Home
News
- 1 Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn is an American Colorado-based computer security specialist and the owner of Zcash.
- 2 Zcash is a privacy-intent cryptocurrency offering all the conveniences of Bitcoin with full encryption to safeguard individual’s financial data.
Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn is a computer security proficient, cypherpunk, and CEO of the Electric Coin Company (ECC). ECC is a for-profit institution leading the expansion of Zcash, a digital asset that offers solitariness and anonymity for crypto users. Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn is also known for his profession on Tahoe-LAFS, a protected, decentralized filesystem, and ZRTP, a secure voice communication protocol.
Background of the Owner of Zcash
Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn was born Bryce Wilcox on May 13, 1974, in Phoenix, Arizona. He embraced the name Zooko in college and later switched his last name to Wilcox-O’Hearn after getting matched. Zooko has been curious about cryptography and computer science since he was a teenager, and trained himself how to program by reading textbooks and publications. He also followed the University of Arizona but dropped out after two years to follow his affection for technology.
Journey of Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn with Crypto
Zooko was interested in Crypto from a very early age and worked in different areas to gather knowledge and understanding of the field. His first ever interaction with cryptocurrency was in 1996 when Wilcox worked on the first cryptocurrency, Digicash. He later entered the MojoNation project, a peer-to-peer approach that aimed to build a decentralized marketplace for digital interests and services. Zooko also became the lead designer of Mnet, a follow-on network that operated erasure coding to broadcast data securely and efficiently.
In 2001, he described Zooko’s triangle, a schema that relates three desirable properties of identifiers: human-meaningful, decentralized, and secure. In 2004, Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn founded Least Authority Enterprises, a company that provides security consulting and software development services. He also created Tahoe-LAFS, a secure, decentralized file system that uses erasure coding and encryption to store data across multiple servers.
To polish his knowledge and intelligence in relation to Crypto, Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn continuously worked with different firms, fields, and sectors.
Zooko launched Zcash, an anonymous cryptocurrency that uses zero-knowledge proofs to hide the identities and amounts of transactions in 2016. He presently serves as the CEO of the ECC, which oversees the expansion and maintenance of Zcash. Zooko also authorized the Rand Corporation to examine whether unidentified coins were disproportionately described in criminal dealings; the study uncovered they were not.
Zooko is a visionary and pioneer in the sector of cryptography and computer security and believes that Zcash has the potential to offer privacy and freedom to individuals in the digital age. Apart from cryptocurrency, Zooko is also interested in social responsibility and environmental sustainability. He recently announced a donation of 1% of ECC’s profits to mitigate carbon emissions and related issues. Also, he is continuously working for the improvement of Zcash and expanding its adoption around the world.
Conclusion
Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn is one of the popular names in the crypto landscape due to its involvement and introduction to ZCash. He is also involved in other projects such as BLAKE3, a new hash function that is faster than BLAKE2; SPHINCS+, a stateless hash-based signature scheme; and Halo 2, a recursive proof system that can enable scalable zero-knowledge proofs.
Mr. Pratik chadhokar is an Indian Forex, Cryptocurrencies and Financial Market Advisor and analyst with a background in IT and Financial market Strategist. He specialises in market strategies and technical analysis and has spent over a year as a financial markets contributor and observer. He possesses strong technical analytical skills and is well known for his entertaining and informative analysis of the Financial markets.
