About me

I am currently co-founder and Director at Soundness labs and a PostDoc (Part-time) at COSIC, KU Leuven working with Prof. Bart Preneel.

During my PhD, I have been mainly working on privacy-enhancing techniques in distributed systems, with a focus on their applications on Blockchain space (Link to my Thesis). I have collaborated on multiple research papers and gained valuable experience working with global teams and leading companies. In summer 2023, I was a research intern at Mysten Labs, cryptography team.

These days, I am primarily focused on Accountable Threshold Signatures, Traceable Secret Sharing and more efficient decentralized zk proofs verification layers. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or for collaboration opportunities.

News

• 2026-03-25 Two talks accepted to PrivCrypt 2026 (affiliated with Eurocrypt 2026).
• 2026-03-04 Presented PQchain at FC’26. Link to slides.
• 2025-11-29 New eprint is out. Multi-Verifier Keyed-Verification Anonymous Credentials.
• 2025-11-24 Post-Quantum Readiness in EdDSA Chains got accepted to FC’26 – later joined author.
• 2025-11-15 Build a tool to visualize recent results on proximity gap.
• 2025-11-10 I will be serving as a PC member at ACM CCS 2026, Applied crypto.
• 2025-09-02 Keyed-Verification Anonymous Credentials with Highly Efficient Partial Disclosure got accepted to IACR CiC, Volume 2, Issue 3.
• 2025-06-18 Awarded a Sui Foundation Academic Research grant.

Upcoming Events

• 2026-03-[02-03] To attend 4th Edition of the TUM Blockchain&Cybersecurity Salon and give a talk.

Past Events

Pls refer to CV.

Current Students

• Hossein Moghaddas (COSIC, KU Leuven), PhD co-supervisor.

Past Students

• Hossein Hafezi (New York University), Visitor -> Cambridge University
• Kiran Deep Ghosh (ISI Kolkata), master thesis supervisor -> PhD at RUB, Germany
• Raphaël Deknop (KU Leuven), Intern -> Master in Physics (KU Leuven)
• Theresa Wakonig (ETH Zurich), master thesis co-supervisor -> ETH Zurich

Extra

How to pronounce my name: First name: MAH-dee (with the emphasis on the first syllable; “MAH” as in “ma” from “mama” and “dee” as in the letter “D”). Last name: Seh-dah-GHAHT (with the emphasis on the third syllable; “Seh” as in “set”, “dah” as in “dah” from “duh”, and “GHAHT” with a hard “G” like in “go” and “hat” but with a slightly more open “a” sound)