founding engineer at O(1) Labs • zkSNARK blockchain
i was a founding engineer at O(1) Labs, working on Mina protocol during its birth. mina uses recursive zkSNARKs to solve one of distributed ledger technology's fundamental problems: the ever-growing size of blockchain history.
what is mina?
mina is a hash-linked distributed proof system that leverages advanced constructive mathematics—specifically, recursive zkSNARKs—to make blockchain history manageable. instead of every node needing to store and verify the entire blockchain history, mina uses zero-knowledge proofs to compress the entire blockchain down to a constant size: about 22KB, regardless of how many transactions have occurred.
this is achieved through recursive composition of zkSNARK proofs. each new block contains a proof that the previous state was valid, and that proof itself contains a proof of the state before it, and so on. this means you can verify the entire blockchain by checking a single, constant-size proof.
my contributions
as a founding engineer, i worked across the stack during mina's early development. this was the period when the protocol was being designed and the first implementations were taking shape. the work involved:
- protocol design and implementation in OCaml
- understanding and working with zkSNARK circuits
- debugging distributed systems behavior
- performance optimization of proof generation
- contributing to the consensus mechanism implementation
technical challenges
building mina meant working at the intersection of cryptography, distributed systems, and programming language theory. zkSNARKs are computationally expensive, so every operation had to be carefully designed. the recursive composition of proofs required deep understanding of the underlying mathematics.
OCaml was the implementation language, chosen for its strong type system and suitability for writing correct distributed systems. the codebase used advanced type system features to ensure protocol correctness at compile time where possible.
the bigger picture
mina represents an application of serious mathematics to practical problems. the use of recursive zkSNARKs isn't just clever—it fundamentally changes what's possible in blockchain design. by making the blockchain constant-size, mina enables true decentralization: anyone can run a full node on a phone or low-power device.
this work connected to my broader interests in formal methods and making computers actually work correctly. zkSNARKs are, in essence, cryptographic proofs of computation, and building systems around them meant thinking deeply about correctness, verification, and trust.