Eli Ben-Sasson
Eli Ben-Sasson (Hebrew: אלי בן-ששון) is an Israeli computer scientist known for his work on zero-knowledge proofs. He is also the co-founder and CEO of StarkWare Industries, and a former professor at Technion.
Career
[edit]Ben-Sasson studied theoretical computer science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning his PhD in 2001.[1]
In 2014, Ben-Sasson and other researchers collaborated on Zerocash, a design for a private cryptocurrency based on zero-knowledge proofs. Ben-Sasson later became a founding scientist of Zcash, which was based on the Zerocash design.[2][3][1]
In 2018, Ben-Sasson and other researchers invented STARKs, a type of zero-knowledge proof which has applications in blockchain privacy and scalability.[4][5][6][7] Later that year, Ben-Sasson co-founded StarkWare Industries, which aims to scale blockchains using STARK techniques.[5][8] Ben-Sasson later became CEO after Uri Kolodny stepped down from the role in 2024.[9]
In April 2019, Technion sued Ben-Sasson along with co-founder Michael Riabzev, alleging that StarkWare Industries was based on intellectual property developed at the university.[10] The institute demanded 50% of Ben-Sasson's stake in the company. Ben-Sasson maintained that the company merely used employees' knowledge, but no invention belonging to the Technion.[11] In 2020 the two sides reached an agreement and Ben-Sasson left the Technion.[12][13]
References
[edit]- ^ a b "Eli Ben-Sasson". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
- ^ Sasson, EB; Chiesa, A; Garman, C; Green, M; Miers, I; Tromer, E; Virza, M (2014). Zerocash: Decentralized anonymous payments from bitcoin. 2014 IEEE symposium on security and privacy. pp. 459–474.
- ^ "ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency - IEEE Spectrum". spectrum.ieee.org.
- ^ Ben-Sasson, Eli; Bentov, Iddo; Horesh, Yinon; Riabzev, Michael (November 1, 2018). "Scalable, transparent, and post-quantum secure computational integrity" – via Cryptology ePrint Archive (eprint.iacr.org).
- ^ a b "Israeli blockchain firm develops 'fire prevention' tech to thwart FTX-style fraud | The Times of Israel".
- ^ Bambysheva, Nina. "Ethereum Scaling Company StarkWare Quadruples Valuation To $8 Billion Amid Bear Market". Forbes.
- ^ "Israel's Ethereum scaling tool Starknet Prover will be made open source". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. February 5, 2023.
- ^ Mohammed, Kiran Mathur (July 29, 2021). "Eli Ben-Sasson develops technology to make blockchain 20,000 times cheaper". Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
- ^ Allison, Ian (January 11, 2024). "StarkWare CEO Uri Kolodny Steps Down Due to Family Health Issue". www.coindesk.com.
- ^ "Technion sues own lecturer, claims intellectual property infringement". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. April 23, 2019.
- ^ Dobrovitsky, Lital (22 April 2019). "Technion Suing Senior Professor for 50% of His Company Stake". CTECH - www.calcalistech.com. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
- ^ Dor, Ofir (25 March 2021). "Blockchain scalability co Starkware raises $75m". Globes.
- ^ Amitai Ziv. "Caring for Your CryptoKitties Has Never Been Easier, Thanks to These Israelis". Haaretz. Retrieved 7 January 2023.