Emin Gün Sirer, world renowned computer scientist, is the CEO of Ava Labs. The company has now launched Avalanche, the fastest smart contracts form in the blockchain industry. Coming off the back of $60 million of funding, Avalanche competes with the Ethereum ecosystem.
Research for Avalanche began at Cornell University, where Sirer has been a professor of computer science for over 20 years. Sirer’s cutting-edge work has seen him win a National Science Foundation Career award. PopSci has named him one of their Brilliant Ten.
Sirer’s latest project is truly innovative: “Avalanche is built on the first major breakthrough in decentralized systems since Satoshi Nakamoto released the first bitcoin white paper in 2008,” he says.
Emin Gün Sirer: computer scientist
Sirer’s life has been devoted to furthering the field of computer science. After graduating from the Robert College in Turkey, Sirer enrolled at Princeton University where he studied Computer Science for his undergraduate. He then completed his Phd in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington.
Sirer worked a few jobs before becoming an associate professor at Cornell University. These included AT&T Bell Labs and NEC, a Japanese multinational IT company. He has co-developed the SPIN operating system, the Nexus OS effort and in 2003 he released his own Karma system, a pioneering cryptocurrency that predates Bitcoin.
In 2017 he founded the bloXroute Labs, a blockchain distribution network that optimizes performance.
Emin Gün Sirer: life at the center
In his spare time, Sirer enjoys sailing, backcountry skiing and photography. But sometimes his work can get him close to hot water.
In 2016, Sirer found himself at the epicenter of an emergency. He had been tracking flaws in a new system called a decentralized autonomous organisation (DAO). Finding security issues, he urged investors to stop buying into DAO until they could be fixed. On Monday, June 13th, 2016, laid out with a cold from his then 1-year-old son, he discovered a bug in the code that put $250 million of investors’ money at risk.
Sirer sounded the alarm, but his concerns when unheeded. It was too late. What ensued was one of the biggest digital heists in history. The hacker made off with $67 million. Of the mystery hacker or hackers, Sirer wryly remarked: “Great, wonderful, he should cash out.”
Read the full story on Bloomberg here.
Emin Gün Sirer: Ava labs
Sirer’s latest Avalanche is the first decentralized smart contracts platform built to address the scale of global finance. In fact, it represents a giant breakthrough in blockchain technology, handling 4,500 transactions per second.
On launching in 2020, investors from over 100 countries snapped up the 72 million native AVAX tokens available in less than five hours. In other words, a $42 million public token sale.
With a $60 million funding injection upon launch, Sirer’s goal for Avalanche is straightforward, yet ambitious: “To digitize all of the world’s assets [and at the same time create] a frictionless world by redefining the way people build and use finance applications.”
To keep up to speed with all the latest from Ava Labs, follow them on Twitter @avalabsofficial, Facebook and Linkedin.
