Mingxi Ye
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Mingxi Ye 

Mingxi Ye (叢铭熙)
Postdoctoral Fellow
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

E-mail: mingxiye [AT] ust [DOT] hk
[GitHub] [Google Scholar] [Twitter]

About me

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, working with Prof. Charles Zhang. I received my Ph.D. from Sun Yat-sen University, where I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Zibin Zheng and Prof. Yuhong Nan. I used to work on software security, building automated testing and analysis tools to find bugs in blockchain systems and compilers. I am currently interested in LLMs for security and software analysis, and LLM security. I used to play CTFs and hunt bugs on Immunefi.

Education

  • Sun Yat-sen University Ph.D. in Software Engineering (Advisor: Prof. Zibin Zheng & Prof. Yuhong Nan), from Sept. 2021 to Jul. 2026.

  • Sun Yat-sen University B.Sc. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics (w/ Outstanding Graduate Award), from Sept. 2017 to Jun. 2021.

Experiences

  • Research intern in Ant Group. Working on smart contract fuzzing and bug hunting.

  • Research intern in an AI agent startup (HKUST spin-off). Working on cost-efficient coding agents.

Publications

  1. ChainDelta: Automatic Patch-Based Exploit Generation for Ethereum with Fuzzing Agents.
    Mingxi Ye, Yuhong Nan, Zhijie Zhong, Jianzhong Su, Xingwei Lin, Peilin Zheng, Zibin Zheng.
    International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering 2026 (FSE). [CCF-A].

  2. Toward Understanding Functional Bugs in EVM-Based Blockchain Systems.
    Mingxi Ye, Yuhong Nan, Jianzhong Su, Zhijie Zhong, Yuming Xiao, Peilin Zheng.
    IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 2026 (TSE). [CCF-A].

  3. Detecting State Inconsistency Bugs in DApps via On-Chain Transaction Replay and Fuzzing.
    Mingxi Ye, Yuhong Nan, Zibin Zheng, Dongpeng Wu, Huizhong Li.
    International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis 2023 (ISSTA). [CCF-A].

  4. Midas: Mining Profitable Exploits in On-Chain Smart Contracts via Feedback-Driven Fuzzing and Differential Analysis.
    Mingxi Ye, Xingwei Lin, Yuhong Nan, Jiajing Wu, Zibin Zheng.
    International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis 2024 (ISSTA). [CCF-A].

  5. FunFuzz: A Function-Oriented Fuzzer for Smart Contract Vulnerability Detection with High Effectiveness and Efficiency.
    Mingxi Ye, Yuhong Nan, Hong-Ning Dai, Shuo Yang, Zibin Zheng, Xiapu Luo.
    ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 2024 (TOSEM). [CCF-A].

  6. ParityFuzz: Finding Inconsistencies across Solidity Compilers via Fine-Grained Mutation and Differential Analysis.
    Bowei Su, Mingxi Ye, Yuhong Nan, Peilin Zheng, Zibin Zheng.
    Journal of Systems and Software 2026 (JSS).

  7. Odyssey: Hunting Smart Contract Vulnerabilities with Fine-Grained State Modeling and Exploration.
    Jianzhong Su, Mingxi Ye, Jiachi Chen, Yuhong Nan, Peilin Zheng, Tao Zhang, Zibin Zheng.
    International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering 2026 (FSE). [CCF-A].

  8. Is My RPC Response Reliable? Detecting RPC Bugs in Blockchain Client under Context.
    Zhijie Zhong, Yuhong Nan, Mingxi Ye, Qing Xue, Jiashui Wang, Long Liu, Xinlei Ying, Zibin Zheng.
    International Conference on Software Engineering 2026 (ICSE). [CCF-A].

