The BIG Lab brings together researchers from Técnico and associated research instituted with broad interdisciplinary expertise in blockchain and related foundational technologies including distributed computing, security and applied cryptography, AI, machine learning, software engineering, big data and cloud computing, human computer interaction, service design, and design thinking.
In partnership with knowledge users and user communities, our cutting-edge research targets new ways to boost the potential of these emerging technologies in health, energy, digital citizenship, transport and creative industries as well as their economic impacts.
The core challenges of the research performed under the BIG Lab are:
Achieving performance comparable to today’s transaction processing systems;
Providing accessible development tools, improving trustworthiness and robustness of DLT apps;
Leveraging blockchain interoperability to unlock the true potential of decentralised networks;
Providing design guidance for DLTs mediating and articulating human experience and values;
Research Highlights
BIGLab member(s) involved:
Miguel Pardal (IST/ INESC-ID), Teresa Almeida (IST/ITI)
Blockchain Application Infrastructures
Our collaborative research explores fundamental scientific knowledge created in various application areas, contributing innovative solutions with very diverse societal partners to diverse practical challenges, developing technically robust, ethically and socially grounded blockchain infrastructures.
With Samouco Salinas, we have developed EarthlyConsensus [1], a decentralized governance platform using blockchain to record human activities like noise and pollution and assess their effects on multispecies populations. PrivacHer [2] is an innovative blockchain based mechanism for managing consent and accountability in feminine health data. Also for the healthcare sector we developed MedSky [3] a hybrid blockchain/cloud architecture for securely storing electronic health records in public clouds, ensuring integrity, confidentiality, and trust in healthcare data management.
Some of these initiatives have been developed with national RRP Blockchain.PT. With Cerfundão and SenseFinity we are leveraging principles of software architecture and DLT system design in the development of a multilayer blockchain system involving enterprise Integration, sensor devices, data intake certifiers, and mobile Apps, which required new design principles and customization of available systems software [4].
[1] G. Pinto, EarthlyConsensus: A Decentralized Governance Model Platform for More-than-human Constituencies. Instituto Superior Técnico, (2024).
[2] L. Tomaz, D. Matos, T. Almeida. Trust Through Transparency: Blockchain for Consent and Accountability in Femtech Applications. GoodIT’25: Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good, 2025.
[3] J. A. Bernardo. MedSky: Enhancing healthcare data storage with multi-cloud blockchain integration. Instituto Superior Técnico, 2024.
[4] L. Preto, S. Eisa, D. R. Matos, O. Remédios, M. L. Pardal. Dependable Food Traceability Data through Blockchain and Database Integration.1st International Workshop on Dependable and Secure Web3, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, 2024.
BIGLab member(s) involved: Nuno Nunes (IST/ITI), Mariana Pestana (IST/ITI) and Teresa Almeida (IST/ITI)
Blockchain for Participation and Inclusion
We have investigated how DLT may promote participation and inclusion by a broad engagement at the intersection of architecture, design, and digital technologies, advancing participatory futures that decentralise decision-making and foreground multispecies perspectives.
Within the Bauhaus of the Seas EU initiative, we have built Pilots as testbeds and explored how blockchain and DAOs can support agroecological regeneration, how multispecies ethnographic methods can reveal landscape rhythms and interrelations, and how organisational frameworks like the Zoöp model can foster ecological cooperation between humans and more-than-humans [1]. Our research contributes methodologies for representing nonhuman voices in decision-making assemblies, such as Eden X’s digital platform for rivers and their constituents [2].
Female-oriented technologies (FemTech) promise to empower individuals to take control of their bodies and intimate health, yet this rapidly expanding and largely unregulated sector presents critical security, privacy, and safety concerns. We investigated vulnerabilities in image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) removal tools, revealing how low-budget generative AI-based inversion attacks threaten perceptual hashing systems [3].
[1] C. Pedroso-Roussado; K. Kuitenbrouwer; V. Fearns; M. Pestana; V. Nisi; A. Light; N. Jardim Nunes. Zoöp Futures: Towards an organisational framework for ecological cooperation between humans and more-than-humans. Futures, 2025.
