Interested in growing the world’s lightest, most accessible blockchain?
To create a vibrant decentralized network and open programmable currency — so anyone with a smartphone can participate, build, exchange and thrive.
Mina is a layer one protocol designed to deliver on the original promise of blockchain — true decentralization, scale and security. But rather than apply brute computing force, Mina uses advanced cryptography and recursive zk-SNARKs.
Mina is an inclusive open source protocol uniting teams and technicians from San Francisco and around the world.
Joseph is an assistant professor at NYU. His research has spanned a variety of topics in cryptography and security including HTTPS and web security, passwords and authentication, cryptocurrencies, end-to-end encrypted communication tools, and side-channel cryptanalysis. He is co-author of the popular textbook "Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies" and co-taught the first MOOC on cryptocurrencies. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and BS and MS degrees in computer science and cryptography from Stanford University.
Paul Davison co-founded Clubhouse, an audio-based social media app where users can join in or listen to people across unlabeled chat rooms. He also co-founded and served as CEO of CoinList - the leading platform for high quality, compliant token sales and airdrops. Prior to CoinList, Paul was the Founder/CEO of Highlight (acquired by Pinterest), an EIR at Benchmark Capital, and a VP at Metaweb (acquired by Google). He holds a BS from Stanford University and an MBA from Stanford Business School.
Akis is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at NYU's Courant Institute, where he is advised by Professors Joseph Bonneau and Yevgenyi Dodis. His research revolves around cryptography, privacy, and security, currently focusing on the privacy and scalability issues affecting cryptocurrencies. He also works on differential privacy and its applications to distributed systems and private learning. Akis holds an MSc in theoretical computer science from the University of Toronto and a BSE from Princeton University.
Zaki Manian wears many hats in the blockspace. Zaki is an active contributor to Cosmos and related protocols. He was a founding team member at Cosmos, and is an expert in cryptography and distributed systems. Zaki is excited about extending access and availability of secure computing to as many people as possible. Zaki has been active in the blockchain space since 2013.
Amit Sahai is a Professor of Computer Science at UCLA, Fellow of the ACM, and Fellow of the IACR. His research interests are in security, cryptography, and theoretical computer science. He is the co-inventor of Attribute-Based Encryption, Functional Encryption, Indistinguishability Obfuscation, author of over 100 technical research papers, and invited speaker at institutions such as MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley. He has also received honors from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Okawa Foundation, Xerox Foundation, Google Research, the BSF, and the ACM. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from MIT and served on the faculty at Princeton before joining UCLA in 2004.
Luke 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. Since then, Blockscale has successfully generated over 20 million XTZ in baking rewards and operates highly available API endpoints for Tezos that are used by major wallet providers. Luke currently works as a staff software engineer at Coinbase Custody, where he launched Tezos Staking Rewards.
Izaak Meckler is a mathematician and computer scientist. Most recently, he was a PhD student studying cryptography at UC Berkeley. Prior to that, he worked as a software engineer at trading firm Jane Street, and has contributed to numerous open source projects including the Elm compiler.
Claire's career has focused on using technology to reimagine financial services and building community to increase engagement and opportunities for individuals. Prior to joining the team at O(1) Labs, she was at Ripple, where she led a number of strategic projects and served as the main liaison to the XRP community. Prior to that, Claire was an early employee at SoFi, were she was involved in the day-to-day operations across all functions of the marketing team during four years of hyper growth, including leading their member engagement strategy. Earlier in her career, she designed and mplemented a community-based micro grant program in rural India that has sponsored 300+ women to attend university. Originally from rural Pennsylvania, Claire graduated with distinction from Dartmouth College (A.B.) and holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Emre's career has focused on bringing new economic opportunities to societies using the power of technology. Before O(1) Labs, he spent two years at Coinbase's Business Development team where he led a number of strategic programs during a period when the company grew 10x. Before Coinbase, Emre was a Product Manager at Intel's wearable devices group. Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, Emre has an MBA degree from Columbia University.
