# Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias

> Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias leads distributed systems research at Mysten Labs / Sui. A researcher specializing in technology transfer, he connects academic research with the realities of building distributed systems that run in production.

Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias leads distributed systems research at Mysten Labs / Sui. His work spans research leadership and technology transfer: translating between academic research, protocol design, applied cryptography, and the engineering of distributed systems that run in production. Previously an Assistant Professor at IST Austria and, before that, a Research Scientist at Facebook / Meta. PhD in Computer Science from EPFL; MEng from the National Technical University of Athens.

## Expertise

Distributed systems research leadership, Technology transfer between academic research and distributed systems engineering, Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus, DAG-based consensus, Applied cryptography, Decentralized storage, Storage engines and data availability, Blockchain execution and scalability, Key and binary transparency, Distributed randomness, Translating research into deployed distributed systems, Threshold cryptography, Asynchronous distributed key generation, Access-controlled encrypted data sharing.

## Verified impact

- Consensus: co-author of ByzCoin, OmniLedger, Narwhal and Tusk, Bullshark, Mysticeti, and Sui Lutris; research adopted in Sui.
- Key and binary transparency: co-author of Parakeet, which informed WhatsApp's deployed key transparency system, and CHAINIAC, for transparent and verifiable software updates.
- Storage: co-author of Walrus (CCS 2026), Tidehunter (VLDB 2026), and Proof of Availability & Retrieval in a Modular Blockchain Architecture (FC 2023).
- Threshold cryptography: co-author of ADKG (CCS 2020), Practical ADKG (IEEE S&P 2022), practical high-threshold ADKG (USENIX Security 2023), and Calypso, and the randomness research underlying drand and Cloudflare's League of Entropy.

## Google Scholar statistics

As of 2026-10-26: 8,758 citations, h-index 32, i10-index 48. Since 2021: 7,199 citations, h-index 31, i10-index 47. Source: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7TOIlqkAAAAJ&hl=en). [Structured statistics](https://lefkok.github.io/scholar.json).

## Sources and machine-readable records

- [Students and mentorship](https://lefkok.github.io/mentorship/): Students, interns, and links to shared papers and preprints.
- [Mentorship data](https://lefkok.github.io/mentorship.json): Structured mentorship and shared research records.
- [Awards and honors](https://lefkok.github.io/awards/): Complete awards, fellowships, and academic recognition.
- [Awards data](https://lefkok.github.io/awards.json): Full structured awards record.
- [Professional profile](https://lefkok.github.io/profile.json): Current role, expertise, education, awards, contact and source links.
- [Research archive](https://lefkok.github.io/research.json): Complete paper titles, authors, venues, years, and original links.
- [Talks and authored writing](https://lefkok.github.io/media.json): Source links to recordings, talks, and articles.
- [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.gr/citations?user=7TOIlqkAAAAJ)
- [DBLP](https://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/k/Kokoris=Kogias:Eleftherios)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lefteris-kokoris/)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/LefKok)

## 2026 research

- [Thunderbolt: Concurrent Smart Contract Execution with Nonblocking Reconfiguration for Sharded DAGs](https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09409): EDBT 2026; Best Paper Runner-Up.
- [Remora: Scale-out Deterministic Execution for Smart Contracts](https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.02817): VLDB 2026.
- [Tidehunter: Large-Value Storage With Minimal Data Relocation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01873): VLDB 2026.
- [Walrus: An Efficient Decentralized Storage Network](https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05370): CCS 2026.
- [Sunfish: Reading Ledgers with Sparse Nodes](https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1680): SBC 2026; research presentation at SBC, as confirmed by the author.

## Contact

lefteris@mystenlabs.com

Last updated: 2026-10-26. Current leadership responsibility confirmed by Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias.

## Full research archive

### Thunderbolt: Concurrent Smart Contract Execution with Nonblocking Reconfiguration for Sharded DAGs

Junchao Chen, Alberto Sonnino, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Mohammad Sadoghi. EDBT 2026. Best Paper Runner-Up.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09409)

### Remora: Scale-out Deterministic Execution for Smart Contracts

Zhengqing Liu, Alberto Sonnino, Igor Zablotchi, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Marios Kogias. VLDB 2026.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.02817)

### Tidehunter: Large-Value Storage With Minimal Data Relocation

Andrey Chursin, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Alex Orlov, Alberto Sonnino, Igor Zablotchi. VLDB 2026. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01873)

### Walrus: An Efficient Decentralized Storage Network

George Danezis, Giacomo Giuliari, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Markus Legner, Jean-Pierre Smith, Alberto Sonnino, Karl Wüst. CCS 2026. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05370)

