Xuechao Wang is a PhD candidate in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received his MSc in 2020. Before that, he received his BSc from the department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University. His research interest is in decentralized consensus protocols (blockchains). He applies techniques from applied probability, combinatorics, and optimization to provide new algorithmic solutions and analyze the performance and security of new blockchain protocols.