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MasterThesis

Johan Pouwelse edited this page May 9, 2023 · 11 revisions

Master thesis at Tribler lab

⚠️ You need to share our love for running code and operational systems. ⚠️

The Tribler lab takes inspiration from Linux, Wikipedia, Bittorrent, and Bitcoin. These technologies disrupted existing industries and brought change to the world. You thesis will contribute to something similar. All thesis projects are exploratory research projects of 45 ECTS. We offer a very wide range of topics: Web3, decentralised learning, blockchains, digital trust, digital identity, digital Euros, personal data vaults, etc.

See all ongoing and past master thesis projects on Github. Every master thesis is documented on Github, code is on Github, and all thesis drafts are on Github. Every progress meeting is documented in a few lines, we publish our findings immediately, providing open notebook science. Various open topics:

Decentralised Machine Learning

PageRank is the defining centralised algorithm of Google. A small field is investigating architectures for decentralised machine learning. One of the initial works in this field is from Delft, G-Rank: Unsupervised Continuous Learn-to-Rank for Edge Devices in a P2P Network. The goal of this master thesis is to understand, improve, and implement the first true decentralised machine learning algorithm. The application of your algorithm is Internet search or something else you prefer.

As a general intro, read the Wikipedia entry on decentralised search engines. Early work from 2005 by Delft provides a simple and realistic experimental approach to the problem of media discovery and recommendation, you are required to understand the basic algorithm of semantic clustering (e.g. taste buddies). A paper from 2012 proposes a model where mobile phones use gossip learning to compute a linear model, without revealing local models and without storing the full data set. Another classic attempt from 2003 onwards is the decentralised YaCy search engine with a web crawler, complex hashing, and reverse word index.

Web3 technology stack

The superapp by Delft is the starting point of a Web3 alternative for Big Tech.

Web3 Seedbox Mining for Bitcoin

You master thesis focus is on the key part of the Web3 technology stack: content storage and dissemination. Pay Bittorrent seeders in Bitcoin for their efforts. Create a self-organising and censorship-free content platform based on free-market principles.

DAO - the future of the firm

We believe that the DAO is the future of the firm, providing economic activity without boundaries. See prior work by Delft: our unstoppable DAO. Your task is to further realise this dream of a robot economy or even the fourth industrial revolution. Key goals are collective money and democratic decision making processes.

GoldEuro for offline payments

You master thesis task is to design and deploy a Euro coin with true gold value. For several years we have building prototypes at Delft for the upcoming digital Euro. See the latest offline Euro work by a team of master students for 5 ECTS. By using a small amount of antique gold it is possible to back a digital stable coin. The GoldEuro is an ownership token for actual physical gold. As such, it is stable, well understood legally, and easy to deploy. Going back to the gold standard has significant implication for payment systems and central banks. Money again has intrinsic value, limiting commercial money creation by banks. With GoldEuro citizens take back power in the global economy.

EU-ID: passport-grade Self-sovereign identity for Europe

10 ECTS Literature survey at Tribler lab

See example: https://arxiv.org/search/?query=pouwelse+survey&searchtype=all&source=header Approach: read 30+ papers, put them in a table, call this a taxonomy, write code, make screenshot, include this, DONE.