{
  "schemaVersion": 1,
  "name": "Shashank Motepalli",
  "role": "Builder and researcher in distributed systems",
  "biography": "I build and study distributed systems, with a focus on coordination, decentralization, and economics. During my PhD at the University of Toronto, I researched blockchain consensus and reward mechanisms: how to measure and improve decentralization. Now, at Ekai Labs, I’m building B2B context infrastructure that turns private meeting notes into insights for the right partners, while preserving privacy. I’m also exploring compute markets.",
  "portrait": {
    "src": "./assets/photos/shashank-motepalli-960.webp",
    "sources": [
      {
        "src": "./assets/photos/shashank-motepalli-480.webp",
        "width": 480
      },
      {
        "src": "./assets/photos/shashank-motepalli-960.webp",
        "width": 960
      }
    ],
    "sizes": "(max-width: 680px) 156px, (max-width: 1000px) 290px, 353px",
    "alt": "Shashank Motepalli in graduation regalia.",
    "width": 960,
    "height": 1280
  },
  "focus": "Coordination, decentralization, and economics in distributed systems.",
  "links": {
    "email": "mailto:shashank.motepalli@gmail.com",
    "scholar": "https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sGuHIQgAAAAJ",
    "github": "https://github.com/sm86",
    "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/smotepalli",
    "x": "https://x.com/sh1sh1nk"
  },
  "education": {
    "degree": "PhD in Computer Engineering",
    "university": "University of Toronto",
    "department": "Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering",
    "dates": "September 2019 – April 2026",
    "defended": "13 January 2026",
    "advisor": "Hans-Arno Jacobsen",
    "researchGroup": "Middleware Systems Research Group",
    "committee": "Andreas Park, Andreas Veneris"
  },
  "thesis": {
    "title": "Decentralization in Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms: Quantification and Advancement",
    "url": "https://utoronto.scholaris.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/7c4ff69c-c295-4fcf-8a72-dbfd20e9a0a4/content",
    "researchQuestion": "How decentralized are blockchains, really?",
    "description": "I studied who holds power in blockchain consensus—and how to distribute it more broadly."
  },
  "scholarship": {
    "scope": "11 papers and preprints from the PhD chapter. Google Scholar contains the wider publication record.",
    "publications": [
      {
        "id": "gpos",
        "type": "journal",
        "topic": "geospatial",
        "year": "2026",
        "title": "GPoS: Geospatially-aware Proof of Stake",
        "authors": [
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Naman Garg",
          "Gengrui Zhang",
          "Hans-Arno Jacobsen"
        ],
        "venue": "ACM Transactions on the Web",
        "thesis": true,
        "result": "45% average reduction in GEC, a measure of geographic concentration, across five blockchains in the GPoS evaluation.",
        "note": "Online 2025 · journal issue 2026",
        "featured": true,
        "contribution": "Combines validator location and stake when assigning consensus voting power.",
        "summary": "Studies geographic concentration across five proof-of-stake networks and introduces a voting-power mechanism that incorporates geographic diversity. The evaluation examines decentralization and consensus performance.",
        "doi": "https://doi.org/10.1145/3774629",
        "preprint": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.02034"
      },
      {
        "id": "pos-decentralization",
        "type": "journal",
        "topic": "consensus",
        "year": "2025",
        "title": "Decentralization in PoS Blockchain Consensus: Quantification and Advancement",
        "authors": [
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Hans-Arno Jacobsen"
        ],
        "venue": "IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management",
        "thesis": true,
        "result": "Square-root and logarithmic stake weights improve decentralization metrics by 51% and 132% on average.",
        "note": "",
        "featured": true,
        "contribution": "Measures stake concentration and explores alternative ways to distribute validator voting power.",
        "summary": "Analyzes ten proof-of-stake blockchains using several decentralization metrics. Square-root and logarithmic stake-weighting models are evaluated as alternatives to proportional stake weighting.",
        "doi": "https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSM.2025.3561098",
        "preprint": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14351"
      },
      {
        "id": "tee-sequencers",
        "type": "conference",
        "topic": "layer2",
        "year": "2025",
        "title": "Where to Place Your TEE? In Search of a Censorship-Resilient Design for Rollup Sequencers",
        "authors": [
          "Luciano Freitas",
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Benjamin Livshits"
        ],
        "venue": "OPODIS 2025 · LIPIcs",
        "note": "",
