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Rich Warner
Full stack developer creating products on the new Internet.
Rich Warner is a software engineer currently working at the Ethereum Foundation. He joined the organization in September 2022 and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah.1
Professional Experience
Rich collaborates with the Privacy & Scaling Explorations Team at the Ethereum Foundation, focusing on showcasing zero-knowledge privacy technologies. His responsibilities include:
- Developing smart contracts and subgraphs
- Contributing to front-end design and implementation
- Working with technologies such as Solidity, JavaScript, Next.js, and Tailwind CSS1
Prior to joining the Ethereum Foundation, Rich had a diverse career in technology and marketing:
- He worked on an on-chain video platform for DAOs at ETHGlobal, where his team was a finalist at ETHMexico1
- He held leadership positions in marketing at Wintrust Mortgage and Veterans First Mortgage
- He worked as a software engineer at various companies, including New Freedom Mortgage and LeadMAXX1
Education
Rich has pursued multiple educational paths:
- He is currently completing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at Oregon State University, expected to graduate in 20241
- He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School
- He studied Psychology with a minor in Computer Science at the University of Utah1
Skills and Interests
Rich is experienced in full-stack development and has a particular interest in blockchain technology and Web3. He has skills in:
- Smart contract development
- Zero-knowledge proofs
- Solidity programming
- JavaScript and front-end frameworks1
Rich describes himself as a "full stack developer creating products on the new Internet," indicating his passion for innovative web technologies and blockchain-based solutions.1
Highlights
Picture a world where you could prove aspects of your identity, creditworthiness, experience, ownership, and even your DNA without anyone having to see your documents.
I was lucky enough to spend the last two weeks learning from some of the leading talent in Zero Knowledge Proving Systems, and working to complement such systems with machine learning that can bring eyes, ears, and judgment to the blockchain.
For a fun and simple use case, we worked on an image recognition prototype that can administer a decentralized scavenger hunt. You take a photo when you find a hidden object, and if the object is recognized as the right one, a proof from your device is verified by an on-chain proving circuit, allowing you to automatically receive prize money without revealing the photo to anyone. It’s planned to get its first real-life use at an upcoming event in Montenegro.
We're all accustomed to giving away more info than we need to on a daily basis, like when we show an ID with our full address and birth date. These technologies bring exciting potential for disruption in how we provide information, improving our interactions in finance, healthcare and more. Won’t that be nice?
“Trust but verify.” Isn't that a nice way of just saying “verify”?
Imagine you’re a part of a group that needs to choose someone to administer a fund. You want to do so by holding a vote, but in a way in which only members of the group can vote, and each can only vote once. You don’t want any centralized data to exist at any point about who voted for whom, and you don’t want to have to rely on anyone to administer the vote honestly.
Not possible in web2. Already here in web3.
It’s great seeing the way web3 is bringing autonomous systems and economies that empower new efficiencies and trustlessness by using technology to remove the need for central sovereigns.
I was fortunate to work with the Ethereum Foundation’s Privacy & Scaling Explorations team on a project to showcase applications of zero-knowledge privacy technology at the recent Devcon in Bogotá. We made an app that allowed (only) conference participants to contribute anonymously to an art canvas, and to vote on their favorites. After a couple months’ work on the application and its smart contracts, I got to hang out in the Temporary Anonymous Zone (TAZ) at the conference talking to people about this technology and watching our social experiment play out. (The picture shown here is one of the anonymous-collaborator canvases.)
One thing that struck me as I talked to people from all corners of the planet was the salient role that corruptible forces (and real worries around who gets access to what power and information) play for many. I saw sincere anxiety in their eyes as they talked about government institutions, crime organizations, corporate power, and the like.
You can imagine the power of these new technologies for empowering gated, anonymous participation in things such as voting, whistleblowing, research -- and allowing people to go about their lives.
Validity rollup and zero-knowledge technologies are becoming a reality faster than expected (whoa, a technology moving faster than expected?) and they will allow us to do things we just couldn’t do before. It will be truly interesting to see the real-world applications that emerge.
#web3 #zeroknowledge
