One more year, blockchain is written from Málaga
We wrap up another edition of the Blockchain Technologies course at the University of Málaga with that familiar mix of pride and anticipation that always comes with endings that are, in truth, new beginnings. A new group of students has fully immersed themselves in the Web3 ecosystem, working side by side with leading companies in the sector, tackling real-world challenges, and delivering innovative solutions.
This year, we’ve had the support of companies that are setting the pace in the industry. We’re especially excited to welcome two new partners: catapulta, led by David Racero, and Unknown Gravity, with Jesús Sánchez. We’re truly grateful to both for their involvement and for opening their doors to our students, giving them the chance to learn from the inside how real Web3 projects are built.
And of course, our thanks to those who continue to believe in this course year after year: Clovr Labs, with Aleksandar Yabalkarov; the NICS Lab group at the University of Málaga; and Fortris, with Antonio Tovar, who once again hosted our final presentations in their offices.
At Decentralized Security, we’ve also been fortunate to continue playing an active role in organizing the course, something we always approach with great enthusiasm. Helping to build that bridge between the university and the professional ecosystem is, for us, a fundamental part of the work. This commitment is embodied especially by Isaac Agudo, the course director and CEO of Decentralized, who has been driving these initiatives for years with the same passion he brings to his research and teaching.
Six proyects
This year, six projects developed by the students were presented. Each team delved deep into technologies ranging from Bitcoin and Ethereum to Avalanche, Raptoreum, and the Lightning Network. Here’s a summary of each one.
Unknown Gravity – Raptoreum Digital Asset Marketplace
Alberto Zaragoza and Álvaro Jiménez, under the mentorship of Jesús Sánchez, explored Raptoreum, a lesser-known blockchain that forks from Dash (and ultimately from Bitcoin), which offers an interesting proposition: it enables the creation, transfer, and management of digital assets and NFTs directly on-chain, without relying on smart contracts for basic functionality.
The first part of the project involved building an API client library for interacting with Raptoreum nodes via JSON-RPC from scratch. The library, now available to the community as an NPM package (raptoreum.js), supports operations such as balance management, transaction sending, and NFT control. Building on this foundation, they developed a full marketplace using Node.js (backend with Sequelize and MySQL, including encrypted wallet data custody) and React with Chakra UI v3 (frontend).
raptoreum.js library
Decentralized Security – Faillapop Side Project for Web2 Vulnerability Education
Gloria Cano and Reda Toujgani worked with us on developing an extension of Faillapop.
Faillapop is an educational project driven by our community and developed collaboratively by José Carlos Ramírez and Marco López, who also mentored Gloria and Reda in their work. Faillapop simulates a real-world project deployed on Ethereum, but intentionally filled with vulnerabilities. Its goal is to provide an advanced environment that mirrors the complexity of production-level projects, allowing developers and auditors to practice, identify flaws, and test their Web3 security knowledge.
Until now, Faillapop has focused on vulnerabilities specific to the blockchain world, especially those found in smart contracts written in Solidity. Gloria and Reda’s work expands this scope by introducing a new angle: educating about Web2 vulnerabilities that still persist in modern Web3 applications. These types of flaws often go unnoticed, yet have been responsible for multiple severe exploits in decentralized protocols.
To tackle this, the students began by researching real incidents where classic web development bugs led to fund losses in Web3 systems. Based on that research, they selected a set of representative vulnerabilities and built a frontend for Faillapop that intentionally includes them. The result is a side project of Faillapop focused specifically on Web2 vulnerabilities within a Web3 context.
Thanks to this project, we now have an ideal platform for running Web3 security workshops from a holistic perspective, one that doesn’t overlook the origins of many vulnerabilities at the interface or client layer. It also enables independent learning for those looking to sharpen their auditing skills, as they can analyze the repository in search of vulnerabilities and develop their own proof of concepts to exploit them. An excellent way to keep promoting education and security within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Clovr Labs – Improving UX in Lightning with Replace-by-Fee support
José Canto, Pedro Scarpati, and Rubén Rodríguez joined Clovr Labs to implement a key enhancement in NodeGuard: support for Replace-by-Fee (RBF), a feature that allows users to increase the fee of an already broadcasted Bitcoin transaction, thereby speeding up its confirmation.
NodeGuard is an open-source project designed to simplify treasury operations for Lightning nodes, with a strong focus on both security and user experience. It enables efficient management of Lightning treasury funds while adhering to the principles of separation of duties and least privilege, eliminating the need for an internal hot wallet on the node and separating key management from the actual node operators.
Thanks to this new feature, it is now possible to “bump the fee” of Bitcoin transactions within NodeGuard, accelerating confirmation times during network congestion. This improvement contributes directly to the ElenPay stack.
Special thanks to Marcos Fernández for his technical leadership and to Aleksandar Yabalkarov for his continued coordination.
Catapulta – Automatic Multichain Event Indexing
Roberto Sánchez, Alejandro Cortés, and Ángel Bayón collaborated with catapulta to build Catapulta Autoindexer, an automatic, multichain blockchain event indexing system.
As of today, anyone looking to query events across different networks typically faces a chaotic mix of block explorers, self-hosted nodes, custom solutions, and scattered data. The students tackled this problem with their proposal: a single system to index events from multiple chains, accessible via REST API, and GraphQL, all wrapped in a fast, user-friendly interface.
The tech stack is built with scalability in mind: a backend using Bun and Elysia, with PostgreSQL and Rindexer for efficient processing, and a React frontend featuring real-time charts.
Fortris – Parliamentary Voting System on Ethereum
Piedad Paredes, Pablo Mora, and Luis Emilio Vasquez collaborated with Fortris to develop a digital voting system for parliaments, built on Ethereum and integrated with WalletConnect.
Each representative can cast their vote from their own device by signing digitally without exposing their private key, while only the chairperson has the authority to initiate the voting process. The entire procedure is recorded on a smart contract deployed on Sepolia, ensuring traceability, authenticity, and transparency.
NICS Lab – Blockchain and Cybersecurity for Threat Intelligence Sharing
Jacobo Elicha and Javier Parada, members of the NICS Lab research group, worked on the infrastructure of TenguCTI, a platform designed to securely and privately share cyber threat intelligence.
To achieve this, they built a custom network using Avalanche as the L1 and deployed the core smart contracts of the TACo protocol, which ensures that only authorized entities can share information in a traceable manner. The entire infrastructure was tested in a controlled environment with validator nodes running on AWS, laying the foundation for a pioneering solution in the field of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI).
🌱 One Step Closer to the Future
The outcomes of this year’s edition reflect not only the students’ technical growth, but also their teamwork, adaptability, and strategic thinking. Congratulations to all the participants, the collaborating companies, and the faculty involved for continuing to build bridges between the university and the blockchain industry.
See you next year, with more ideas, more code, and an even stronger drive to make a difference.