For the Namada RPGF, I am nominating Benedikt Bünz, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Espresso Systems.
Benedikt is a researcher interested in applied cryptography whose work has for many years primarily been focused on enhancing the privacy, usability and security of blockchain protocols.
He has published numerous papers that contribute to the field of privacy technology. Some notable examples include
- VERI-ZEXE: Decentralized Private Computation with Universal Setup
- Zether: Towards Privacy in a Smart Contract World
- Bulletproofs: Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More
- also see corresponding presentation
At Espresso Systems, Benedikt and his team are committed to creating better infrastructure for how we transact and interact online, which fundamentally includes establishing the properties required to protect users’ privacy. One of their flagship products, CAPE (Configurable Asset Privacy for Ethereum), is dedicated to offering privacy options for sending, receiving and holding assets on Ethereum.
For anyone reading this who’s interested in zero knowledge proofs and their implications, I’d also like to recommend a podcast on Zero Knowledge, Scaling and Privacy with Benedikt Bünz.
Nominee Contact
Mail: benedikt at cs.stanford.edu
Twitter: @benediktbuenz
My contact (mail): jiyomi at myfastmail.com