About me
I mainly work on Cryptography Research and Protocol Design in the FilOz team (part of the Protocol Labs Network), where my work is focused on improving the Filecoin protocol.
Before joining Protocol Labs in Fall 2018, I received my PhD in Cryptography from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, working at the IMDEA Software Institute under the supervision of Dario Fiore; during my PhD I spent a semester as Visiting PhD Student at City College of New York (hosted by Rosario Gennaro) and I also did some consultancy for Blockchain startups.
My PhD thesis “Cryptographic Techniques for the Security of Cloud and Blockchain Systems” can be found here.

Research Interests
My research focuses on both theoretical and practical aspects of Cryptography and Protocol Design and its applications to Web3.
Some of the topics I work on include:
- Proof of Space
- Decentralized Storage
- Commitment schemes and (zero-knowledge) proof systems.
- Homomorphic authentication.
- Foundations of cryptography.
The full list of my publications is available here.
Filecoin Development
I have been contributing to the development of Filecoin since 2018, in two main areas
Cryptography Research
- Theoretical design of Filecoin proofs and its transition from an academic paper to a production ready product. More details on the Filecoin Proof of Useful Space can be found here
Protocol Design
I contributed to the design of different protocol improvement of Filecoin, including
As well as to many others Filecoin Improvement Proposals (FIPs). The full list of Filecoin FIPs can be found here.
Patents
Subversion Resilient Attestation for Trusted Execution Environments.
US11361069B2 / EP3627367B1 · Issued Jun 14, 2022
Inventors: Claudio Soriente, Dario Fiore, Antonio Faonio, Luca Nizzardo.
Awards
- Best paper in IET information security award for the paper “Multi Key homomorphic Authenticators”, 2020.
- UPM Outstanding PhD thesis award, 2019.
- “Cum Laude” PhD Mention, 2019.
- International PhD mention, 2018.
Selected Talks and Presentations
- Invited Speaker: “Filecoin: From Proof of Space to Decentralized Storage”
CSIC, Madrid, 2022. Link
- Speaker: “Storage Metrics DAO”
CryptoEcon Day, 2022. Link
- Invited Speaker: “From Proof of Space blockchain to Decentralized Storage” CifrisChain Seminars, 2021. Link
- Invited Speaker: “Dottori di Ricerca in Azienda: tips and tricks”
Assolombarda, 2022, 2021 and 2020.
- Invited Lecturer: “Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies and Web3”
IE Business School, Madrid, 2019.
- Invited Speaker: “Bitcoin y más allá”
Codemotion Madrid, 2018. Link
- Invited Speaker: “Bitcoin and Beyond”
Blockchain and Crypto Values Conference, Milan, 2018
- Invited Speaker: “Fair Exchange over Bitcoin: Zero Knowledge Contingent Payments (and more)”
Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, 2018
- Panelist, “Bitcoin and Beyond”
Workshop “La moneta tra Stato e Mercato”, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, 2018. Link
- Invited Speaker: “Cryptography: Past, Present and Future Challenges”
IBM – Intesa Sanpaolo joint meeting, NYC, 2017
- Invited Speaker: “Cryptography & Business: State of the Art and Future (?) Challenges”
IBM Italia SpA, 2017
- Invited Speaker: “Multi Key Homomorphic Authenticators”
Cornell Tech Crypto Reading Group
- Speaker: “Multi Key Homomorphic Authenticators”
Asiacrypt 2016. Link - Speaker: “Programmable hash functions go private: Constructions and Applications to (Homomorphic) Signatures with Shorter Public Keys”
Crypto 2015.
Service
Program Committee Member
- 11th Conference on Security and Cryptography for Networks (SCN 2018)
External Reviewer
I served as external/sub reviewer for the following International Cryptography Conferences:
- CRYPTO 2015, 2021
- PKC 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
- EURO S&P 2016, 2017
- ASIACRYPT 2017
- AFRICACRYPT 2018
- PETS 2018
- IEEE Blockchain 2018
- CCS 2018, 2019
- IWSEC 2019
- Financial Crypto 2020
Reviewer
I served as reviewer for:
- IET Information Security: 2019
- Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing: 2018, twice
- ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS, formerly TISSEC): 2016, twice
- Springer (proposal evaluation): 2016
- Information and Computation: 2019
CV
My CV can be found here.
Programa Kit Digital Cofinanciado Por Los Fondos Next Generation (EU) Del Mecanismo De Recuperación Y Resilencia