        "featured": false,
        "contribution": "Explores where trusted execution environments fit in a rollup sequencer design that resists censorship.",
        "summary": null,
        "doi": "https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.27"
      },
      {
        "id": "stake-distribution",
        "type": "conference",
        "topic": "consensus",
        "year": "2024",
        "title": "How Does Stake Distribution Influence Consensus? Analyzing Blockchain Decentralization",
        "authors": [
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Hans-Arno Jacobsen"
        ],
        "venue": "IEEE ICBC",
        "thesis": true,
        "badge": "Best Paper Award candidate",
        "result": "Square-root stake weighting improves the Nakamoto coefficient by 101% for liveness and 80% for safety.",
        "note": "",
        "featured": false,
        "contribution": "Examines validator stake concentration and a square-root stake-weighting model.",
        "summary": null,
        "doi": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.13938"
      },
      {
        "id": "delay-towers",
        "type": "conference",
        "topic": "consensus",
        "year": "2024",
        "title": "Delay Towers to Bootstrap Blockchains",
        "authors": [
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Hans-Arno Jacobsen"
        ],
        "venue": "IEEE ICBC",
        "thesis": true,
        "note": "",
        "featured": false,
        "contribution": "Uses verifiable delay functions to support identity and Sybil resistance when bootstrapping a blockchain.",
        "summary": null,
        "doi": "https://doi.org/10.1109/ICBC59979.2024.10634426"
      },
      {
        "id": "bft-survey",
        "type": "journal",
        "topic": "consensus",
        "year": "2024",
        "title": "Reaching Consensus in the Byzantine Empire: A Comprehensive Review of BFT Consensus Algorithms",
        "authors": [
          "Gengrui Zhang",
          "Fei Pan",
          "Yunhao Mao",
          "Sofia Tijanic",
          "Michael Dang’ana",
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Shiquan Zhang",
          "Hans-Arno Jacobsen"
        ],
        "venue": "ACM Computing Surveys · 56(5)",
        "note": "",
        "featured": false,
        "contribution": "Compares Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus algorithms, their components, and their trade-offs.",
        "summary": null,
        "doi": "https://doi.org/10.1145/3636553",
        "preprint": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.03181"
      },
      {
        "id": "rollup-sequencers",
        "type": "preprint",
        "topic": "layer2",
        "year": "2023",
        "title": "SoK: Decentralized Sequencers for Rollups",
        "authors": [
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Luciano Freitas",
          "Benjamin Livshits"
        ],
        "venue": "arXiv · preprint",
        "thesis": true,
        "note": "",
        "featured": true,
        "contribution": "Organizes the properties and design choices of decentralized sequencers for Layer 2 rollups.",
        "summary": "Examines the centralization introduced by rollup sequencers, then outlines desirable properties and the components of decentralized alternatives. The work brings together design considerations and directions for further research.",
        "doi": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03616"
      },
      {
        "id": "geospatial-distribution",
        "type": "conference",
        "topic": "geospatial",
        "year": "2023",
        "title": "Analyzing Geospatial Distribution in Blockchains",
        "authors": [
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Hans-Arno Jacobsen"
        ],
        "venue": "IEEE DAPPS",
        "thesis": true,
        "badge": "18.5% acceptance rate",
        "result": "Distant “minority” validators miss performance requirements and can be mistaken for crash failures, then jailed or slashed.",
        "note": "",
        "featured": false,
        "contribution": "Studies how geographic distance can disadvantage validators and contribute to centralization.",
        "summary": null,
        "doi": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.17771"
      },
      {
        "id": "v-guard",
        "type": "preprint",
        "topic": "systems",
        "year": "2023",
        "title": "V-Guard: An Efficient Permissioned Blockchain for Achieving Consensus under Dynamic Memberships in V2X",
        "authors": [
          "Gengrui Zhang",
          "Yunhao Mao",
          "Shiquan Zhang",
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Fei Pan",
          "Hans-Arno Jacobsen"
        ],
        "venue": "arXiv · preprint",
        "note": "",
        "featured": false,
        "contribution": "Studies consensus for vehicular data when the set of participating vehicles changes.",
        "summary": null,
        "doi": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.06210"
      },
      {
        "id": "v2x",
        "type": "journal",
