AZTEC Strengthens its Research Team
We’re delighted to announce that Ariel Gabizon has joined the company as Chief Scientist.
One of the foremost experts in his field, Ariel brings an exceptional track record of major contributions to zero knowledge cryptography. Working with our CTO Zac Williamson, Ariel will help accelerate AZTEC’s mission to bring fast privacy to Web3.0.
Biography
Ariel earned his PhD in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute. After research roles at Columbia University in the US and Technion University in Israel, he was cryptographer and engineer at Zcash, and then researcher at Protocol Labs (the team behind IPFS).
Recent zero knowledge output includes AuroraLight and PLONK. His extensive research output can be found here.
Universal SNARKs
Ariel first collaborated with Zac in the publication of PLONK (Permutations over Lagrange bases for Oecumenical Non-interactive arguments of Knowledge) in August 2019.
This represented a big breakthrough in Universal SNARK cryptography, defining a fresh model for arithmetic circuits, and bringing an order-of-magnitude improvement in Universal SNARK efficiency.
Ariel presented the paper at the Simons Institute last September:
https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FdHo56MhQlHk%3Ffeature%3Doembed&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdHo56MhQlHk&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FdHo56MhQlHk%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube
In the space of just four months, PLONK has already spawned significant follow-on research and extensions — notably TurboPLONK, SLONK, RedShift and SuperSonic.
Efficient Universal SNARKs allow privacy and scaling of Web3.0 with at most one MPC Setup — they are critical to enabling us to:
- make private transactions that can be generated on all user devices (including phones, tablets etc)
- efficiently execute these transactions on public networks
With Ariel on the team, we can’t wait to make big strides towards faster privacy in 2020.
About AZTEC
AZTEC is a scaleable privacy network on Ethereum — we enable easy integration of privacy for developers, so you can get on and build your dapp whilst safeguarding your users’ important transaction data.
Join the Team
We’re on the lookout for talented engineers and applied cryptographers. If joining our mission to bring scalable privacy to Ethereum excites you — get in touch with us at hello@aztecprotocol.com.