Brandon Kase loves functional programming. He was first introduced to it while pursuing his BS in computer science at Carnegie Mellon. He has worked as a software engineer for Highlight (acquired by Pinterest), Pinterest, Facebook, and Mozilla. Brandon is excited about the safety and clarity strong statically typed functional programming techniques can bring to the software industry. He also enjoys proselytizing, so you may find him speaking at a conference near you.
Prior to joining O(1) Labs, Joon Kim served as the general counsel of Terra, which is a blockchain technology company focused on algorithmic stablecoins with primary operations in Asia. Before that, he was Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Lightyear Capital, a private equity firm based in New York City. He also served as Assistant General Counsel and Vice President at Goldman Sachs for three years, advising its asset management division. He started his career at international law firms, including Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He attended Cornell Law School and New York University. He is admitted to practice law in the state of New York.
Ben’s career has spanned finance, technology, and strategy. Prior to O(1) Labs, he spent four years working as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he focused on corporate strategy for the world’s largest financial institutions. During his time at grad school, Ben worked at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange in the Strategy team. Originally from Sydney, Australia, Ben has an MBA degree from Stanford University, and an MPA degree from Harvard University.
Aneesha's career in software engineering has spanned a wide range of technology companies from biotech startup to big enterprise. She has an MSE in computer engineering from the University of Michigan and most recently came from an identity company as an Engineering Manager. Her primary background is in QA, so believes in delivering high quality, scalable and maintainable software. She loves team building and working with individuals to achieve their goals.
Nathan is a passionate, self-taught programmer who loves programming languages and paradigms and using high-level abstractions to create high-performance systems. Some of his favorite projects have been developing an array programming languages that targeted GPUs, an Elixir DSL for service buses, a MySql binary log deserializer, and a VR-based window manager on Linux. Most recently, Nathan was building a unique educational program to teach people how to program from the ground up using simplified programming languages and a simple virtual machine.
Christine is an early contributor in the community with broad experience in multidisciplinary engineering teams. She previously worked for global firms in the US, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Hong Kong. She believes that we can take more ownership of our lives than ever before by using blockchain technology. She supports the community and Mina by combining their efforts in achieving a decentralized future.
Deepthi is a functional programming enthusiast and software engineer. In her recently completed master's work, Deepthi designed GitQL, a novel embedded DSL for querying textual changes in software repositories. Her interests span programming languages and program analysis. Deepthi holds an MS in computer science from Oregon State University and a BE from Visvesvaraya Technological University.
Sherry is a marketing and communications professional who enjoys telling stories that resonate. Her previous experiences have been in the hardware (semiconductor) space, but she is really interested in how blockchain can solve problems by disrupting the status quo. She is excited to work on developing blockchain technology that will open up more opportunities to more people. Sherry holds a BA in Communications/International Studies from Northwestern University.
Brian McKenna is passionate about building products that allow people to self-organize and take back control and trust over their digital lives. Brian holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and spent over a decade in fintech, specializing in trading systems. More recently, he spent four years working in the blockchain industry with IOHK.
Martin is an avid programming and technology enthusiest. He started with O(1) Labs as an intern and has since been focused on making applications that help enable Mina to grow and develop. Martin enjoys working with new technologies and learning as much as he can about the ever growing blockchain industry.
Having being involved in the blockchain sector for 5 years hands on, I imagine no other area or industry to work in. The online movement by projects and individuals only continues to grow. I found Mina and the team to be the most appealing, constructive and positive. Helping towards the growth and education of zk-SNARKS within the MINA ecosystem and beyond.
Crystal Pham graduated from UC Davis with a degree in Psychology and a minor in English. Crystal started her career as a paralegal and volunteered with local community organizations. She is excited to see Mina Foundation grow and is proud to be a part of its growth.
