I'm Nikki, a theoretical computer scientist and cryptographer. Right now, I'm interested in blockchain systems from cryptographic and privacy-based perspectives. There are some protocol-design challenges related to MEV which would be ideally solved using cryptography-based solutions, but no satisfactory solutions have been discovered yet. Mid-term approaches to these challenges currently often center around the use of TEE technology, which allow us to bypass the mathematical barriers of establishing provably-private protocols that satisfy our use cases, and achieve those guarantees via hardware-based assumptions instead. As a long-term goal however, the ideal case will be to overcome these barriers via clean (yet to be discovered) provably-private solutions. Towards this, I study Blockchain and other MEV systems, both in practice today and via theoretical models, to assess and design new solutions for long-term system sustainability and growth. I enjoy cross-disciplinary work and often explore related fields of theoretical computer science and mathematics for ideas that might inspire bold new directions. I am a proponent of open research, a philosophy of practice that aims to make research more transparent, accessible, and collaborative.