# Towards Federated Long-Tailed Graph Learning: An Energy-Guided Dual Decoupling Approach

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.24237 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24237/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jun 2026.

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

- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Open Graph Benchmark: Datasets for Machine Learning on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00687/) (2020)
- [Decoupling Representation and Classifier for Long-Tailed Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.09217/) (2019)
- [FedProto: Federated Prototype Learning across Heterogeneous Clients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00243/) (2021)
- [A critical look at the evaluation of GNNs under heterophily: Are we really making progress?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11640/) (2023)
- [Deep Gaussian Embedding of Graphs: Unsupervised Inductive Learning via Ranking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.03815/) (2017)
- [Revisiting Heterophily For Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07606/) (2022)
- [GraphSMOTE: Imbalanced Node Classification on Graphs with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.08826/) (2021)
- [Subgraph Federated Learning with Missing Neighbor Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13430/) (2021)
- [Federated Learning with Label Distribution Skew via Logits Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00189/) (2022)
- [Inferring Networks of Substitutable and Complementary Products](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.08839/) (2015)
- [Federated Learning on Heterogeneous and Long-Tailed Data via Classifier Re-Training with Federated Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13399/) (2022)
- [Personalized Subgraph Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10206/) (2022)
- [FedGTA: Topology-aware Averaging for Federated Graph Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11755/) (2024)
- [LTE4G: Long-Tail Experts for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10205/) (2022)
- [FedTAD: Topology-aware Data-free Knowledge Distillation for Subgraph Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14061/) (2024)
- [AdaFGL: A New Paradigm for Federated Node Classification with Topology Heterogeneity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11750/) (2024)
- [Fed-GraB: Federated Long-tailed Learning with Self-Adjusting Gradient Balancer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07587/) (2023)
- [OpenFGL: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Federated Graph Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16288/) (2024)
- [Federated Graph Learning with Structure Proxy Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09393/) (2024)
- [Accelerating Molecular Graph Neural Networks via Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14818/) (2023)
- [Mastering Long-Tail Complexity on Graphs: Characterization, Learning, and Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09938/) (2023)
- [Towards Federated Long-Tailed Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14988/) (2022)
- [S2FGL: Spatial Spectral Federated Graph Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02409/) (2025)
- [You Are Your Own Best Teacher: Achieving Centralized-level Performance in Federated Learning under Heterogeneous and Long-tailed Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06916/) (2025)
- [FedLF: Adaptive Logit Adjustment and Feature Optimization in Federated Long-Tailed Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12105/) (2024)
- [Classifying Long-tailed and Label-noise Data via Disentangling and Unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11414/) (2025)
- [GraphFedMIG: Tackling Class Imbalance in Federated Graph Learning via Mutual Information-Guided Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10471/) (2025)
- [Fine-Tuning Impairs the Balancedness of Foundation Models in Long-tailed Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.02247/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated Graph Learning facilitates collaborative graph modeling across distributed clients while preserving data privacy. However, real-world data categories frequently exhibit long-tailed distributions. Such statistical scarcity severely degrades performance in two ways: it biases the global model toward majority classes, and it structurally isolates minority nodes by submerging them in heterophilic, head-dominated neighborhoods. While existing methods attempt topology-agnostic statistical compensations, they often fail under data scarcity. Instead of recovering tail nodes, they overfit the structural noise from adjacent dominant classes, leading to representation degradation. To address these limitations, we propose FedEPD, a framework built on a dual decoupling paradigm that separates topological purification from semantic recalibration. Specifically, FedEPD utilizes distribution-aware Dirichlet energy pruning to filter spatial heterophilic edges. It then overcomes Non-IID distribution shifts by extracting robust global prototypes from topologically central nodes, which are incorporated into local representations via a spatial low-pass prototype injection. Furthermore, a two stage alternating optimization strategy strictly protects majority decision boundaries while improving minority accuracy. Extensive experiments demonstrate that FedEPD achieves state-of-the-art performance across diverse long-tailed benchmarks, yielding absolute improvements of up to 4.97% in Accuracy and 5.48% in Macro-F1.