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The Web3 Scholars Conference (WSC) is a research‑driven forum that prioritizes technical depth and innovative Web3 research. In line with the broader Web3 Scholars vision, WSC focuses on technical and organizational innovations across the blockchain ecosystem and invites leading researchers to curate and select the most technically rigorous talks.
WSC aims to drive innovation within the Web3 community and enhance collaboration among scholars, researchers, and practitioners. Through carefully curated talks, rich networking, and interactive breakout sessions, the conference seeks to foster a vibrant, inclusive research community and to anchor a world‑class hub for Web3 scholarship in Asia, catalyzing breakthroughs that shape the next generation of decentralized protocols, applications, and digital public goods from Asia to the world.
Previous conference talks are available here: WSC 2023, WSC 2024, WSC 2025
Conference Date: April 23, 2026
Location: Hong Kong, China
Thursday, Apr. 23, 2026
12:00 – 12:15
Welcome to WSC 2026
12:15 - 12:45
Keynote
12:45 - 13:05
B-Privacy: Defining and Enforcing Privacy in Weighted Voting
——
Patrick McCorry, Researcher, Arbitrum Foundation
13:05 - 13:25
Keynote
Session 1: Smart Contract Attacks, MEV, and Infrastructure
14:00 - 14:15
Beyond Guesswork: LLM Driven Semantic Distillation to Fuzz and Exploit Smart Contracts
——
Ziqiao Kong (Nanyang Technological University); Wanxu Xia (Beihang University); Borui Li (Jilin University); Yi Lu (Movebit); Pan Li (Bitslab); Yang Liu (Nanyang Technological University)
14:15 - 14:30
TxRay: Agentic Postmortem of Live Blockchain Attacks
——
Ziyue Wang (independent); Jiangshan Yu (The University of Sydney); Kaihua Qin (University of Warwick); Dawn Song (UC Berkeley); Arthur Gervais (University College London); Liyi Zhou (University of Sydney)
14:30 - 14:45
More to Extract: Discovering MEV by Token Contract Analysis
——
Jiaqi Chen, Yuzhe Tang (Syracuse University); Yue Duan (Singapore Management University)
14:45 - 15:00
Understanding and Mitigating Denial-of-Service Risk on Block Builders
——
Yuzhe Tang, Wanning Ding (Syracuse University); Yibo Wang (University of Wyoming); Jiaqi Chen (Syracuse University); Taesoo Kim (Georgia Institute of Technology and Microsoft)
15:00 - 15:15
Break
Session 2: Blockchain Systems and Cryptography
15:15 - 15:30
ZK verification
——
Pascal Berrang (University of Birmingham)
15:30 - 15:45
SoK: Understanding zk SNARKs: The Gap Between Research and Practice
——
Junkai Liang (Peking University); Daqi Hu (Peking University); Pengfei Wu (Singapore Management University,); Yunbo Yang (East China Normal University); Qingni Shen (Peking University); Zhonghai Wu (Peking University)
15:45 - 16:00
PRIME: Efficient Algorithm for Token Graph Routing Problem
——
Haotian Xu (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)); Yuqing Zhu (Nanyang Technological University); Yuming Huang (National University of Singapore); Jing Tang (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
Session 3: Governance, Economics and Regulation
16:00 - 16:15
My Biases against Ethereum's P2P Network, Ledger Model, and PBS Architecture
——
Ren Zhang (Cryptape Co. Ltd. and Nervos)
A combined presentation of three research papers examining Ethereum across network, ledger, and block building layers:
A Place for Everyone vs Everyone in its Place: Measuring and Attacking the Ethereum Global Network
Chenyu Li (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences); Ren Zhang (Cryptape and Nervos); Xiaorui Gong (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Beneath the Surface: A Dive into UTxO and Account Models
Ren Zhang (Cryptape and Nervos); Zhichun Lu (University of Sydney); Yunwen Liu (KU Leuven); Jiangshan Yu (University of Sydney)
Order Flow Exclusivity and Value Extraction Mechanism: An Analysis of Ethereum Builder Centralization
Ao Zhang (Tsinghua University); Yunwen Liu (KU Leuven); Ren Zhang (Cryptape and Nervos); Yingdi Shan (Tsinghua University); Yongwei Wu (Tsinghua University)
16:15 - 16:30
Evasion Under Blockchain Sanctions
——
Endong Liu (University of Birmingham); Mark Ryan (University of Birmingham); Liyi Zhou (University of Sydney); Pascal Berrang (University of Birmingham)
16:30 - 16:45
Law and Order without a Sheriff
——
Shuyang Tang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University); Sherman S. M. Chow (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Key Dates
Talk submission deadline: Feb 20 (AoE)
Final acceptance notification: Mar 6 (AoE)
Conference date: Apr 23
Submission Server
https://wsc26.hotcrp.com/u/0/
Submission Instructions
Each talk submission should include:
An abstract (up to 250 words) summarizing the work.
