About Me

I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University, advised by Prof. Aniket Kate at FreedomLab. Previously, I obtained my Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Sun Yat-sen University.

My primary research interest is the consensus problem of distributed systems/blockchains. I am dedicated to developing scalable and secure consensus protocols toward supporting more emerging decentralized applications and mitigating new security issues, such as MEV.

I am on the 2026-2027 job market and am seeking research-oriented positions (faculty, postdoctoral, or research scientist roles).

Selected Publications

Five Minutes of DDoS Brings down Tor: DDoS Attacks on the Tor Directory Protocol and Mitigations PDF
Zhongtang Luo, Jianting Zhang, Akshat Neerati, and Aniket Kate
To appear at 21st ACM European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys), 2026.
Beluga: Block Synchronization for BFT Consensus Protocols Adopted by Sui PDF
(*random order*)
Jianting Zhang, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Tasos Kichidis, Arun Koshy, Mingwei Tian, Ilya Sergey, Alberto Sonnino
Preprint, 2025
Lifefin: Escaping Mempool Explosions in DAG-based BFT PDF
Jianting Zhang, Sen Yang, Alberto Sonnino, Sebastián Loza, Aniket Kate
Preprint, 2025
No Fish Is Too Big for Flash Boys! Frontrunning on DAG-based Blockchains PDF Code
Jianting Zhang, Aniket Kate
Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), 2025
The Science of Blockchain Conference (SBC), 2025.
The Latest in DeFi Research (TLDR), 2025.
Optimal Sharding for Scalable Blockchains with Deconstructed SMR Adopted by Supra PDF Code
Jianting Zhang, Zhongtang Luo, Raghavendra Ramesh, Aniket Kate
51st International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), 2025
Front-running Attack in Sharded Blockchains and Fair Cross-shard Consensus PDF
Jianting Zhang, Wuhui Chen, Sifu Luo, Tiantian Gong, Zicong Hong, Aniket Kate
Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2024
View Full Publication List

Experience

  • Research Intern, Mysten Labs (May 2025 - Aug 2025)
  • Research Intern, Alibaba DAMO Academy (May 2020 - Aug 2020)

Honors & Awards

  • ICPP 2020 Best Paper Award Runner-up
  • Graduate Student with Honors
  • 2020 National Scholarship for Graduate Students

Professional Service

Reviewer
  • Conference (external): AsiaCCS'26, IEEE SP (23, 24, 25), CCS (24, 25), ICDCS'25, FC (24, 25)
  • Journal: IEEE/ACM ToN, IEEE TSC, IEEE TIFS, ACM TOPS, ACM TOIT

Misc

In addition to research, I enjoy singing. My friends call me "Purdue's Eason Chan".