# One Node Per User: Node-Level Federated Learning for Graph Neural Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19513 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19513/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 30)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [Neural Message Passing for Quantum Chemistry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.01212/) (2017)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Geom-GCN: Geometric Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05287/) (2020)
- [Convolutional Networks on Graphs for Learning Molecular Fingerprints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.09292/) (2015)
- [Inverting Gradients -- How easy is it to break privacy in federated learning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.14053/) (2020)
- [Multi-scale Attributed Node Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13021/) (2019)
- [Split learning for health: Distributed deep learning without sharing raw patient data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00564/) (2018)
- [Fake News Detection on Social Media: A Data Mining Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.01967/) (2017)
- [SplitFed: When Federated Learning Meets Split Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12088/) (2020)
- [Distributed learning of deep neural network over multiple agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.06060/) (2018)
- [Wiki-CS: A Wikipedia-Based Benchmark for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02901/) (2020)
- [Anti-Money Laundering in Bitcoin: Experimenting with Graph Convolutional Networks for Financial Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02591/) (2019)
- [Subgraph Federated Learning with Missing Neighbor Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13430/) (2021)
- [Federated Graph Classification over Non-IID Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13423/) (2021)
- [Privacy Preserving Vertical Federated Learning for Tree-based Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.06170/) (2020)
- [VAFL: a Method of Vertical Asynchronous Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.06081/) (2020)
- [Detailed comparison of communication efficiency of split learning and federated learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.09145/) (2019)
- [Cross-Node Federated Graph Neural Network for Spatio-Temporal Data Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05223/) (2021)
- [Locally Private Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05535/) (2020)
- [GraphFL: A Federated Learning Framework for Semi-Supervised Node Classification on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04187/) (2020)
- [Vertically Federated Graph Neural Network for Privacy-Preserving Node Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11903/) (2020)
- [Fi-GNN: Modeling Feature Interactions via Graph Neural Networks for CTR Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.05552/) (2019)
- [Personalized Subgraph Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10206/) (2022)
- [Hybrid Approach of Relation Network and Localized Graph Convolutional Filtering for Breast Cancer Subtype Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05859/) (2017)
- [Distributed Training of Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.06281/) (2020)
- [A Coupled Design of Exploiting Record Similarity for Practical Vertical Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06312/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [A Comprehensive Data-centric Overview of Federated Graph Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16541/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) training often necessitates gathering raw user data on a central server, which raises significant privacy concerns. Federated learning emerges as a solution, enabling collaborative model training without users directly sharing their raw data. However, integrating federated learning with GNNs presents unique challenges, especially when a client represents a graph node and holds merely a single feature vector. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for node-level federated graph learning. Specifically, we decouple the message-passing and feature vector transformation processes of the first GNN layer, allowing them to be executed separately on the user devices and the cloud server. Moreover, we introduce a graph Laplacian term based on the feature vector's latent representation to regulate the user-side model updates. The experiment results on multiple datasets show that our approach achieves better performance compared with baselines.