A description of the key technical contribution (up to 250 words).
An explanation of why this will make an interesting talk for WSC (up to 250 words), including its relevance and potential impact.
A paper in PDF form (preprint, working draft, or published version).
(Optional) Information on previous acceptance at a conference or workshop.
(Optional) Links to previous talks on this work (e.g., videos or slides).
(Optional) Any previous reviews received (e.g., from conferences or journals).
Submission Policy
Submissions must present original work and accurately acknowledge all prior and related research; work previously accepted or published elsewhere is welcome, as WSC does not have formal proceedings.
We do not accept talks whose primary focus is token price prediction, trading signals, or investment advice, in order to maintain a research‑oriented, non‑financial‑advice program.
At least one author of each accepted submission is expected to attend the conference in person and present the talk on site.
Review and Conflict of Interest Policy
Authors must report in the submission site any conflicts with program committee (PC) members. A conflict exists if an author has the same affiliation as a PC member, has ever acted as their PhD supervisor or been supervised by them, has a close personal relationship with them, or has been co‑authors on a paper within the past two years. PC members will not review, read the reviews of, or participate in discussions of submissions they are conflicted with; submissions conflicted with both PC chairs will be handled by a designated “conflict chair.” Reviewers will primarily evaluate whether the submission will make an interesting and technically strong talk for WSC. They are expected only to briefly check that the paper is consistent with the stated key technical contribution and are not required to read the paper in full. Submissions may be anonymous at the authors’ discretion; if authors choose anonymity, the PDF should omit names and affiliations, but all conflicts must still be fully and accurately reported in the submission site.
Topics of Interest
We welcome technically deep Web3 research and systems work, including but not limited to:
Core protocols and infrastructure (consensus, networking, scalability, data availability).
Cryptography, security, and privacy (e.g., ZK, MPC, smart contract and protocol security).
Blockchain systems and scaling (L1/L2, rollups, interoperability, storage and state management).
Mechanism design and on‑chain markets (protocol economics, MEV, agentic payments, stablecoins, DeFi primitives; excluding token price prediction and trading‑signal work).
Identity, governance, applications, and public goods (DAOs, wallets, developer tooling, public goods funding, and real‑world impact).
AI and blockchain (AI‑native protocols, on‑chain agents, AI‑driven tools for security, analysis, and user experience).
Security, abuse, and forensics in Web3 ecosystems (fraud detection, phishing and scams, transaction graph analysis, monitoring, and incident response).
Empirical, usability, and policy studies of Web3 systems (measurements, user behavior, legal and regulatory aspects, CBDC and digital payments).
Organizing Committee
Audrey Tang, DRK Lab
Jiangshan Yu, The University of Sydney
Liyi Zhou, The University of Sydney
Shyam Sridhar, Ethereum Foundation
Program Chairs
Jiangshan Yu, The University of Sydney
Liyi Zhou, The University of Sydney
Program Committee
Andrew Lewis Pye, The London School of Economics and Political Science
Arthur Gervais, University College London
Daniel Xiapu Luo, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Deepak Maram, Mysten Labs
Fan Zhang, Yale University
Jeremy Clark, Concordia University
Jiaheng Zhang, National University of Singapore
Kaihua Qin, University of Warwick
Patrick McCorry, Arbitrum Foundation
Will Scott, Protocol Labs
Yajin Zhou, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and BlockSec
Yu Yu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
© Web3 Scholars 2023
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