Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn

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Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
2017-12-29 Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn 8102.jpg
Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn at 34C3 in 2017
Born
Bryce Wilcox

(1974-05-13) May 13, 1974 (age 51)
Phoenix, Arizona
EmployerElectric Coin Company
Parents
  • Ron Wilcox (father)
  • Olene Harris (mother)
Website zooko on Twitter

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

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] 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. [15] [16] . Wilcox later commissioned the Rand Corporation to study whether anonymous coins were disproportionately represented in criminal transactions; the study found they were not. [17]

Additionally Wilcox-O'Hearn was one of the co-creators of Blake3. [18]

References

  1. 1 2 DJ Pangburn (2013). "Introducing the PRISM-Proof Storage Device". motherboard. Vice. Archived from the original on 28 August 2013.
  2. ↑ Wilcox-O'Hearn, Zooko (14 February 2009). "ANNOUNCING allmydata.org "Tahoe", the Least-Authority Filesystem... : Tahoe-LAFS". Launchpad. Archived from the original on 20 December 2012. Retrieved 20 April 2009.
  3. ↑ Orlowski, Andrew (22 April 2009). "Why Whack-a-Tard won't save music". The Register. Archived from the original on 5 May 2013. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
  4. ↑ Yee, Ka-Ping (2008). An Open Source License Idea (PDF). PyCon.
  5. ↑ 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.
  6. ↑ zfoneproject (2010). "About The Zfone™ Project". Archived from the original on 10 April 2018. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
  7. ↑ "BLAKE2 website". BLAKE2 Team. 19 November 2012. Archived from the original on 1 November 2018. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
  8. ↑ 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.
  9. ↑ 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.
  10. ↑ "About Us". Least Authority Enterprises. 2017. Archived from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 9 November 2020. moved to Berlin in 2016
  11. ↑ Staff (29 July 2000). "Get Your Music Mojo Working". Wired Magazine . Retrieved 3 June 2021.
  12. ↑ "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.
  13. ↑ "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.
  14. 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.
  15. ↑ "Welcoming a new season at ECC: A message from the Bootstrap board of directors". Electric Coin Company. 18 December 2023. Retrieved 30 August 2025.
  16. ↑ Kubinec, Jack (18 December 2023). "Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox steps down as CEO of Electric Coin Co". Blockworks. Retrieved 30 August 2025.
  17. ↑ 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.
  18. ↑ "Blake3 github". GitHub .
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