Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Co-founder and Startup of You author, who sits on the boards of Mozilla Corporation, Swipely, Kiva, and Airbnb joins Blockstream’s Board of Directors as Blockstream raises at least $15.18m in a funding round that is still open. The information was reveled in a recent Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC) filing.
Blockstream is “a private company with a very public mission: the transformation of technologies of trust for the benefit of all.” On commit 5620e43 made October 22, 2014, Blockstream released the Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains whitepaper. A paper that proposes a new technology called pegged sidechains. Pegged sidechains ‘enable bitcoin and other ledger assets to be transferred between multiple blockchains’ in a push towards a more decentralized and scalable Bitcoin.
Of course that if it hopes to succeed, Blockstream must have a strong team of people at it’s core. Meet the Blockstream founders: Pieter Wuille, Ph.D., Jonathan Wilkins, Jorge Timon, Erik Svenson, Gregory Maxwell, Austin Hill, Francesca Hall, Mark Friedenbach, Alex Fowler, Matt Corallo, and Adam Back, Ph.D (see below for brief bios and visit Blockstream online for more).
The Blockstream team is highly technical with collective experience in cryptography, venture creation, and Bitcoin development. Adam Back, the creator of hashcash, is on the team, and the ability of Blockstream to attract Reid Hoffman to their Board of Directors is a strong indicator of a solid team.
Brief Bios
Pieter Wuille, Ph.D.
Bitcoin core developer and cryptographer with experience as a Site Reliability Engineer at Google.
Jonathan Wilkins
18 year veteran of the information security industry who released the first Windows NT password cracker and helped secure systems at Microsoft, MySpace, Zynga, Yelp, and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies.
Jorge Timon
Software engineer who proposed and co-designed Freicoin and contributed to the design of Ripple v0.6 (pre-Ripple Labs).
Erik Svenson
10 year veteran of the finance industry with experience as a co-founder, consultant, and employee of multiple start-ups.
Gregory Maxwell
Bitcoin core developer and key architect of the two-way peg that makes sidechains possible.
Austin Hill
Founded Total.Net, co-founded Zero-Knowledge Systems, is an active investor, and social entrepreneur focused on meaningful games and gift economies.
Francesca Hall
Team coordinator, expert in complex systems, chaos theory, system automation, and large scale organizational challenges.
Mark Friedenbach
Software engineer, Bitcoin core developer, and former NASA-Ames contractor.
Alex Fowler
Former Chief Privacy Officer at Mozilla and who has almost 25 years of experience with open source technologies, data security, and Internet policy and user rights.
Matt Corallo
Bitcoin core developer who contributed to BitcoinJ and core testing infrastructure.
Adam Back, Ph.D.
Inventor of the hashcash proof-of-work and decentralized mining, applied cryptographer, and former Chief Security Officer of Picorp.
Visit Blockstream online for more information, or check out the Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains whitepaper.
Photo Source: Blockstream online