San Francisco, CA – o1Labs, the software development company building Coda Protocol, announced that it has established a Testnet Advisory Board, and will welcome two industry leaders, Zaki Manian and Luke Youngblood, as technical advisors.
o1Labs also announced the start of the next phase of Coda Protocol’s testnet in beta, starting with release 2.1, which will allow users to operate nodes on a cryptocurrency network utilizing their succinct blockchain technology.
Coda Protocol, the first succinct blockchain that can remain decentralized at scale, has seen rapid progression and advanced the state-of-the-art in significant ways. Some of Coda’s breakthroughs include:
- Usage of recursive zk-SNARKs to facilitate a succinct blockchain
- Production implementation of a modified Ouroboros Proof of Stake consensus algorithm
- Development of snarky, an OCaml DSL for writing zk-SNARKs
- First marketplace for zk-SNARK proofs, the ‘SNARKetplace’
The Testnet Advisory Board is in keeping with the collaborative nature of the blockchain industry. According to Emre Tekisalp, Director of Business Development at o1Labs, ‘We’re seeing a cambrian explosion of open source and peer-to-peer networks. As the industry iterates on what will become mission critical infrastructure for the internet, it’s imperative that we collaborate.’
Zaki Manian is Head of Research at Tendermint, which pioneered a new standard in the way Proof of Stake networks are launched with the first adversarial, incentivized testnet, ‘Game of Stakes’ on the Cosmos network. He is also the co-founder of iqlusion, which provides state-of-the-art secure infrastructure for next generation blockchain networks. According to Manian, ‘Coda Protocol’s public testnets and demonstration of succinct blockchains are phenomenal technical achievements. The technology has profound implications for scalability and interoperability.”
Luke Youngblood is the founder and CEO of Blockscale, an early pioneer of blockchain and crypto technologies. In 2018, he helped launch the Tezos network by creating the staking infrastructure for the Tezos Foundation, becoming the largest decentralized proof of stake validator in the world overnight. “I’m thrilled to join Coda Protocol as a testnet advisor. Developers have built some amazing decentralized apps, but to date, these apps have always required some centralized infrastructure. I’m excited about the potential of Coda to enable developers to build truly decentralized apps.”
‘We are thrilled to welcome Zaki and Luke, both of whom bring a wealth of expertise and are well respected in the industry, into our community. The Testnet Advisory Board will allow us to iterate even more quickly towards a mainnet candidate,’ said Evan Shapiro, co-founder and CEO at o1Labs.
About o1Labs
o1Labs is a software development company based in San Francisco, CA. Founded in 2017, they are building Coda Protocol, the first succinct, constant-sized blockchain.
About Mina Protocol
Mina is the world’s lightest blockchain, powered by participants. Rather than apply brute computing force, Mina uses advanced cryptography and recursive zk-SNARKs to design an entire blockchain that is about 22kb, the size of a couple of tweets. It is the first layer-1 to enable efficient implementation and easy programmability of zero knowledge smart contracts (zkApps). With its unique privacy features and ability to connect to any website, Mina is building a private gateway between the real world and crypto—and the secure, democratic future we all deserve.