### Sunfish: Reading Ledgers with Sparse Nodes

Giulia Scaffino, Karl Wüst, Deepak Maram, Alberto Sonnino, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias. SBC 2026. Research presentation.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1680)

### Byzantine Consensus in the Random Asynchronous Model

George Danezis, Jovan Komatovic, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, Igor Zablotchi. DISC 2025. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09116)

### Securing Consensus from Long-Range Attacks through Collaboration

Junchao Chen, Suyash Gupta, Alberto Sonnino, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Mohammad Sadoghi. SRDS 2025.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.02325)

### Pilotfish: Distributed Execution for Scalable Blockchains

Quentin Kniep, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, Igor Zablotchi, Nuda Zhang. FC 2025. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.16292)

### Seahorse: Efficiently Mixing Encrypted and Normal Transactions

Ben Riva, Alberto Sonnino, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias. FC 2025.

[Original paper](https://fc25.ifca.ai/preproceedings/127.pdf)

### Anthemius: Efficient & Modular Block Assembly for Concurrent Execution

Ray Neiheiser, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias. FC 2025.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.10074)

### Mahi-Mahi: Low-Latency Asynchronous BFT DAG-Based Consensus

Philipp Jovanovic, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Bryan Kumara, Alberto Sonnino, Pasindu Tennage, Igor Zablotchi. ICDCS 2025. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08670)

### RACS-SADL: Robust and Understandable Randomized Consensus in the Cloud

Pasindu Tennage, Antoine Desjardins, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias. CLOUD 2025.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04183)

### Mysticeti: Reaching the Limits of Latency with Uncertified DAGs

Kushal Babel, Andrey Chursin, George Danezis, Anastasios Kichidis, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Arun Koshy, Alberto Sonnino, Mingwei Tian. NDSS 2025. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.14821)

### Sui Lutris: A Blockchain Combining Broadcast and Consensus

Sam Blackshear, Andrey Chursin, George Danezis, Anastasios Kichidis, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Xun Li, Mark Logan, Ashok Menon, Todd Nowacki, Alberto Sonnino, Brandon Williams, Lu Zhang. CCS 2024. Authors listed alphabetically. Distinguished Paper · CCS 2024.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.18042)

### HammerHead: Leader Reputation for Dynamic Scheduling

Giorgos Tsimos, Anastasios Kichidis, Alberto Sonnino, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias. ICDCS 2024.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12713)

### An Empirical Study of Consensus Protocols DoS Resilience

Giacomo Giuliari, Alberto Sonnino, Marc Frei, Fabio Streun, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Adrian Perrig. ASIACCS 2024.

[Original paper](https://netsec.ethz.ch/publications/papers/Consensus_DDoS_AsiaCCS_24.pdf)

### QuePaxa: Escaping the Tyranny of Timeouts in Consensus

Pasindu Tennage, Cristina Basescu, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Ewa Syta, Philipp Jovanovic, Vero Estrada-Galinanes, Bryan Ford. SOSP 2023.

[Original paper](https://bford.info/pub/os/quepaxa/quepaxa.pdf)

### Practical Asynchronous High-threshold Distributed Key Generation and Distributed Polynomial Sampling

Sourav Das, Zhuolun Xiang, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Ling Ren. USENIX Security 2023.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1389.pdf)

### Executing and Proving over Dirty Ledgers

Christos Stefo, Zhuolun Xiang, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias. FC 2023.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1554.pdf)

### Proof of Availability & Retrieval in a Modular Blockchain Architecture

Shir Cohen, Guy Goren, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, Alexander Spiegelman. FC 2023. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/455.pdf)

### Parakeet: Practical Key Transparency for End-to-End Encrypted Messaging

Harjasleen Malvai, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, Esha Ghosh, Ercan Oztürk, Kevin Lewi, Sean Lawlor. NDSS 2023.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/081.pdf)

### STROBE: Streaming Threshold Random Beacons

Donald Beaver, Kostas Chalkia, Mahimna Kelkar, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Kevin Lewi, Ladi de Naurois, Valeria Nikolaenko, Arnab Roy, Alberto Sonnino. AFT 2023.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1643)

### Divide and Scale: Formalization of Distributed Ledger Sharding Protocols

Georgia Avarikioti, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Antoine Desjardins, Roger Wattenhofer. SIROCCO 2023.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10434)

### Bullshark: DAG BFT Protocols Made Practical

Alexander Spiegelman, Neil Giridharan, Alberto Sonnino, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias. CCS 2022.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.05677)

