Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn | |
|---|---|
 Wilcox-O'Hearn in 2017 | |
| Born | Bryce Wilcox May 13, 1974 |
| Education | University of Colorado Boulder (BS, Computer Science, 1998) |
| Known for | Zcash, Zooko's triangle, BLAKE2 |
| Parents |
|
| Website | zooko on X |
Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn (born Bryce Wilcox; 13 May 1974 in Phoenix, Arizona), is an American Colorado-based computer security specialist, self-proclaimed cypherpunk, and ex-CEO of the Electric Coin Company (ECC), a for-profit company leading the development of Zcash.[1]
Biography
[edit]He is known for the Tahoe Least-Authority File Store (or Tahoe-LAFS), a secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant filesystem[2][3] released under GPL and the TGPPL licenses. He is the creator of the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence (TGPPL).[4]
Wilcox-O'Hearn is the designer of multiple network protocols that incorporate concepts such as self-contained economies and secure reputation systems.[5] He is a member of the development team of ZRTP[6] and the BLAKE2 cryptographic hash function.[7][8]
Zooko's triangle is named after Wilcox-O'Hearn, who described the schema that relates three desirable properties of identifiers in 2001.[9]
Wilcox-O'Hearn was founder and CEO of Least Authority Enterprises in Boulder, Colorado[1] where he is now an advisor.[10]
Zooko was a developer of the MojoNation[11] P2P system and lead developer of the follow-on Mnet network,[12] and a developer at SimpleGeo.[13]
Wilcox-O'Hearn worked on the first cryptocurrency, DigiCash, with David Chaum in 1996.[14] In January 2009, Wilcox was among the first people to publicly write about Bitcoin, and Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto subsequently linked to Wilcox's blog post from the Bitcoin project's website.[15][16] He is a member of the founding team of the anonymous cryptocurrency Zcash, which launched in 2016.[14] He served as CEO of the affiliated Electric Coin Company until December 18, 2023, when he was succeeded by Josh Swihart.[17][18] Wilcox later commissioned the Rand Corporation to study whether anonymous coins were disproportionately represented in criminal transactions; the study found they were not.[16]
Additionally Wilcox-O'Hearn was one of the co-creators of Blake3.[19]
References
[edit]- 1 2 DJ Pangburn (2013). "Introducing the PRISM-Proof Storage Device". motherboard. Vice. Archived from the original on 28 August 2013.
- ↑ Wilcox-O'Hearn, Zooko (14 February 2009). "ANNOUNCING allmydata.org "Tahoe", the Least-Authority Filesystem... : Tahoe-LAFS". Launchpad. Retrieved 20 April 2009.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link) - ↑ Orlowski, Andrew (22 April 2009). "Why Whack-a-Tard won't save music". The Register. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link) - ↑ Yee, Ka-Ping (2008). An Open Source License Idea (PDF). PyCon.
- ↑ Ferne, Peter (21 November 2008). "Collaborative Filtering and Social Capital". World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 28 December 2013.
- ↑ zfoneproject (2010). "About The Zfone™ Project". Archived from the original on 10 April 2018. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
- ↑ "BLAKE2 website". BLAKE2 Team. 19 November 2012. Archived from the original on 1 November 2018. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
- ↑ Jean-Philippe Aumasson; Samuel Neves; Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn; Christian Winnerlein (2013). "BLAKE2: simpler, smaller, fast as MD5" (PDF). Applied Cryptography and Network Security. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 7954. IACR. pp. 119–135. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-38980-1_8. ISBN 978-3-642-38979-5. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 December 2013. Retrieved 28 December 2013.
- ↑ Ferdous, Md. Sadek; Jøsang, Audun; Singh, Kuldeep; Borgaonkar, Ravishankar (2009). "Security Usability of Petname Systems" (PDF). Identity and Privacy in the Internet Age. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 5838. pp. 44–59. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.617.1149. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-04766-4_4. ISBN 978-3-642-04765-7.
- ↑ Staff (29 July 2000). "Get Your Music Mojo Working". Wired Magazine. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
- ↑ "Cutting edge P2P, crypto comes to your PC". The Register. 25 February 2002. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017. Retrieved 10 August 2017.
- ↑ "Post-Funding, SimpleGeo Pounces on a Six Aparter, A Hacker, And Beta Keys". TechCrunch. 14 December 2009. Archived from the original on 27 July 2017. Retrieved 25 June 2017.
- 1 2 O'Hearn, Zooko (29 December 2017). "Cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, etc.: revolutionary tech?". 34C3 (video). Chaos Computer Club. Archived from the original on 20 June 2025. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
- ↑ Hackett, Robert (18 December 2017). "Zcash: Meet Zooko Wilcox, the Man Building a Better Bitcoin". Fortune.
- 1 2 del Castillo, Michael (6 May 2020). "Cypherpunk Zooko Wilcox Aims To Bring Anonymous Zcash To Law-Abiding Masses". Forbes. Archived from the original on 31 January 2025. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
- ↑ "Welcoming a new season at ECC: A message from the Bootstrap board of directors". Electric Coin Company. 18 December 2023. Retrieved 30 August 2025.
- ↑ Kubinec, Jack (18 December 2023). "Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox steps down as CEO of Electric Coin Co". Blockworks. Retrieved 30 August 2025.
- ↑ "Blake3 github". GitHub.
