Blockchain infrastructure engineer

Raha Motaqy

U.S. Permanent Resident, no sponsorship 860-***-**** ****@*****.*** linkedin.com/in/raha-motaqy github.com/rahamotaqy

• Blockchain infrastructure engineer with experience designing and deploying Go-based distributed full-node systems. PhD researcher specializing in formal consensus safety, liveness, and adversarial protocol analysis, with 4+ years owning correctness-critical production financial backend systems. Skills

• Languages: Go, Python, C#, PL/SQL, SQL, Solidity

• Blockchain Infrastructure: Full-node implementation, P2P networking, mempool management, block validation, ledger persistence, RPC/API access, node synchronization, committee operation, secure/scalable protocol design

• Distributed Systems: Consensus protocols, synchronization, rollback, fault tolerance, autorecovery, ledger consistency, transaction/block propagation, bounded-delay models

• Backend & Databases: REST/SOAP APIs, Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, NoSQL datastores, transactional consistency

• Cloud, DevOps & Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipelines, staging deployments, Linux, automation scripting

• Operations & Reliability: Production debugging, incident response, release management, performance tuning, rollback planning, invariant enforcement

• Tools & AI-Assisted Workflow: Git, Ollama, local LLMs, Codex, AI-assisted coding/debugging Research Experience: Blockchain Infrastructure & Node Engineering chainBoost: Dependent Sidechain Architecture University of Connecticut; Aug 2021 – Jun 2023 (EuroS&P 24)

Built and deployed a Go-based distributed full-node blockchain prototype across multiple AWS-hosted servers, implementing P2P networking, mempool management backed by a NoSQL datastore, PBFT-style consensus, block validation, ledger persistence, RPC/API access, and node synchronization.

Containerized node components and orchestrated multi-node test deployments with Kubernetes to validate P2P networking, consensus execution, synchronization, and performance under distributed workloads.

Designed a dependent sidechain protocol for blockchain-based resource markets, offloading high-frequency service-related transactions while preserving mainchain safety and liveness.

Designed and validated recovery mechanisms for distributed blockchain nodes, including rollback handling, sync correctness, invalid state-update rejection, and recovery from malicious or unresponsive sidechain committees.

Implemented epoch-based committee operation, leader-based PBFT consensus, rollback-resilient synchronization, block pruning, and autorecovery for faulty or unresponsive sidechain committees.

Developed a comprehensive threat model covering malicious/lazy committees, invalid block and sync proposals, mainchain rollbacks, sidechain downtime, and bounded-delay adversarial conditions.

Validated multi-node protocol behavior under distributed workloads, verifying transaction/block propagation, consensus execution, ledger consistency, synchronization correctness, and fault tolerance.

Evaluated the prototype under Filecoin-inspired storage-market workloads, demonstrating 4–11 throughput gains and up to 90% blockchain size reduction.

Implemented a Go prototype of a publicly verifiable Proof-of-Retrievability scheme, including BLS-style homomorphic authenticators, aggregate proofs, and pairing-based verification. Professional Experience

Backend Systems Engineer Fara Rayane Design and Processing Company; Sep 2016 – Oct 2020

Owned correctness and performance of production backend systems end-to-end including schema design, transactional data models, deployments, and incident investigation.

Owned deployment lifecycle, release management, monitoring, and incident response for stateful backend systems, using GitHub Actions and CI/CD pipelines to support repeatable builds and controlled releases.

Debugged cross-layer production issues spanning C# service logic and Oracle transaction layers, resolving performance degradation and data inconsistency under load.

Improved reliability through retry logic, invariant checks, safeguards for partial failures, and recovery paths that prevented state corruption.

Tuned SQL queries and PL/SQL procedures using indexes, joins, execution plans, batching, and lock-contention mitigation to reduce transaction latency and improve throughput.

Led large-scale database migrations including schema evolution, data backfill, validation, and rollback planning to preserve data integrity.

Containerized backend services and provisioned isolated staging environments to reduce environment drift and validate releases before deployment.

Research Experience: Protocol Security & Consensus Analysis Ethereum GHOST Consensus Security University of Connecticut; Jun 2023 – Present (Asiacrypt 26)

Formalized Ethereum GHOST protocol under partially synchronous Byzantine fault-tolerant network model, enabling precise analysis of safety, liveness, and settlement risk.

Rigorously proved consistency (safety), liveness, and bounded finality latency (confirmation) guarantees of GHOST, for both adversarial and deterministic tie-breaking implementations.

Constructed concrete consensus-stalling attacks immediately outside consistency region in each tie-breaking model to demonstrate tight protocol failure boundaries.

Derived explicit confirmation bounds and failure thresholds using rigorous mathematical modeling to characterize system behavior under adversarial conditions.

Incentive-Compatible Smart Contract Mechanisms University of Tehran; Sep 2019 – Feb 2021 (GameSec 21)

Designed and developed a Solidity smart contract enabling trustless collaboration among pseudonymous participants without requiring individual contribution measurement.

Proved incentive compatibility and strong equilibrium behavior under an incomplete-information game model.

Validated equilibrium stability through simulation, analyzing parameter sensitivity and adversarial coordination dynamics. Education

• University of Connecticut 2021 – Aug 2026 (ABD)

Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering

• University of Tehran 2020

M.Sc. in Computer Engineering (Software Engineering)

• Shahed University 2017

B.Sc. in Computer Science

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant – Modern Cryptography University of Connecticut

Led discussion sections on security proofs for cryptographic primitives, reductions, adversarial models, and proof techniques.

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