  9. RPCSpecter: Detecting Blockchain RPC Bugs through a Specification-Driven, Constraint-Aware Fuzzing Approach.
    Yuming Xiao, Yuhong Nan, Zhijie Zhong, Mingxi Ye, Zibin Zheng.
    International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis 2026 (ISSTA). [CCF-A]. πŸ† ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award

  10. ASTRO: Detecting Access Control Vulnerabilities in Smart Contracts via Graph Similarity Comparison.
    Wei Li, Yuhong Nan, Mingxi Ye, Jingwen Zhang, Peilin Zheng, Zibin Zheng.
    IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 2025 (TSE). [CCF-A].

  11. SmartReco: Detecting Read-Only Reentrancy via Fine-Grained Cross-DApp Analysis.
    Jingwen Zhang, Zibin Zheng, Yuhong Nan, Mingxi Ye, Kaiwen Ning, Yu Zhang, Weizhe Zhang.
    International Conference on Software Engineering 2025 (ICSE). [CCF-A].

  12. V2E: Validating Smart Contract Vulnerabilities through Profit-Driven Exploit Generation and Execution.
    Jianwen Zhang, Yuhong Nan, Kaiwen Ning, Mingxi Ye, Wei Li, Yuming Xiao, Yuming Feng, Weizhe Zhang, Zibin Zheng.
    International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering 2026 (FSE). [CCF-A].

  13. DAppSCAN: Building Large-Scale Datasets for Smart Contract Weaknesses in DApp Projects.
    Zibin Zheng, Jianzhong Su, Jiachi Chen, David Lo, Zhijie Zhong, Mingxi Ye.
    IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 2024 (TSE). [CCF-A].

  14. Turn the Rudder: A Beacon of Reentrancy Detection for Smart Contracts on Ethereum.
    Zibin Zheng, Neng Zhang, Jianzhong Su, Zhijie Zhong, Mingxi Ye, Jiachi Chen.
    International Conference on Software Engineering 2023 (ICSE). [CCF-A].

Honors and Awards

Selected Academic Award

  1. ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award - 2026.

  2. Outstanding Ph.D. Graduate Award, Sun Yat-sen University - 2026.

  3. BYD Scholarship, Sun Yat-sen University - 2025.

  4. Yat-sen Scholar Award, Sun Yat-sen University - 2024.

  5. National Scholarship for Doctoral Students - 2024.

Selected Capture-The-Flag (CTF)

  1. 5th place at MetaTrust CTF - September 2023.

  2. 8th place at Numen Cyber CTF - March 2023.

  3. Winner (with Ant Group) at China Trusted Blockchain Security Attack and Defense Competition - September 2023.

Selected Web3 bugs

  1. DoS bug reported for multiple blockchain platforms (e.g., Reth, Nethermind, Avalanche).

  2. API Misbehaving bug reported for Erigon.

  3. Erroneous Execution bug reported for Polygon.

  4. Price manipulation bug reported for Asymmetry Finance.

  5. Metamorphic contract bug reported for Basin.

  6. Read-only reentrancy bug reported for Basin.

Talks

  1. The Oracle Problem in Smart Contract Testing - October 2024.
    The Decentralised Science Seminar, the University of Sydney, Remotely.

  2. Midas: Mining Profitable Exploits in On-Chain Smart Contracts via Feedback-Driven Fuzzing and Differential Analysis - September 2024.
    The 33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2024), Vienna, Austria.

  3. Detecting State Inconsistency Bugs in DApps via On-Chain Transaction Replay and Fuzzing - July 2023.
    The 32nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2023), Seattle, United States.

  4. Detection of Smart Contract Vulnerabilities - April 2023.
    University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.

  5. Software Services in Ethereum System - May 2022.
    The Ph.D. Symposium of CCF 15th International Conference on Service Science (CCF-ICSS 2023), Virtually.

Professional Services

Program Committee Member

  1. The AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Program Committee, 2027.

  2. The ACM Web Conference Program Committee, 2026.

  3. USENIX Security 2025 Artifact Evaluation Committee, 2025.

  4. The 2nd Workshop on Explainable and Reliable Software Systems (EXPRESS) Program Committee, 2026.

  5. International Conference on Blockchain and Trustworthy Systems (Blocksys), 2023.

Reviewer

  1. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE).

  2. Blockchain: Research and Applications (BCRA).