Alin Tomescu

The “official” statement…

The “official” statement…

I was born and raised in Pitești, a small city in Romania. I moved to the US in 2008 to attend college.

I was always fascinated with computers: playing games on them, fixing them & programming them.

I like to read and write. In fact, you can see some of my writing on this website and on Decentralized Thoughts.

I am currently the Head of Cryptography at Aptos Labs.

Before Aptos Labs, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher and then a Research Scientist at VMware Research.

Before VMware, I was a cryptography PhD student at MIT, advised by Srini Devadas.

Before MIT, I was building tamper-proof clouds and end-to-end encrypted outsourced file storage at Private Machines.

…and some of my research

My papers, posts, talks, the “cryptomat” and this call for research best reflect my research interest.

But, if you’re looking for a list, I’ve led (and thoroughly enjoyed) research on:

  1. keyless blockchain accounts
  2. anonymous cryptocurrencies
  3. Herkle trees, or homomorphic Merkle trees: AMTs and Hyperproofs
  4. constant-sized vector commitments
  5. fast threshold BLS signatures
  6. Verkle trees
  7. transparency logs
  8. append-only logs on top of Bitcoin

I’ve also helped with, although not led, research on

The truth

Alin is a prolific slav-squatter.

In his free time, he likes to play piano, ride motorcycles, and lift things up and put them back down again.

Slowly…

He also enjoys travelling, but only to destinations with total solar eclipses.

Naturally, he dislikes clouds.

Please join him in Antarctica, in 2021; or, in Winnemucca, Nevada on October 14th, 2023; or, in Austin, Texas, on April 8th, 2024 Spain, on August 12th, 2026.

Alin has an amazing superpower which only manifests during total solar eclipses: no matter how much he plans, he will find himself in the one spot where the eclipse is covered by clouds.

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