David Matos, a BIG ERA Chair research team member, visited the CyLab (CyLab Security & Privacy Institute) at Carnegie Mellon University between August 19th-30th 2024. During this research visit, David Matos collaborated with Dr. Seth Goldstein in the topic of Blockchain for social good.

– You were one of the faculty members hired by the project who have transited to a tenure track position at IST. Can you provide us with an overview of your current research work under the BIG project?

In the context of the BIG project I have been working with development of decentralized applications for social good. Some examples of these applications include: decentralized storage of electronic health records (EHR), consent management of medical data, and decentralized deliberation platforms. These applications empower users, allowing them to gain control over their data and keep track of its use by corporations. Besides the development of decentralized applications for social goods, I have been also involved in research intrusion recovery systems for blockchain applications that allow users to revert unintended transactions cause by, for example, an personification attack. 

– While at CMU you were hosted in the CyLab and worked with Seth Goldstein. Can you briefly explain what were the main objectives that you set out before departing and research outcomes of your time at CMU?

Before my visit to CMU I had some meetings with Seth Goldstein to discuss my work at the CyLab. In those meeting we realized we have been working with similar problems: decentralized applications for social good. One of the recent projects of Seth is BoLT, a community-based system that uses blockchain to create a transparent platform that allows businesses to raise money by selling claims to their future goods and services. This project not only is aligned with my research interest but it also related with the goals of the BIG project. After a couple of meetings in person and some intensive brainstorming sessions, we came up with a new idea for a decentralized social media platform that uses an innovative business model that rewards content readers and content creators. The social platform also tackles some problems we identifies in existing social media platforms, namely, addiction, hate speech, and filter bubbles.

– Was this research visit important for the strengthening of your research network, namely, do you expect to continue your collaboration with CMU? If yes, what are the near future collaborations you foresee ?

This visit was very important for strengthening my research in the sense that it allowed me to discuss my work with an expert in the field and put some of my ideas to the test. The several brainstorming sessions were very valuable to develop the core of the platform we are correctly working on. This collaboration, that started a couple of months before my visit, has continued since my return to Portugal. I have been meeting with Seth and we are still working on the development of this platform and expect to have at least one publication describing the system in the near future. We also collaborated on three grant proposals to fund this work and a future visit to the CMU. Seth is also one of the invited speakers of the Lisbon Blockchain Winter School (LxBWS) organized by BIG and will visit Técnico Lisbon next February 2025.