        "topic": "systems",
        "year": "2022",
        "title": "Blockchain for V2X: Applications and Architectures",
        "authors": [
          "James Meijers",
          "Panagiotis Michalopoulos",
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Gengrui Zhang",
          "Shiquan Zhang",
          "Andreas Veneris",
          "Hans-Arno Jacobsen"
        ],
        "venue": "IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology · 3, 193–209",
        "note": "",
        "featured": false,
        "contribution": "Reviews blockchain applications and architecture choices for vehicle-to-everything systems.",
        "summary": null,
        "doi": "https://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~veneris/22OJVT.pdf"
      },
      {
        "id": "evolutionary-rewards",
        "type": "conference",
        "topic": "consensus",
        "year": "2021",
        "title": "Reward Mechanism for Blockchains Using Evolutionary Game Theory",
        "authors": [
          "Shashank Motepalli",
          "Hans-Arno Jacobsen"
        ],
        "venue": "BRAINS",
        "thesis": true,
        "note": "",
        "featured": false,
        "contribution": "Models how validator rewards and penalties influence participation using evolutionary game theory.",
        "summary": null,
        "doi": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.05849"
      }
    ],
    "talks": [
      {
        "year": "2023",
        "title": "Analyzing Geospatial Distribution in Blockchains",
        "event": "IEEE International Conference on Decentralized Applications and Infrastructures",
        "shortEvent": "IEEE DAPPS",
        "location": "Athens, Greece",
        "url": "https://ieeedapps.com/",
        "linkLabel": "Conference website",
        "video": null
      },
      {
        "year": "2023",
        "title": "Unveiling Geospatial Centralization: A Hidden Threat to Blockchain Decentralization",
        "event": "The Blockchain Technology Symposium",
        "shortEvent": "Blockchain Technology Symposium",
        "location": "Virtual",
        "url": "https://bts23.encs.concordia.ca/program.php",
        "linkLabel": "Event program",
        "video": null
      },
      {
        "year": "2021",
        "title": "Reward Mechanism for Blockchains Using Evolutionary Game Theory",
        "event": "Conference on Blockchain Research and Applications for Innovative Networks and Services",
        "shortEvent": "BRAINS",
        "location": null,
        "url": "https://brains.dnac.org/2021/program-2/",
        "linkLabel": "Event program",
        "video": null
      }
    ],
    "fellowships": [
      {
        "name": "Edward S. Rogers Sr. Graduate Student Fellowship",
        "organization": "University of Toronto",
        "year": "2019–2023"
      },
      {
        "name": "Graduate Fellowship",
        "organization": "Schwartz Reisman Institute of Technology and Society",
        "year": "2021–2022"
      }
    ]
  },
  "teaching": [
    {
      "code": "ECE419",
      "name": "Distributed Computing",
      "role": "Teaching Assistant; Lab Head TA",
      "dates": "Winter 2020–2023",
      "description": "Teaching Assistant in Winter 2020; Lab Head TA in Winter 2021, 2022, and 2023."
    },
    {
      "code": "CSC301",
      "name": "Introduction to Software Engineering",
      "role": "Teaching Assistant; Head TA",
      "dates": "2021–2023",
      "description": "Teaching Assistant in Winter and Fall 2021; Head TA in Winter 2022 and 2023."
    },
    {
      "code": "CSC454",
      "name": "Business of Software",
      "role": "Teaching Assistant",
      "dates": "2022–2023",
      "description": "Winter 2022, Fall 2022, and Winter 2023."
    },
    {
      "code": "CSC207",
      "name": "Software Design",
      "role": "Teaching Assistant",
      "dates": "2020 & 2022",
      "description": "Fall 2020 and Summer 2022."
    },
    {
      "code": "ECE1785",
      "name": "Empirical Software Engineering",
      "role": "Teaching Assistant",
      "dates": "2022–2023",
      "description": "Winter 2022 and Winter 2023."
    },
    {
      "code": "ECE444",
      "name": "Software Engineering",
      "role": "Teaching Assistant",
      "dates": "Fall 2023",
      "description": null
    },
    {
      "code": "ECE496",
      "name": "Senior-year Design Projects",
      "role": "Co-supervisor",
      "dates": "2019–2023",
      "description": "Co-supervised undergraduate design projects in 2019–20, 2020–21, 2021–22, and 2022–23."
    }
  ],
  "service": {
    "id": "service",
    "label": "Community & service",
    "title": "ECEGSS President",
    "summary": "Led the transition to a virtual community for a society serving 700+ graduate students.",
    "dates": "September 2020–September 2021",
    "highlights": [
      "President of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate Students’ Society at the University of Toronto.",
      "Served on the UTGSU Board of Directors (2019–2021) and the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering Faculty Council (2020–2021)."
