Kai Li

System and network security, cybercrime detection and prevention, performance evaluation and optimization, blockchain and cryptocurrency

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at San Diego State University. My research interests lie in distributed system security, cybercrime detection and prevention, performance analysis and optimization. I received my Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 2022.

Currently, my research group focuses on understanding and hardening the security of largely deployed blockchains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin at different system layers, detecting and flagging emerging cryptocurrency scams and phishing attacks, and optimizing the performance of blockchain’s P2P network.

I am looking for self-motivated students to work on the above research areas. If you are interested, please read our recent papers before sending me an email with your CV and transcripts.

06/2021 - 08/2021, Research Intern, Amazon AWS
06/2020 - 08/2020, Research Intern, IBM Research
08/2015 - 08/2017, Software Engineer, ZTE

2025 - Now: Assistant Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology
2022 - 2025: Assistant Professor, San Diego State University

2022 Norton Labs Fellowship Finalist
ACM CCS 2021 Student Grant
IEEE S&P 2021 Student Grant
NDSS 2021 Student Grant

NSF CRII: 2024/07 - 2026/06
Ethereum Rangers Grant: 2025/03 - 2025/09
Ethereum Academic Grant: 2023/09 - 2025/05
Ethereum Run A Node: 2023/09 - 2024/08

Conference Papers (underlined are students advised by me)
- Shixuan Guan, Kai Li. Characterizing Ethereum Address Poisoning Attack, ACM CCS 2024. AR=16.9%.
- Yibo Wang, Yuzhe Tang, Kai Li, Wanning Ding, Zhihua Yang. Understanding Ethereum Mempool Security under Asymmetric DoS by Symbolized Stateful Fuzzing, USENIX Security 2024. AR=18.32%.
- Kai Li, Shixuan Guan, Darren Lee. Towards Understanding and Characterizing the Arbitrage Bot Scam In the Wild, ACM SIGMETRICS 2024. Summer Cycle AR=12.5%.
- Kai Li, Darren Lee, Shixuan Guan. Understanding the Cryptocurrency Free Giveaway Scam Disseminated on Twitter Lists, IEEE Blockchain 2023. AR=31.8%.
- Jiaqi Chen, Yibo Wang, Yuxuan Zhou, Wanning Ding, Yuzhe Tang, XiaoFeng Wang, Kai Li. Understanding the Security Risks of Decentralized Exchanges by Uncovering Unfair Trades in the Wild, Euro S&P 2023.
- Yuzhe Tang, Kai Li, Yibo Wang, and Jiaqi Chen, Ethical Challenges in Blockchain Network Measurement Research”, EthiCS@NDSS 2023.
- Yibo Wang, Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, “Towards the Comprehensive Understanding of Ethereum Mempool DoS Security”, ConsensysDay@ACM CCS 2022.
- Kai Li, Yibo Wang, Yuzhe Tang. DETER: Denial of Ethereum Txpool sERvices, ACM CCS 2021. AR=22%.
- Kai Li, Jiaqi Chen, Xianghong Liu, Yuzhe Tang, XiaoFeng Wang, Xiapu Luo. “As Strong As Its Weakest Link: How to Break Blockchain DApps at RPC Service”, NDSS 2021, AR=15.2%.
- Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Yibo Wang, Xianghong Liu. TopoShot: Uncovering Ethereum’s Network Topology Leveraging Replacement Transactions, ACM IMC 2021, AR=28%.
- Yibo Wang, Qi Zhang, Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Xiapu Luo, Ting Chen. “iBatch: Saving Ethereum Fees via Secure and Cost-Effective Batching of Smart-Contract Invocations”, ESEC/FSE 2021, AR=24.5%.
- Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Qi Zhang, Jianliang Xu, Ju Chen. “Authenticated Key-Value Stores with Hardware Enclaves”, ACM/IFIP Middleware 2021 (industrial track).
- Kai Li, Qi Zhang, Lei Yu, Min Hong. “DRL-Clusters: Buffer Management with Clustering based Deep Reinforcement Learning”, DBAI @NeurIPS 2021.
- Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Zhehu Yuan, Cheng Xu, Jianliang Xu. “Cost-Effective Data Feeds to Blockchains via Workload-Adaptive Data Replication”, ACM/IFIP Middleware 2020, AR=25.2%.
- Yuzhe Tang, Kai Li, Yibo Wang, Sencer Burak Somuncuoglu. “Scalable Log Auditing on Private Blockchains via Lightweight Log-Fork Prevention”, SERIAL 2020.
- Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jianliang Xu, Ben Kim. “Secure Consistency Verification for Untrusted Cloud Storage by Public Blockchains”, SecureComm 2019, AR=25.5%
- Yuzhe Tang, Ju Chen, Kai Li. “Log-Structured Authenticated Data Structures for Secure Cloud Storage with Minimal Trust”, SecureComm 2019.
- Qiwu Zou, Yuzhe Tang, Ju Chen, Kai Li, Charles Kamoua, Kevin Kwiat, Laurent Njilla. “ChainFS: Blockchain-Secured Cloud Storage”, IEEE Cloud 2018.

Journal Papers
- Yibo Wang, Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Qi Zhang, Xiapu Luo, and Ting Chen, “Towards Saving Blockchain Fees via Secure and Cost-Effective Batching of Smart-Contract Invocations,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2023.
- Yuzhe Tang, Kai Li, Katchaguy Areekijseree, Shuigeng Zhou, Liting Hu. “Privacy-Preserving Multi-Party Directory Services”, EAI Endorsed Transactions on Security and Safety.

Spring 2025: Fundamentals of Cryptography with Applications to Blockchain, Computer Security
Fall 2024: System Programming, Computer Security
Spring 2024: Fundamentals of Cryptography with Applications to Blockchain
Fall 2022 - Fall 2023: System Programming