Vanishree is a theoretical and applied cryptographer with deep experience in industry and academia. She earned her PhD at UCLA through her work on zk-proofs, multiparty computation, hashing, and pseudorandom functions, among other projects. She then worked in industry at Xerox PARC and Intertrust Technologies. Vanishree enjoys developing cryptographic solutions for real-world challenges and communicating intuitive explanations of complex cryptography concepts.
Kate has made a career of building people systems and strategies that balance business goals and objectives, corporate culture, and employee experience. She has a Bachelor’s in Business, a Master’s in Human Resources & Labor Relations, and a Juris Doctor. She left a traditional legal career to work with people systems at a tech startup in Detroit and has been passionate about driving change in people operations ever since.
I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in a variety of fields and in different countries and cultures. Throughout these experiences I have always found myself gravitating towards areas where I can work with many kinds of people to accomplish ambitious goals. Discovering the online world of open-source software, cryptocurrency and blockchain was like arriving on a new planet for me. So alien, and yet so fundamentally the same. With having such a great number of facets to explore and experiment with I think this will keep me busy for a long time to come!
Andrea graduated from the University of Florida with a Master in International Business and a BS in Marketing and minor in Innovation. She then went on to work as marketing manager for a technology-based golf venue, Topgolf. During her time at Topgolf she began to grow an interest in blockchain technologies as she helped her family grow their crypto mining project based in her hometown, Caracas, Venezuela. Now Andrea looks forward to making meaningful contributions in the blockchain era by being part of the O(1) Labs team, especially in regards to web privacy.
Nacera has had a career spanning startups, medium sized companies, and corporations. After earning her BS and MS from IAE in Lille, France, Nacera moved to San Francisco. Over the next decade, she worked with Bleacher Report (through growth from 10 to 60 employees and an acquisition by Turner), Mokum Solutions, Sephora, Venture Beat, AMSI, Oracle, and a software sales business which she helped start up and scale.
Matthew Ryan is a self-taught programmer with a strong interest in computer-aided theorem proving, formal program verification, and functional programming. He has been involved with several open-source projects, and passionately believes in the open-source philosophy. He has a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Warwick, U.K., where he studied cryptography.
Joseph loves cryptography, decentralized systems and security. Most recently, he was a principal software engineer at Akamai developing Secure Web Gateway technology. Prior to that, he developed a MITM https proxy for Bloxx Ltd and studied for a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, specializing in decentralized P2P systems. He also contributed as a research assistant at the File Systems and Storage Lab, SUNY Stonybrook and holds a BS in Computer Science from NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
Paul is a functional programmer and researcher. In the academic realm, he's followed his interest in PLs, type systems, and formal verification through collaborations with INRIA, the MIT PLV Group, and NICTA. He also worked on the initial implementation of Alacris, a cryptocurrency solution layered on top of existing blockchains. He holds a PhD in computer science from Northeastern University.
Jiawei loves writing interpreters and type checkers. He received his BS in computer science from Indiana University, and he's fascinated by categorical semantics and dependent type theory. Currently, he is implementing a toy dependently typed language called Pie.
Andrew is a blockchain enthusiast and technologist that has been working for crypto startups since 2016 when he received a BA in Computer Science from Boston University. Since joining O(1) Labs he has been focused on making Mina networks easier to deploy, test, and scale so that we can fulfill the promise of the world's lightest blockchain.
It’s hard to quantify, but it’s not hard to see: in any community, culture is everything. It’s the values that drive us. It’s how we see the world and how we show up. Culture is who we are and becomes what we create.
Above all, we respect each other. That’s why we stand for equality and fairness. Why we’re committed to decentralization. And why we strive to always be inclusive and accessible.
It’s our obsession to understand and solve. Our attraction to big questions and impossible problems. Our love of collaboration and exploration. It’s our imagination, at work.
We demand the best of ourselves. Elegant solutions. Symphonic systems. Technical beauty. We’re committed to creating tech people can depend on. We enjoy the process and deliver results.
We’re all about being there for our community. Empowering people with helpful information. Sharing where we are. Owning our mistakes. And serving our vision with humility.
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