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Jae Kwon | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Occupation | Software engineer |
| Known for | Tendermint, Cosmos, Gno.land |
Jae Kwon is an American software engineer who created Tendermint, the first consensus protocol to apply Byzantine fault tolerant agreement to a proof of stake blockchain,[1] and who initiated the Cosmos network.[2]
Education and early career
[edit]Kwon graduated from Cornell University in 2005 with a bachelor's degree in computer science.[2][3] After graduating he worked in Silicon Valley as a programmer and engineer,[2] including as lead mobile developer at Yelp, where he built the company's first iPhone application.[3]
Tendermint
[edit]In 2014 Kwon published Tendermint: Consensus without Mining, proposing that a blockchain be secured by a Byzantine fault tolerant voting protocol among validators instead of by proof of work. Validators post a bond of the native token; a validator that signs conflicting blocks forfeits the bond, so that equivocation is punishable rather than merely unrewarded.[4]
The design was subsequently adopted by Ethereum. In the 2017 paper specifying Casper, Ethereum's proof-of-stake finality gadget, Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith write that "repurposing BFT algorithms for proof of stake was first introduced by Tendermint" and that "Casper follows this BFT tradition, though with some modifications."[1]
In 2018 Kwon, Ethan Buchman and Zarko Milosevic published a formal specification of the protocol with proofs of its safety and liveness properties.[5] The protocol has also been independently model checked.[6]
Cosmos
[edit]Kwon co-founded All in Bits, Inc. (later Tendermint Inc.) with Buchman to develop the protocol, and from 2014 the two worked on Cosmos, a network of interoperable application-specific blockchains described as an "internet of blockchains".[2][7] Kwon stepped down as the company's chief executive in 2020.[7]
NewTendermint and Gno.land
[edit]In 2022 Kwon founded NewTendermint to develop Gno.land, a smart contract platform whose contracts are written in Gno, a deterministic interpreted variant of the Go language, and published on-chain in source form.[8] According to the company, Gno.land's production network launched in September 2026, following a public auction of the GNOT token in July 2026 that raised US$1.18 million at $0.0645 per token.[9]
References
[edit]- 1 2 Buterin, Vitalik; Griffith, Virgil (2017). "Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget". arXiv:1710.09437 [cs.CR].
Repurposing BFT algorithms for proof of stake was first introduced by Tendermint, and has modern inspirations such as [Algorand]. Casper follows this BFT tradition, though with some modifications.
- 1 2 3 4 Hamacher, Adriana (2019-04-19). "The discovery that led Jae Kwon to build the Cosmos blockchain". Decrypt.
- 1 2 Kwon, Jae. "About". jaekwon.com. Retrieved 2026-09-18.
- ↑ Kwon, Jae (2014). "Tendermint: Consensus without Mining" (PDF).
- ↑ Buchman, Ethan; Kwon, Jae; Milosevic, Zarko (2018). "The latest gossip on BFT consensus". arXiv:1807.04938 [cs.DC].
- ↑ "Formal Specification and Model Checking of the Tendermint Blockchain Synchronization Protocol" (PDF). OASIcs, Formal Methods for Blockchains (FMBC 2020). Schloss Dagstuhl.
- 1 2 "What Is Going On With Jae Kwon and Cosmos?". CoinDesk. 2020-02-04.
- ↑ "Jae Kwon Returns to 'NewTendermint' to Battle for the Soul of Cosmos". CoinDesk. 2022-05-25.
- ↑ "Gno.land Mainnet Is Live: NewTendermint Puts Readable Go Code On-Chain" (Press release). New Tendermint LLC. 2026-09-18 – via EIN Presswire. Syndicated at apnews.com.