Type: Bachelor, Master

Date: Immediately

Supervisor: Robert Heinrich, Niclas Kannengießer, Lan Bao Quang Le 

Choosing inappropriate configurations of blockchain systems for decentralized applications (DApps) can entail serious issues, including exposure to attacks, too slow performance, and high costs. Such inappropriate blockchain system configurations can even require migrating to a new system, which is extremely difficult once a blockchain system is deployed. Every node would need to set up a completely new blockchain system, and crucial data could get lost. To configure blockchain systems that meet DApp requirements on dependability, decentralization, and performance, software architects need tooling to simulate and analyze the influence of blockchain system configurations on the behaviors and quality of blockchain systems before deployment. In particular, novel modeling, simulation, and prediction approaches are needed to estimate and explain the behavior of blockchain systems to ensure they meet DApp requirements on dependability before setup. Within the context of developing suitable blockchain systems for DApps, several topics for Bachelor/Master thesis are available as listed in the following. In addition to these topics, we will be happy to discuss your own ideas for thesis topics on blockchain technology.

• DApp Archetypes: Develop archetypal DApps that can be used to bootstrap productive DApps.

• Mitigation of Security Risks by Design: Develop new security analyses for blockchain systems to help improve their robustness against common attacks (e.g., selfish mining attacks [3]) by design.

• Modeling and Simulation: Design a modeling language to represent blockchain systems or DApps using Palladio [2]. Implement an extension for the Palladio analysis tool to assess blockchain systems for security vulnerabilities or performance bottlenecks. Evaluate your extension of the Palladio tool.

• Trade-offs in Blockchain Systems: Develop new analysis techniques to assess the quality attributes and behaviors of blockchain systems with a focus on the blockchain trilemma [1].

If you are interested in blockchain technology, software security engineering, performance modeling, and simulation, this thesis is a great opportunity to work on a relevant and impactful topic!

• Practical Impact: Your work will help software architects avoid costly mistakes when selecting blockchain protocols.

• Hands-on Development: You will gain experience in software modeling, simulation, and performance analysis.

• Cutting-Edge Topic: Blockchain technology is rapidly evolving—your research will contribute to an emerging field.

Interested in one of the topics, or do you have your own ideas that fall into the umbrella topic? Do not hesitate to reach out to us. We offer interdisciplinary collaborative supervision from two leading universities: Technical University of Munich (Campus Heilbronn) and University of Ulm.

Contact

Robert Heinrich (robert.heinrich(at)uni-ulm.de)

Niclas Kannengießer (niclas.kannengiesser(at)tum.de)

Lan Bao Quang Le (lan.le(at)uni-ulm.de)

References

[1] Mansur Aliyu, Niclas Kannengießer, and Sunyaev Ali. From Concept to Measurement: A Survey of How the Blockchain Trilemma Can Be Analyzed. 2025. url: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03768.

[2] Ralf H Reussner et al. Modeling and simulating software architectures: The Palladio approach. MIT Press, 2016.

[3] Yannik Sproll et al. “SM-SIM: A Simulator for Selfish-Mining Attacks in Blockchain Systems”. In: 2025 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. Pisa, Italy, 2025.