Ariel Gabizon, a distinguished cryptographer, coauthor of PLONK, and pioneer of zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, has rejoined Aztec Labs as its Chief Scientist.
Ariel brings over 14 years of experience in mathematics and has played a key role in major advancements in ZK technology. He began with a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute. During his postdoctoral tenure, a serendipitous encounter with the Bitcoin whitepaper ignited his passion for applied cryptography.
This led him to join Eli Ben-Sasson's lab, where he made significant contributions to the early development of STARKs when they were known as probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs). He was involved in the first deployment of ZK technology at Zcash and coauthored two pivotal papers that made SNARK setups practical and viable.
In addition to his groundbreaking work on the PLONK paper, co-authored with Zachary Williamson, Ariel also helped discover a crucial counterfeiting vulnerability stemming from the underlying zk-SNARK originally used by Zcash. Since then, he has been advancing the state of the art in polynomial commitment schemes (SHPLONK, FFLONK), lookup protocols (Plookup,cq) and folding schemes (ProtoGalaxy).
With Devnet now live and private, client-side smart contract execution with public verifiability possible, Ariel is rejoining us at a pivotal moment for Aztec, our upcoming privacy-first L2 on Ethereum. His expertise and vision will be vital in continuing to drive our efforts to build a more private, secure, and efficient blockchain ecosystem. As Chief Scientist, Ariel will spearhead our research and development efforts, focusing on enhancing the privacy and scalability of Aztec. Ariel’s expertise will not only bolster our existing work but pave the way for innovative advancements in ZK technology. You can read more about the work Ariel is doing at Aztec via his recently published paper, Private Proofs of Stack and Contract Execution Using Protogalaxy.
Ariel is speaking at the Verifiable Summit during Warsaw Blockchain Week on September 4th, 2024. This event will provide a platform for Ariel to discuss recent progress on Fast Fourier Transforms from the Galois FFT and circle STARK papers. Get your discounted ticket using FRENSOFAZTEC.
We are confident that Ariel’s experience and expertise in mathematics, cryptography and ZK technology will propel us to new heights. We invite our community to follow us on X for regular updates.
