Szczepan Gurgul
AI × Blockchain Security Engineer
Distributed Systems • Protocol Engineering • AI Agents
Software engineer specializing in distributed systems, blockchain infrastructure, and AI agents. I build secure, maintainable systems and tooling - from smart contracts and DeFi primitives to performance-oriented infrastructure.
Education
M.Sc. Informatics, University of Zürich — 2026
B.Sc. Mechatronic Engineering, AGH University of Science and Technology — 2023
Stack
AI
Blockchain
Software Engineering
Programming Languages
Experience
AI × Blockchain Security Engineer — Nextrope(current)
LLM-based audit automation for smart contract security: agent workflows with tool calling, retrieval and MCP integrations, EVM bytecode interpretation, and vulnerability classification.
Graduate Researcher — Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Technologies Group — University of Zürich
Conducted research within the Blockchain & DLT Group as part of my MSc at the University of Zürich, resulting in 2 peer-reviewed papers (one published, one accepted and pending publication).
Software Developer — Kaseya
Cloud team on a Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery product: backend and frontend work, unit tests, code review, and production incident investigation.
Project Engineer Internship — TECUMEX
Embedded and commissioning intern work on marine radar systems in Dubai before moving into distributed systems.
Projects
All projects →AI Agents for MEV Extraction on Rollups
MEV platform for EVM rollups: live mainnet liquidity-pool scanner, profitability/risk/price-impact benchmarks, and a multi-agent system (Eliza OS) orchestrating strategy execution and market analysis. Presented at BCK25, Mumbai.
Shared Liquidity ZK Rollups
Two local zkSync chains connected by a hyperbridge, with Uniswap V2 forked on one for token swaps. Simulated multiple IP sources and parallel WebSocket clients to maximize throughput and avoid HTTP overhead, benchmarking 72 TPS.
Decentralized Sports Betting Platform
dApp with a Node.js backend for API handling and database management. Integrated Chainlink Oracles for real-time odds and outcomes, with end-to-end flow testing. Won the BCOLN Challenge Award for Best Distributed dApp, 2024.
Selected Achievements
🎓 Graduated with Honors (Magna Cum Laude)
University of Zürich — M.Sc. Informatics (2026). Graduated magna cum laude for academic excellence.
📄 2 Research Papers & 2 International Conference Presentations
Co-authored two blockchain research papers on AI agents for MEV and ZK rollups (one published, one accepted and pending publication). Presented the work at international conferences in Zürich, Switzerland (BCK24) and Mumbai, India (BCK25).
🦄 Uniswap v4 Hooks Incubator
Selected for the Uniswap v4 Hooks Incubator (Atrium Academy), protocol engineering cohort focused on designing, implementing, and testing production-ready Uniswap v4 Hooks. Cohort starts in October 2026.
🏆 BCOLN Challenge Award — Best Distributed dApp
Winner of the BCOLN Challenge Hackathon (2024) for building a decentralized sports betting platform, competing against 10 teams across Zürich.
Publications
📄 AI Agents for MEV Extraction on Rollups
The Physical Society of Japan — accepted, pending JPS Conference Proceedings publication · 2026
Co-authored with researchers at University of Zürich.
- Built a research MEV bot, running against live mainnet liquidity pools for EVM rollups.
- Used deterministic economics with CPMM/CLMM formulas to calculate MAV. Created stochastic economics to model sequencer/mempool uncertainty.
- Implemented and compared MEV strategies: cross-DEX arbitrage, sequencer spamming, sandwich attacks
- Run a multi-agent setup to orchestrate the MEV bot and gather market insights
- Benchmarked PnL, execution cost, and risk under realistic L2 constraints (fees, price impact, ordering)
📄 Scaling DeFi with ZK Rollups
2025 IEEE International Conference on Distributed Ledger Technologies (ICDLT) · 2025
Co-authored with researchers at University of Zürich.
- Deployed a private ZK rollup including sequencer and prover on zkSync (Elastic Chain stack)
- Forked Uniswap V2 as the AMM under test
- Built a load balancer / tx generator to stress-test throughput
- Benchmarked SNARK proofs, TPS (71 vs ~15-20 on mainnet), soft & hard finalities, and gas patterns