Agenda

PhD defense Maxence Brugères: Reconciling Privacy and Regulatory Compliance in Distributed Financial Applications

Friday 20 Nov., 2026, at 10:00 (Paris time) at Télécom Paris

Télécom Paris, 19 place Marguerite Perey F-91120 Palaiseau [getting there], amphi 3 and in videoconferencing

Jury

  • Laurent Pautet, Professor, Télécom Paris, France (President of the jury, Examiner)
  • Sara Tucci, Head of Laboratory, CEA LIST, France (Reviewer)
  • Srdjan Capkun, Full Professor, ETH Zürich, Switzerland (Reviewer)
  • Daniel Augot, Research Director, Inria, France (Examiner)
  • Sonia Ben Mokhtar, Research Director, CNRS, France (Examiner)
  • Petr Kuznetsov, Professor, Télécom Paris, France (Thesis supervisor)

Abstract

Blockchains allow participants to share and verify a record of data without relying on a single trusted organization. Their adoption by the financial industry, however, faces a central difficulty: making transaction data public enables verification but exposes sensitive information (payments, prices, invoices, business relationships), while concealing it obstructs regulatory enforcement and audits. This thesis investigates how distributed financial services can be private and compliant at the same time, at a cost compatible with large-scale use. It combines distributed protocols and zero-knowledge proofs to enforce rules without revealing the underlying data.

Learn more
We address three layers of the financial stack. For payments, PaxPay is a consensus-free protocol for asynchronous networks whose transfers hide the sender, the receiver and the amount, while enforcing spending limits and sanctions. For anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism, we embed encrypted (k,t)-provenance graphs in the coins of an extension of Zerocash: a user can selectively disclose the provenance of her funds to the regulator, and the regulator can freeze coins whose provenance includes a blacklisted user. Finally, for invoices, PIROS handles the confidential issuance, acceptance and settlement of invoices through smart contracts, with verifiable reports of receivables, payables and solvency.