Co-located with ACSAC 2025
Monday, December 8, 2025 – Alohilani Resort, Honolulu
07:30 - 08:30 Breakfast (Alohilani I)
08:30 – 09:00 Registration and Welcome Coffee
09:00 – 09:15 Opening Remarks
Hans Walter Behrens (Plasma) — Welcome and workshop overview
09:15 – 10:15 Keynote Address
Andrea Cerone (0xCODE)
Lessons Learned From Building a Consensus Protocol from Scratch
Explores the practical challenges of transforming theoretical consensus protocols into production blockchain systems.
10:15 – 10:30 Coffee Break
10:30 – 12:00 Paper Session I (Session Chair: Dragan Boscovic)
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch Break
13:00 – 14:30 Paper Session II (Session Chair: Hans Walter Behrens)
14:00 – 14:45 Invited Speaker
Edmundo López Bóbeda (Idiomatic Software)
Leveraging Cryptography-as-a-Service for Secure Bridging in the UTXO Context
14:45 – 15:00 Coffee Break
15:00 – 16:30 Expert Panel Discussion
Topic: The Quantum–AI Threat to Decentralization: Securing Web3’s Future
Moderator: Dragan Boscovic (ASU)
Panelists: Hans Walter Behrens (Plasma), Raja Jayaraman (NMSU), Andrea Cerone (0xCODE), Edmundo López Bobeda (Idiomatic Software)
Discussion on post-quantum cryptography transitions, AI-driven exploitation, and autonomous agents in DAO governance.
16:30 – 17:00 Closing Remarks and Networking
Summary of key discussions and future collaboration opportunities.
Andrea Cerone is a blockchain protocol engineer and researcher (Ph.D.), specializing in consensus protocols across both EVM-compatible and non-EVM blockchains. He has worked with major L1s and L2s, often leading the design and implementation of mission-critical components. He is currently a Staff Research Scientist working for the Plasma blockchain. His research interests are in blockchain technologies, distributed computing and concurrency theory.
Raja Jayaraman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA. Dr. Jayaraman’s current research interests focus on a multidisciplinary approach to engineering problems applying systems engineering, process optimization, operational excellence, and digital transformation to characterize, model, and solve complex systems. His research targets applications in supply chains, multi-modal logistics, maintenance planning, and healthcare delivery. Dr. Jayaraman has over 16 years of experience in higher education institutions spanning India, the USA, and the UAE. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in supply chain and logistics, optimization, stochastic models, systems engineering, and quality management.
With over 130 journal publications in the domains of engineering, technology, and business his research contributions have appeared in top-tier journals including Annals of Operations Research, IISE Transactions, Computers & Industrial Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, IEEE Engineering Management Review, Production Planning & Control, Energy Policy, Technology in Society, Knowledge-Based Systems, Expert Systems with Applications, Journal of Cleaner Production, Technology Forecasting and Social Change, Engineering Management Journal, and others.
Dr. Jayaraman was recognized in 2022 and 2023 as Stanford University World’s Top 2% scientists and most influential researcher under the subject categories: Operations Research, Artificial Intelligence, and Information and Communication Technologies. Dr. Jayaraman is a senior member of the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineering (IISE) and a member of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (Informs). He currently serves as Associate Editor, International Journal of Quality and Reliability and on the editorial board of several journals.
Hans Walter Behrens is Chief Technology Officer at Plasma, where he leads research and development on high-performance blockchain consensus and secure decentralized infrastructure. His work focuses on distributed systems, adversarial resilience, and blockchain scalability. Before joining industry, he conducted research in systems cyber-defense at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Arizona State University.
Dr. Behrens’ academic publications span venues such as the IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, the IEEE International Conference on Communications, and the Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment. His research integrates theoretical advances in consensus and security with practical systems design for resilient, scalable distributed computing.
Edmundo López Bóbeda is a core contributor to Plasma’s protocol and systems architecture, focusing on secure, scalable decentralized infrastructure. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Geneva. His academic background centers on formal verification, symbolic model checking, set- and term-rewriting methods, and decision-diagram techniques, with applications to distributed systems and fault-tolerant design.
His current interests include verification-guided blockchain systems, interoperability, and security engineering. He has contributed to peer-reviewed work on verification and complex systems, and applies these methods to the design and analysis of decentralized protocols. He is also the founder of Idiomatic Software, an engineering practice focused on distributed systems, where he leads projects across interoperability, applied cryptography, and performance-critical services, including systems design and implementation in Rust and Scala.
Dragan Boscovic is a clinical professor at the W. P. Carey Business School of Arizona State University, Director of Blockchain Research L at ASU and the Research Director at the Arizona Blockchain Applied Research Center. He also serves as the Associate Director of the Center for AI and Data Analytics for Business and Society.
Dr. Boscovic is the CEO and Founder of VizLore Group, an Arizona-based tech company that specializes in IoT, data analytics, blockchain distributed computing, and digital asset management solutions.
He holds a Ph.D. in Numerical Electromagnetic Modeling from the University of Bath, earned in 1991. With over 35 years of international experience in high-tech sectors across the UK, France, China, and the USA, Dr. Boscovic is adept at advancing data-driven technologies in a global context. He is known for his lateral thinking and extensive experience with diverse scientific methods and business practices. Dr. Boscovic holds 24 patents and has a strong record in developing strategies and leading projects in web3, ML/AI, and IoT technologies.