[2] J. Pestana, M. Pestana, M. Carvalhais, N. Jardim Nunes. (2025), Designing with an Assembly of Many: Eden X on rivers, their constituents and rights. CHI Italy, ACM, 2025.
[3] S. Hawkes, C. Weinert, T. Almeida, M. Mehrnezhad. (2025). Perceptual hash inversion attacks on image-based sexual abuse removal tools. IEEE Security & Privacy, 23(3), 2025.
BIGLab member(s) involved: Miguel P. Correia (IST/INESC-ID).
DApps, Blockchain interoperability, Wallet Security
We have investigated decentralized Applications (DApps) based on DLT in many innovative use cases, such as property tokenization, marketplaces for real estate, automated rental applications, and the use of oracles and DAOs to support automation and public procurement. For example, with Lisbon-based startup Unlock.IT, we have developed novel DLT platforms to simplify and streamline real estate transactions.
Real-world application scenarios often rely on the combination of several blockchains. We have investigated blockchain interoperability, mechanisms, security, and privacy, the design of crash recovery protocols (e.g., SATP Gateway), and performance evaluations of cross-chain transactions, complemented by novel approaches such as dependable blockchain views and benchmarking of bridge aggregators, our research featuring at the cover of CACM [1], also with a most downloaded article at ACM DLT [2].
Focusing on the challenges of wallet security, we have leveraged trusted execution environments (SGX, TrustZone) to strengthen both custodial and non-custodial wallets [3], proposing secure data backup and recovery (SRX), trusted data relocation, inter-processor attestation and sealing, as well as pioneering trusted human–computer interaction paths using augmented reality smart glasses.
[1] R. Belchior, J. Süßenguth, Q. Feng, T. Hardjono, A. Vasconcelos, M. Correia. A Brief History of Blockchain Interoperability. Communications of the ACM, 67(10), 2024.
[2] R. Belchior, L. Riley, T. Hardjono, A. Vasconcelos, M. Correia. Do You Need a Distributed Ledger Technology Interoperability Solution?. ACM Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice, 2(1), 2023.
[3] D. Andrade, J. N. Silva, M. Correia. I Can’t Escape Myself: Cloud Inter-Processor Attestation and Sealing using Intel SGX. 28th IEEE Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing, 2023.
BIGLab member(s) involved: Nuno Nunes (IST/ITI), Mariana Pestana (IST/ITI) and Valentina Nisi (IST/ITI)
DLT, Sustainability, and User-Centric Design
As infrastructural technology, blockchain can fundamentally transform how people transact, trust, collaborate, organise, and identify themselves. Through these research efforts, we engage with using blockchain (and its values) as design material, exploring different ideas, applications and pedagogical viewpoints across diverse contexts.
We examined how blockchain can empower small-scale agriculture, addressing market access, transparency, and traceability challenges faced by underserved farming communities [1]. Through user-centred co-design with Portuguese small farmers, we developed DigiFarm, broadening HCI’s sustainability discourse by highlighting the economic dimension essential for the Triple Bottom Line of sustainable development [2]. Additionally, we explored peer-to-peer energy trading through PowerShare 2.0, a gamified platform that fosters cooperation between prosumers and utilities [3].
We promote the use of blockchain as a design material, revealing how design-led exploration helps unpack the conceptual and infrastructural complexities of emerging technologies [4]. Outcomes from these projects underscore the value of interdisciplinary speculation and collaboration in navigating blockchain’s potentials and limitations across agricultural, energy, and storytelling applications.
[1] S. Scuri, N. Jardim Nunes, V. Nisi. Empowering Small-Scale Agriculture through Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology: Review and Future Perspectives, in Blockchain for Good, Taylor and Francis, 2025.
[2] S. Scuri, ;M. Ferreira, N. Jardim Nunes, V, Nisi, and C. Mulligan.. Hitting the Triple Bottom Line: Widening the HCI Approach to Sustainability, ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22), 2022.
