I'm departing ECC, but it's going to be fine!

[ebfull]

I’m making the difficult decision to leave ECC and work full time on Zcash research independently, with a focus on scalable payments. This is the same focus I’ve had for Zcash since the beginning, and I intend to see it to fruition.

After nearly a decade of working at ECC this is a huge change for me. I have worked with some of the best cryptographic engineers in the world while at this company. I’m actually not sure why I was so lucky to be in this position.

This is a newspaper clipping I found in my mom’s belongings after she passed away last year. She was proud of me. My parents did their best to encourage and support me and gave me a lot of autonomy that helped me blossom as a person and collect some fantastic memories.

Some of you have noticed a radio silence from me in the last several months, or even the last several years. I got married. I travelled. I thought deeply about what I want to work on. I care about Zcash, just as I always have.

My career has been a series of happy accidents and lucky breaks; so much deus ex machina that I’ve been tempted to solipsism. I have no university pedigree or even prior work experience. This last decade has been a personal miracle.

I joined ECC because I had been researching zk-SNARKs, was passionate about private cryptocurrency, and just happened to land on a panel discussing consensus algorithms in Las Vegas just as I had turned 21. I bar hopped and was introduced to Zooko in the process.

As an aside, take pictures. I used to think pictures were redundant and obnoxious: why interject your memories with a phone screen and an artificial smile? As I’ve gotten older, and especially as memories fade, you find so much value in these mementos.

The photo above is from us in Pacifica working during the day we launched Zcash. It was a long and stressful process for all of us. I spent day and night implementing the first zk-SNARK circuit that was deployed in production, which I am very proud of. I spent so much time designing and implementing and coordinating the trusted setup involved in our launch that my roommates thought I was on the verge of a panic attack.

I hadn’t travelled much in my life at that point. I remember dinner with Paige and talking about how we both liked Tool. The room I stayed in had a bidet in it and I hadn’t used one before and ended up spraying myself in the face with it on accident. I remember a homeless person randomly throwing bar stools at me in San Fransicso. I sent a raunchy meme to the group chat for the trusted setup thinking that it was my roommates, so the company got me a work phone so I wouldn’t humiliate myself like that again.

These are all silly memories. The best ones are the ones I can’t share.

One of my favorite memories was hanging out with str4d and Brian Warner at PETS in Minneapolis. We designed Sapling there. Scribbling on whiteboards and pacing around thinking about ways to break it. I learned more in those 24 hours than I’ve ever learned in my life.

It wasn’t a complete accident that I ended up at ECC. I grew up hacking and programming and ran into someone studying cryptography at his university when I was about 13 years old. He would write quizzes and give me homework. He made me fall in love with cryptography to the point that I decided to stop even going to high school. I’ll talk with him later today to show my appreciation – I wouldn’t be here without him.

I was at a conference with Ariel Gabizon when we realized that there was an issue in BCTV14 that meant unlimited counterfeiting was possible in Zcash. I spent 8 months fixing this and grew many white hairs. Afterwards I worked on zk-SNARK research, scribbling equations on napkins on an airplane to design Sonic, and months later discovering the technique in Halo that has resulted in dozens of academic papers so far.

I’ve not only worked with geniuses (like str4d, daira emma, kris, ying tong, and many others) but I’ve been fortunate enough to meet heroes of mine over the years. People I read about as a kid: Goldwasser, Boneh, Groth. People I wouldn’t have dreamed of spending time with: Buterin, Wuille, and so on.

I’ll never forget what ECC did to make almost a third of my life into a magical experience.

While I’m leaving ECC, I’m not leaving Zcash. I’ll be collaborating with ECC engineers and anyone else in the community that wants to make Zcash succeed. I’ll see you soon.

[joshs]

I’m both sad and excited about this change. I’m sad because Sean, who is an amazing person, is leaving the employ of ECC, but excited because he is being set free to do independent long-term research work on Zcash scalability. In this new community role, he’ll be able to focus his time, wherever it leads, and outside the constraints of ECC’s engineering responsibilities and roadmap.

ECC is delivering performant, secure and private payments at scale. I expect his work will dovetail nicely with our own R&D work and we plan to continue to collaborate with him, and bring his ideas to life. While Sean is not replaceable, we need to add to our engineering team and will soon start a search. Please reach out if you are interested.

For those that don’t know him, here’s a little more background on Sean:

Sean is one of the world’s leading cryptographer-engineers. As a founding member of ECC (then known as Zcash Company), he played a pivotal role in launching Zcash and implementing the first practical application of zero-knowledge proofs, That’s an impressive feat in and of itself, but a little less than three years later, in 2019, Sean discovered something that would break new ground — again.

His discovery was a technique for creating practical, scalable and trustless proving systems, ending an almost decade-long pursuit by the cryptography community. Halo, or Halo2 as it’s now called, eliminates the trusted setup, reducing a protocol’s attack surface and improving assurance about supply integrity. Halo was implemented in Zcash in 2021.

In addition to this breakthrough, Sean has been instrumental in delivering Zcash-related innovations like the encrypted memo field, unified addresses, and viewing keys. He’s helped solve Zcash security challenges, remediate critical vulnerabilities (like the major counterfeiting bug in 2019, and the memory exhaustion bug in 2023), build and launch six major Zcash upgrades, and he has been a linchpin in the world-class ECC engineering team that includes other heavyweights Daira-Emma Hopwood, Str4d, and Kris Nuttycombe.

The Zcash community is lucky to have Sean, and we’re excited to collaborate with him in his continued research.

[dismad]

Good luck on your next adventure!

[kworks]

Great efforts!
It would be wonderful if someone such as you, could write a book about the paths you have taken, the paths not taken. What types of teams work, skills needed in effective teams. Ideas of innovation, brief history of the beginning of private electronic value. I think if you could take the time for this time capsule, it might help the next astronaut.
Good vibes between each step

[pacu]

Sean, whatever goals you’ve set up for yourself, I’m sure you will achieve them.

Indeed good things have happened to you. Sometimes, it can be just “luck”. I believe that most of the times it is what we inspire in others. The first time I met you and the other ECCers, I said to myself “I’m with good people”. You’ve accomplished which was deemed impossible with great folks along the way. I don’t think that’s just luck, but a correlation to you being someone that inspires others to do good and who has a great talent that you share with others.

That’s what many would call “a gift” or “a blessing”. A talent can also mean a restless mind and the hope of many. Which can be a very heavy load on anyone. Now I learn that when we worked together at ECC you were enduring with difficult personal matters, it makes me sad because I feel I maybe was not attentive or supportive enough and could have been a better colleague, yet again it reinforces my initial “I’m with good people” belief.

Sos buena leche Sean! (You are good people Sean!) And It makes me really happy that you will be still around continuing to building the Zcash you want to see in the world. All the best for what to come. Onward!