Distributed Networks Institute’s mission is to achieve sustainable technological growth and resilience by leveraging scientific, engineering, and organizational principles of distributed networks. We are a part of a 501(c)3 non-profit incubator in Washington DC called BlockShop.

Research Axes

AI

SpecGEM

SpecGEM is our spec-driven code generation model fine-tuned to produce sophisticated, fault-tolerant edge workers from structured comment blocks. It targets the knowledge gaps, attention limits, and instruction-adherence failures of vanilla frontier models by training on a small, highly curated synthetic dataset of recent, narrowly scoped code, prioritizing aggressive data curation over hyperparameter tuning. An automated, continuously running pipeline keeps the model current with fast-evolving serverless runtimes.

Synthetic Data

To proactively address the emerging threats associated with the rise of generative AI, we have developed a suite of tools that enable researchers and engineers to create synthetic datasets. These datasets serve as a foundation for building compact, high-efficiency classification models capable of detecting distributed network attacks in their early stages.

IT Security

We maintain a crowdsourced knowledge base on IT security vulnerabilities and cyberattack taxonomy across distributed networks. Our attack surface maps and corresponding datasets help regulators and law enforcement focus attention on the biggest threats and principal actors. As part of our documentation efforts, we maintain a crowdsourced dataset on blockchain ecosystem attacks.

Market Health

To improve the integrity and accountability of cryptocurrency trading venues, we are working on transparency standards designed to detect potential threats posed by market participants. Specifically, we are creating a set of health metrics aimed to identify fraudulent activity in market venues, including wash trading and front running. Additionally, we release analytical articles that showcase real-world applications of these metrics and enable community to detect fraudulent activities within the crypto space.