[3] S. Scuri, N. Jardim Nunes. PowerShare 2.0: A Gamified P2P Energy Trading Platform, in Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI ’20), 2020.
[4] P. Bala, S. Scuri, S, Prandi, N. Jardim Nunes, V. Nisi. Visualising the Ledger: Teaching Blockchain as Design Material. ACM CHItaly proceedings, 2025.
BIGLab member(s) involved: Rodrigo Rodrigues and André Breda (IST/INESC-ID).
Scalability in Blockchains
A key challenge in Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) is to find novel solutions for deploying blockchain networks at a much larger scale, opening new possibilities for large-scale supply chain management, financial networks, and other enterprise applications that require both security and high performance.
In the context of permissioned blockchain networks based on Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus, we have developed Kauri [1], which organizes participants in tree-like structures using an innovative pipelining technique that processes multiple decisions simultaneously. Tested with up to 800 participants, Kauri achieves up to 58 times better performance than leading blockchain systems without sacrificing speed.
A recent trend in BFT consensus-based blockchains is the use of asynchronous protocols, relying on randomization to remove the need for bounds on message delivery times, making them more resilient to adverse network conditions. While prior research proposals still fall short of gaining practical adoption due to their weak performance or complex design, we proposed Alea-BFT [2], a simple and highly efficient asynchronous BFT protocol, which is gaining practical adoption, namely through proof of concept prototypes in Ethereum distributed validators (with SSV and Obol). Simultaneously, we studied [3] the limitations of the scalability solutions deployed by Ethererum, namely Layer-2 systems, and found that the impact of their load on the main-chain has been, so far, poorly understood.
[1] R. Neiheiser, M. Matos and L. Rodrigues. Kauri: BFT Consensus with Pipelined Tree-Based Dissemination and Aggregation. In ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 2026.
[2] D. S. Antunes, A, N. Oliveira, A. Breda, M, Guilherme Franco, H. Moniz, and R. Rodrigues. 2024. Alea-BFT: Practical asynchronous byzantine fault tolerance. 21st USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), 2024.
[3] R. Neiheiser, G. Inácio, L. Rech, C. Montez, M. Matos and L. Rodrigues. Practical Limitations of Ethereum’s Layer-2. IEEE Access, 11 (2), 2023.
BIGLab member(s) involved: Christof Torres (IST/INESC-ID), Luís Caires (IST/INESC-ID), Nuno Lopes (IST/INESC-ID)
Smart contracts and Application Level Security
The adoption of Blockchain technology is accompanied by significant risks, many of which stem from the inherent transparency of blockchain systems: the combination of transparent data and low barriers to entry enables adversaries to rapidly scan smart contracts and associated infrastructure for vulnerabilities, often leading to exploits that can result in the theft of assets worth billions of euros.
We explored the economic security of smart contracts, moving beyond traditional technical flaws such as integer overflows or reentrancy to analyze market manipulation strategies, for example, we study emerging forms of maximal extractable value (MEV) and the impact of existing transaction-ordering policies on economic fairness and user security, with the goal of designing fairer ordering algorithms and other protective mechanisms that limit undesirable MEV extraction [1].
We studied deterministic optimal metering for smart contracts, a key requirement to ensure fair fees and protect blockchains from denial-of-service attacks [2]. Recently, the special requirements of smart-contract programming are motivating programming models that may automatically prevent issues such as double-spending and reentrancy. We have investigated execution environments for linear languages, based on verified abstract linear machines [3].
[1]C. Ferreira Torres, A, Mamuti, B. Weintraub, C. Nita-Rotaru, S. Shinde: Rolling in the Shadows: Analyzing the Extraction of MEV Across Layer-2 Rollups. ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) , 2024.
[2] G. Mitenkov, N. Lopes. Metering the Meter, or How to Efficiently and Deterministically Charge the Execution of Smart Contracts, Instituto Superior Técnico, 2022.
[3]L. Caires, B. Toninho: The Linear Session Abstract Machine. European Symposium of Programming Languages and Systems (ESOP), 2024.