I am a Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in Cyber Security in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Manchester. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Imperial College London, where I also completed my PhD in Computing. Before that, I obtained both my Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Beihang University, China.
My research focuses on security, privacy, and trust in open and distributed systems. I work on building secure and privacy-preserving infrastructures for collaboration in settings where participants may be decentralized, rational, or untrusted. This spans distributed systems (e.g., blockchain), applied cryptography, and emerging AI and multi-agent systems, including empirical measurement, attack analysis, and secure protocol design.
My current research interests include:
- Security and privacy in distributed and decentralized systems
- Applied cryptography, including classical and post-quantum solutions
- Security, privacy, and trust in collaborative and agentic AI systems
Open positions. I welcome prospective PhD students, research interns, and visiting researchers with interests in security and privacy, applied cryptography, distributed systems, blockchain, and trustworthy AI. I am particularly interested in students excited about rigorous research at the intersection of systems, security, and collaborative / agentic AI. If you would like to work with me, please email your CV and a brief note on your background, interests, and motivation.
For PhD applications, please also refer to the Department of Computer Science doctoral research programme page for application guidelines and funding opportunities.
You can reach me at zhipeng[dot]wang0x01[at]gmail[dot]com or zhipeng[dot]wang[at]manchester[dot]ac[dot]uk.
Selected Publications
Full publication list can be found at Google Scholar.
[Preprint] Five Attacks on x402 Agentic Payment Protocol.
Zelin Li, Qin Wang, Zhipeng Wang.
Preprint.[Preprint] Can Trustless Agents Be Trusted? An Empirical Study of the ERC-8004 Decentralized AI Agent Ecosystem.
Xihan Xiong, Zelin Li, Wei Wei, Qin Wang, William Knottenbelt, Zhipeng Wang.
Preprint.[NDSS 2027] Inscription in Limbo: BRC20 Pinning Attack.
Minfeng Qi, Qin Wang, Zhipeng Wang, Lin Zhong, Tianqing Zhu, Shiping Chen, William Knottenbelt.
Accepted at the Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2027.[USENIX Security 2026] Lighthouse: Single-Server Secure Aggregation with $O(1)$ Server-Committee Communication at Scale.
Sanjam Garg, Alireza Kavousi, Dimitris Kolonelos, Erkan Tairi, Zhipeng Wang.
Accepted at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium.[SatML 2026] SoK: Blockchain-Based Decentralized AI (DeAI).
Elizabeth Lui, Rui Sun, Vatsal Shah, Xihan Xiong, Jiahao Sun, Davide Crapis, William Knottenbelt, Zhipeng Wang.
Accepted at IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning.[USENIX Security 2025] TockOwl: Asynchronous Consensus with Fault and Network Adaptability.
Minghang Li, Qianhong Wu, Zhipeng Wang, Bo Qin, Bohang Wei, Hang Ruan, Shihong Xiong, Zhenyang Ding.
The 34th USENIX Security Symposium.[CT-RSA 2025] DSKE: Digital Signatures with Key Extraction.
Zhipeng Wang, Orestis Alpos, Alireza Kavousi, Harry W. H. Wong, Sze Yiu Chau, Duc V. Le, Christian Cachin.
The Cryptographers’ Track at RSA Conference 2025.[TIFS 2025] TockCuckoo: Two-phase BFT with Linearity and Responsiveness.
Minghang Li, Qianhong Wu, Yupeng Zhang, Zhipeng Wang, Bo Qin, Xuecheng Lin, Willy Susilo.
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security.[TAI 2024] Defending Against Poisoning Attacks in Federated Learning with Blockchain.
Nanqing Dong*, Zhipeng Wang*, Jiahao Sun, Michael Kampffmeyer, William Knottenbelt, Eric Xing.
IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence 2024.
* denotes equal contribution.[FC 2024] A Transaction-Level Model for Blockchain Privacy.
François-Xavier Wicht, Zhipeng Wang, Duc V. Le, Christian Cachin.
Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2024.[Euro S&P 2024] SoK: Public Randomness.
Alireza Kavousi, Zhipeng Wang, Philipp Jovanovic.
IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy 2024.[WWW 2023] On How Zero-Knowledge Proof Blockchain Mixers Improve, and Worsen User Privacy.
Zhipeng Wang, Stefanos Chaliasos, Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Lifeng Gao, Pascal Berrang, Ben Livshits, Arthur Gervais.
The ACM Web Conference 2023.[AFT 2023] Pay Less for Your Privacy: Towards Cost-Effective On-Chain Mixers.
Zhipeng Wang, Marko Cirkovic, Duc V. Le, William Knottenbelt, Christian Cachin.
The International Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies 2023.[S&P 2023] SoK: Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Attacks.
Liyi Zhou, Xihan Xiong, Jens Ernstberger, Stefanos Chaliasos, Zhipeng Wang, Ye Wang, Kaihua Qin, Roger Wattenhofer, Dawn Song, Arthur Gervais.
The 44th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.[FC 2022] Speculative Multipliers on DeFi: Quantifying On-Chain Leverage Risks.
Zhipeng Wang, Kaihua Qin, Duc Vu Minh, and Arthur Gervais.
Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2022.
Academic Service
Conference and workshop program committees
- 2027: NDSS, USENIX Security, AsiaCCS, FC
- 2026: CCS, ESORICS, FC, ACSAC, KDD, WWW, ICBC, AIBlock
- 2025: FC, ICBC, GBC, EISA, CRWA’25@Asiacrypt 2025, ZKDAPPS@ICBC
- 2024: ICBC, CCS’24 Artifact Evaluation, ZKDAPPS@ICBC
Journal reviewing
- IEEE: TIFS, TDSC, TNNLS, TSC, TBD, TCCN, TII
- ACM: TOSEM
- Others: JNCA, Financial Innovation, Blockchain, Computer Networks
Teaching
Security and Privacy in Artificial Intelligence, 2025/26 2nd Semester, The University of Manchester (Lecturer)
Cryptography Engineering, Spring Term 2024, Imperial College London (Teaching Assistant)
Principles of Distributed Ledgers, Spring Term 2023, Imperial College London (Teaching Assistant)
Awards and Grants
- Ethereum Foundation Academic Grant 2024: Building Practical and Secure Blockchain-Based AI
- Best Application Award @IEEE GBC 2025
- Best Student Paper Award Candidate @IEEE ICBC 2025
- Best Paper Award Candidate @IEEE ICBC 2024
Selected Invited and Conference Talks
Five Attacks on x402 Agentic Payment Protocol @Emerging Fault Lines in Global Tech Governance. Manchester, UK, 06/2026
DSKE: Digital Signatures with Key Extraction @UK Crypto Day Sep 2025. Manchester, UK, 09/2025
Migration to Post-Quantum Secure Blockchains @RITICS Showcase 2025. London, UK, 01/2025
How Can Blockchain Make AI More Decentralized? @UCL Distributed Ledger Technologies Seminar. London, UK, 11/2024
Pay Less for Your Privacy: Towards Cost-Effective On-Chain Mixers @AFT 2023. Princeton, USA, 10/2023
Blockchain Transaction Censorship: (In)secure and (In)efficient? @MARBLE 2023. London, UK, 07/2023
On the Usage, Privacy, and Censorship of On-Chain Mixers @Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis Annual Crypto Showcasing Event. London, UK, 06/2023
On How ZKP-based Blockchain Mixers Improve, and Worsen User Privacy @The 2023 ACM Web Conference. Austin, USA, 05/2023
Speculative Multipliers on DeFi: Quantifying On-Chain Leverage Risks @FC 2022. Grenada, 05/2022
Defending Against Poisoning Attacks in FL With Blockchain @Ethereum AI Workshop. Rome, Italy, 10/2024
zkFL: ZKP-based Gradient Aggregation for Federated Learning @Decentralised Machine Learning London Night. London, UK, 10/2023