    ],
    "additional": "Facilitated Grad Step Up sessions for incoming international graduate students, covering healthcare, university resources, and communication (2020–2021)."
  },
  "professional": [
    {
      "name": "Movement Labs",
      "role": "Researcher",
      "dates": "January–August 2024",
      "description": "Wrote the white paper and designed the Movement network architecture. Contributed to early technical-team planning, hiring, partner management, and educational content.",
      "url": "https://movementlabs.xyz/"
    },
    {
      "name": "Matter Labs · zkSync",
      "role": "Research Intern",
      "dates": "August–October 2023",
      "description": "Researched decentralized sequencers for Layer 2 systems, with an emphasis on zk-rollups. Built consensus benchmarking tools with extensions for trusted execution environments.",
      "url": "https://matter-labs.io/"
    },
    {
      "name": "0L Network",
      "role": "Open-source contributor",
      "dates": "April 2020–July 2022",
      "description": "Designed and analyzed standard-library modules in Move, participated in network genesis, and ran validator operations for a year.",
      "url": "https://0l.network/"
    }
  ],
  "currentWork": {
    "name": "Ekai Labs",
    "logo": "./assets/logos/ekai.png",
    "role": "Founder",
    "dates": "April 2025 – present",
    "url": "https://ekailabs.xyz/",
    "description": "We build B2B context infrastructure. Powered by confidential compute (TEEs), our system takes private meeting notes, securely extracts key insights, and routes them to the right partners—unlocking happenstance without compromising data sovereignty.",
    "current": "After a successful deployment during the Shape Rotator accelerator, we are working closely with privacy-focused design partners.",
    "evolution": [
      {
        "title": "Model Router",
        "description": "Moving between AI models without losing context."
      },
      {
        "title": "Memory Layer",
        "description": "Carrying knowledge across tools and sessions."
      },
      {
        "title": "Context Layer",
        "description": "Contexto, our open-source context engine for Hermes and OpenClaw.",
        "meta": "600+ GitHub stars"
      },
      {
        "title": "Shared Context Layer",
        "description": "Secure, organization-wide insight routing."
      }
    ],
    "backers": [
      {
        "name": "Creative Destruction Lab",
        "description": "Montreal",
        "logo": "./assets/logos/cdl.png",
        "url": "https://creativedestructionlab.com/blog/2025-26-graduate-companies/"
      },
      {
        "name": "shaperotator.xyz",
        "description": "Cornell Tech IC3, Flashbots",
        "url": "https://shaperotator.xyz/"
      },
      {
        "name": "Oasis Foundation",
        "logo": "./assets/logos/oasis.svg",
        "url": "https://oasis.net/"
      }
    ],
    "coverage": [
      {
        "publisher": "Forbes",
        "title": "Why Crypto Needs Portable AI Memory",
        "url": "https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/12/12/why-crypto-needs-portable-ai-memory/"
      },
      {
        "publisher": "Oasis Foundation",
        "title": "Ekai AI Context Layer",
        "url": "https://oasis.net/blog/ekai-ai-context-layer"
      }
    ]
  },
  "life": {
    "travel": "For the past two years, I’ve been living as a digital nomad and travelling.",
    "dragonBoating": {
      "id": "sports",
      "label": "On the water",
      "title": "Dragon boating",
      "summary": "Training and competing with the New Dragons team.",
      "details": "With New Dragons, I earned gold at the 2023 Canadian National Dragon Boating Competitions in Welland and bronze at the 2022 competitions in Montreal.",
      "medals": [
        {
          "medal": "Gold",
          "year": "2023",
          "event": "Canadian National Dragon Boating Competitions",
          "place": "Welland, Canada"
        },
        {
          "medal": "Bronze",
          "year": "2022",
          "event": "Canadian National Dragon Boating Competitions",
          "place": "Montreal, Canada"
        }
      ]
    }
  },
  "photographs": [
    {
      "id": "dragon-boating",
      "title": "New Dragons",
      "caption": "Training, racing, and time with the team.",
      "src": null,
      "status": "placeholder"
    },
    {
      "id": "travel",
      "title": "Life on the move",
      "caption": "Photographs from the journey.",
      "src": null,
      "status": "placeholder"
    }
  ]
}