Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn is a pioneering computer security specialist, self-proclaimed cypherpunk, and founder of Zcash, one of the world’s leading privacy-focused cryptocurrencies. With a career spanning decades, he has been instrumental in advancing decentralized systems, cryptography, and digital privacy. He is the creator of the Tahoe Least-Authority File Store (Tahoe-LAFS), a secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant filesystem, and the designer of Zooko’s Triangle, a foundational concept in distributed identifier systems. He co-founded the Electric Coin Company (ECC), which launched and stewarded the Zcash protocol, leveraging zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-SNARKs) to enable private, transparent transactions. Zooko has also contributed to key cryptographic standards, including BLAKE2 and BLAKE3, and is currently Chief Product Officer at Shielded Labs. A respected voice in the blockchain and privacy communities, he continues to shape the future of self-sovereign digital systems.