### Narwhal and Tusk: A DAG-based Mempool and Efficient BFT Consensus

George Danezis, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, Alexander Spiegelman. EuroSys 2022. Authors listed alphabetically. Best Paper · EuroSys 2022.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.11827)

### Practical Asynchronous Distributed Key Generation

Sourav Das, Tom Yurek, Zhuolun Xiang, Andrew Miller, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Ling Ren. IEEE S&P 2022.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1591)

### Jolteon and Ditto: Network-Adaptive Efficient Consensus with Asynchronous Fallback

Rati Gelashvili, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, Alexander Spiegelman, Zhuolun Xiang. FC 2022. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://sonnino.com/papers/jolteon-and-ditto.pdf)

### Be Aware of Your Leaders

Shir Cohen, Rati Gelashvili, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Zekun Li, Dahlia Malkhi, Alberto Sonnino, Alexander Spiegelman. FC 2022. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://sonnino.com/papers/leader-reputation.pdf)

### Brief Announcement: Be Prepared When Network Goes Bad: An Asynchronous View-Change Protocol

Rati Gelashvili, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Alexander Spiegelman, Zhuolun Xiang. PODC 2021. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.03181)

### All You Need is DAG

Idit Keidar, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Oded Naor, Alexander Spiegelman. PODC 2021. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.08325)

### CALYPSO: Private Data Management for Decentralized Ledgers

Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Enis Ceyhun Alp, Linus Gasser, Philipp Jovanovic, Ewa Syta, Bryan Ford. VLDB 2021.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/209.pdf)

### Brick: Asynchronous State Channels

Georgia Avarikioti, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Roger Wattenhofer, Dionysis Zindros. FC 2021. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.11360)

### Sok: Communication across distributed ledgers

Alexei Zamyatin, Mustafa Al-Bassam, Dionysis Zindros, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, Aggelos Kiayias, William Knottenbelt. FC 2021.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1128)

### Asynchronous Distributed Key Generation for Computationally- Secure Randomness, Consensus, and Threshold Signatures.

Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Dahlia Malkhi, Alexander Spiegelman. CCS 2020.

[Original paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1015)

### Rethinking General-Purpose Decentralized Computing

Enis Ceyhun Alp*, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias*, Georgia Fragkouli, Bryan Ford. HotOS 2019.

[Original paper](https://bford.info/pub/os/protean-abs/)

### Channels: Horizontal Scaling and Confidentiality on Permissioned Blockchains

Elli Androulaki, Christian Cachin, Angelo De Caro, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias. ESORICS 2018. Authors listed alphabetically.

[Original paper](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-99073-6_6)

### Omniledger: A secure, scale-out, decentralized ledger via sharding

Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Philipp Jovanovic, Linus Gasser, Nicolas Gailly, Ewa Syta, Bryan Ford. IEEE S&P 2018.

[Original paper](https://csdl.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/sp/2018/4353/00/435301a583-abs.html)

### CHAINIAC: Proactive Software-Update Transparency via Collectively Signed Skipchains and Verified Builds

Kirill Nikitin, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Philipp Jovanovic, Nicolas Gailly, Linus Gasser, Justin Cappos, Bryan Ford. USENIX Security 2017.

[Original paper](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity17/sec17-nikitin.pdf)

### Scalable bias-resistant distributed randomness

Ewa Syta, Philipp Jovanovic, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Nicolas Gailly, Linus Gasser, Ismail Khoffi, Michael J. Fischer, Bryan Ford. IEEE S&P 2017.

[Original paper](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7958592/)

### Proof-of-Personhood: Redemocratizing Permissionless Cryptocurrencies

Maria Borge Chavez, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Philipp Jovanovic, Linus Gasser, Nicolas Gailly, Bryan Ford. EuroS&PW 2017.

[Original paper](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7966966)

### Managing identities using blockchains and CoSi

Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Linus Gasser, Ismail Khoffi, Philipp Jovanovic, Nicolas Gailly, Bryan Ford. HotPETs 2016.

[Original paper](https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/220210/files/1_Managing_identities_bryan_ford_etc.pdf)

### TRM-SIoT: A scalable hybrid trust & reputation model for the social internet of things

Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Orfefs Voutyras, Theodora Varvarigou. ETFA 2016.

[Original paper](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7733612)

### Enhancing bitcoin security and performance with strong consistency via collective signing

Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Philipp Jovanovic, Nicolas Gailly, Ismail Khoffi, Linus Gasser, Bryan Ford. USENIX Security 2016.

