transaction Fee Mechanisms for (Non-)myopic Miners
    Authors: Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish
    In: The 12th Annual Conference of the Israeli Chapter of the Game Theory Society (IGTC’23)

Preprints

  1. 2024 Strategic Vote Timing in Elections With Public Tallies
    Authors: Aviv Yaish, Svetlana Abramova, Rainer Böhme
  2. 2024 Competitive Revenue Extraction from Time-Discounted Transactions
    Authors: Yotam Gafni, Aviv Yaish
  3. 2024 Mechanism Design for ZK-Rollup Prover Markets
    Authors: Wenhao Wang, Lulu Zhou, Aviv Yaish, Fan Zhang, Ben Fisch, Benjamin Livshits
  4. 2024 TierDrop: Harnessing Airdrop Farmers for User Growth
    Authors: Aviv Yaish, Benjamin Livshits
  5. 2023 Airdrops: Giving Money Away is Harder than it Seems
    Authors: Johnnatan Messias*, Aviv Yaish*, Benjamin Livshits (*: equal contribution)

Grants

Honors & Awards

  • 2024 Two papers selected for the last stage of the CSAW’24 Applied Research Competition (ARC)
  • 2024 ACM EC24 student travel funding
  • 2024 The 4th Annual CBER Conference’s best paper award
  • 2023 Named one of the CBER Forum’s top PhD Graduates of 23-24
  • 2023 Melabev’s certificate of appreciation for outstanding volunteer services
  • 2023 ACM CCS23 distinguished paper award
  • 2023 Flashbots company’s bounty
  • 2023 Ethereum Foundation’s bounty
  • 2023 Austria-Israel Academic Network Innsbruck (AIANI) fellowship
  • 2023 AFT23 student travel funding
  • 2023 ACM EC23 student travel funding
  • 2023 ACM CCS23 travel grant
  • 2023 ACM CCS23 iMentor workshop travel funding
  • 2023 The Hebrew University’s Diversity Unit’s September travel grant for outstanding PhDs
  • 2023 The Hebrew University’s Diversity Unit’s March travel grant for outstanding PhDs
  • 2023 Devconnect academic travel grant (awarded, did not collect)
  • 2022 Vaad Edat Hasfaradim’s scholarship
  • 2022 The Hebrew University’s Authority for Research Students’ travel grant
  • 2021 The Hebrew University’s award for excellence in teaching
  • 2021 Ethereum Foundation bounty (awarded, did not collect)
  • 2020 Ranked 9th out of 111 teaching staff in The Hebrew University’s CS school
  • 2019 Zcash Foundation’s Zcon1 travel scholarship
  • 2018 Merit-based Ze’ev Jabotinsky 4-year fellowship for direct-to-PhD students (460K NIS)
  • 2018 The Hebrew University’s Dean prize
  • 2018 The Hebrew University’s Rector prize, for ranking first in MS.c. class
  • 2016 First place at the Hebrew University’s Machine Learning hackathon
  • 2013 The Hebrew University’s Amirim Science excellence scholarship
  • 2007 Ranked in the 99th percentile in Israel’s SAT equivalent (psychometric exam)

Teaching

  • 2017 - 2024 Lecturer. System Introduction (67100), Hebrew University
    Sole lecturer and creator of a MOOC on the commandline of UNIX-esque operating systems, taught 850 students/year.
  • 2017 - 2023 Lecturer. From NAND to Tetris (67925/6), Hebrew University
    Sole lecturer for a course on building a computer from the ground up, managed 7 TAs and taught +500 students/year.
  • 🏆 2021 Award for excellence in teaching from the Hebrew University’s CS school
  • 🏆 2020 Ranked 9th out of 111 teaching staff at the Hebrew University’s CS school
  • 2020 Teaching Assistant. Introduction to Cryptocurrencies (67513), Hebrew University
    Co-created and co-taught with Prof. Aviv Zohar a graduate course on cryptocurrencies, mentored 25 student projects.

Undergraduate Project Supervision

  • 2024 - 2024 Joel van der Boom. Hebrew University. Title: Data-Driven Analysis of Blockchain Governance
  • 2022 - 2023 Nimrod Rak. Hebrew University. Title: Simulating Cryptocurrency Networks Using Real Clients
  • 2022 - 2022 Eytan Tsytkin. Hebrew University. Title: PanoptiToken: De-Anonymization of Cryptocurrency Users
  • 2021 - 2022 Imri Paran. Hebrew University. Title: An Exploration of Bitcoin’s Attack Surface

Academic Service

  • 2024 Organizer. CBER CtCe
  • 2024 Organizer. ACM EC’24 Tutorial on Transaction Fee Mechanism Design
  • 2024 Journal referee. ACM TEAC, INFORMS MOR
  • 2024 Program committee. ACM EC, AFT, MARBLE, ACM DeFi@CCS, FC, CAAW
  • 2023 Program committee. ACM DeFi@CCS
  • 2023 Reviewer. ACM CCS, ACM EC, ACM WWW, ACM-SIAM SODA, FC, FC DeFi, WEIS
  • 2022 Reviewer. ACM WWW, ACM-SIAM SODA, IEEE S&P
  • 2020 Reviewer. ACM AFT

Talks

Community Service

  • 2020 - 2022 Volunteer. The Melabev NPO
    Volunteered with elders with dementia at the Israeli Museum once weekly, called elders twice weekly, translated documents.
    🏆 Received a certificate of appreciation for outstanding volunteer services