[Original paper](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity16/sec16_paper_kokoris-kogias.pdf)

## Authored writing

- [Lutris: Safe Composition of Broadcast and Consensus](https://decentralizedthoughts.github.io/2026-05-20-sui-lutris/), Decentralized Thoughts, 2026-05-20.
- [Mysticeti: Revolutionizing Consensus on Sui](https://decentralizedthoughts.github.io/2026-03-06-mysticeti-revolutionizing-consensus-on-sui/), Decentralized Thoughts, 2026-03-06.
- [Mysticeti v2: Faster and Lighter Sui Transaction Processing](https://www.sui.io/blog/mysticeti-v2-sui-consensus), Sui, 2025-11-06.
- [Understanding Blockchain Latency and Throughput](https://www.paradigm.xyz/writing/consensus-throughput), Paradigm, 2022-07-11.
- [Scaling Blockchains With Hierarchical Consensus](https://research.protocol.ai/blog/2022/scaling-blockchains-with-hierarchical-consensus/), Protocol Labs Research, 2022-03-03.

## Talks

- [Coding Techniques in Walrus for Massive Storage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2AGlgfcGQ0), Honest Majority by Common Prefix, 2026.
- [Walrus: An Efficient Decentralized Storage Network](https://www.corelab.ntua.gr/athecrypt2025/), Athens Cryptography Day, 2025.
- [Walrus: An Efficient Decentralized Storage Network](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkdRJlz5rLU), Protocol Berg v2 · Department of Decentralization, 2025.
- [Generating Randomness Under Asynchrony](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJWUfGnWekk), Randomness Summit, Tokyo, 2023.
- [The Sui Smart Contracts Platform](https://ic3research.org/2023-01-15-ic3-winter-retreat-2023/), IC3 Winter Retreat, 2023.
- [Building Practical and Modular Consensus with DAGs](https://www.corelab.ntua.gr/athecrypt2022/), Athens Cryptography Day, 2022.
- [Building Practical and Modular Consensus](https://acsd2022.ist.ac.at/speakers/), Austrian Computer Science Day · ISTA, 2022.
- [Narwhal and Tusk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7A_k8U0iWY), Personal channel, 2022.
- [Jolteon and Ditto: Network-Adaptive Efficient Consensus with Asynchronous Fallback](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMHOPzoGnYo), ConsensusDays 2021 · Protocol Labs, 2021.
- [Brick: Asynchronous Incentive-Compatible Payment Channels](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV_2KKvFVm8), Financial Cryptography and Data Security, 2021.
- [Bootstrapping Consensus and MPC in an Asynchronous Network](https://www.corelab.ntua.gr/athecrypt2021/), Athens Cryptography Day, 2021.
- [Asynchronous Distributed Key Generation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pJx-FCtQhc), Workshop on Real-World Decentralized Cryptography · Web3 Foundation, 2021.
- [Toward democratising secure decentralised computation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bun_AyEl6Lo), FOCODILE 2021 · DisCoTec, 2021.
- [Digital Trust and Decentralization](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftrXpSmwR0I), Research seminar, 2020.
- [Brick: Asynchronous Payment Channels](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qttQeYfvMGU), FOCODILE 2020, 2020.
- [Employing user-selected committees for scalability and confidentiality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-yz2kIkCVE), Theory and Practice of Blockchains, 2020.
- [Asynchronous Distributed Key Generation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YcEPGc5lK0), Simons Institute · Large-Scale Consensus and Blockchains, 2019.
- [Lefteris on Sharing Private Data over Blockchains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNvGBXplYPM), Bitcoin Wednesday, 2018.
- [Lefteris Explains Calypso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pBq87ff2xw), Bitcoin Wednesday, 2018.
- [OmniLedger: A Secure, Scale-Out, Decentralized Ledger via Sharding](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1pyaAZ7bj0), IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2018.
- [OmniLedger: A Secure, Scale-Out, Decentralized Ledger via Sharding](https://tokyo2018.scalingbitcoin.org/presentations), Scaling Bitcoin · Tokyo, 2018.
- [Scalable and Efficient Distributed Ledgers](https://zisc.ethz.ch/event/scalable-and-efficient-distributed-ledgers/), ZISC Seminar · ETH Zürich, 2018.
- [Scalable and Efficient Distributed Ledgers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZCe_ra2a8w), CESC 2017 · Blockchain at Berkeley, 2017.
- [Enhancing Bitcoin Security and Performance with Strong Consistency via Collective Signing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3V4ZXks0Vk), USENIX Security, 2016.