Hi Zcash community! I’d like to nominate myself to serve on the Zcash Community Grants committee.
My work focuses on security research, technical advisory, applied cryptography, and evaluating emerging tech infrastructure. I currently work as a technical advisor with a venture studio, where I help assess technical architectures, integrations, deployment readiness, and infrastructure risk across blockchain and AI-related systems. Alongside that work, I do independent research and writing focused on blockchain security, AI agents, applied cryptography, and emerging infrastructure risks across ecosystems including Ethereum, Solana, and EVM L2s.
A major part of my work involves evaluating whether technical ideas are realistic, sustainable, and genuinely useful beyond the initial excitement cycle. I believe that perspective is increasingly important for ecosystem grants. Strong ecosystems are not built only through good ideas, but through disciplined execution, clear incentives, sound technical foundations, and long-term thinking. If elected, I would approach proposal evaluation with a focus on technical credibility, ecosystem impact, sustainability, and thoughtful capital allocation.
I’m particularly interested in proposals related to security, privacy-preserving infrastructure, developer tooling, education, research, and applications that make privacy easier to use in practice. I also believe user experience matters enormously for privacy adoption. Privacy-preserving systems should not feel inaccessible or overly technical for everyday users, and I’m interested in supporting applications, wallets, payment experiences, exchanges, creative consumer-facing ideas, and other tooling that make strong privacy guarantees usable through intuitive, well-designed interfaces.
My work has included public educational writing, technical research, and applied cryptography projects, including educational resources featured on Ethereum.org and research referenced in broader U.S. public policy discussions around digital asset infrastructure. I’ve built educational cryptography tooling and visualization projects, including BLSlab (a cryptography toolkit focused on helping make advanced cryptographic concepts more accessible) alongside post-quantum cryptography visualization and educational tooling exploring systems such as Dilithium, Falcon, and SPHINCS+. I’ve also spent time researching security considerations surrounding AI agents and autonomous systems interacting with blockchain infrastructure. Beyond research and education, I care deeply about the long-term resilience of systems. I believe privacy-preserving infrastructure will become increasingly important as digital systems, AI, and financial infrastructure become more interconnected. Privacy should be treated as foundational infrastructure that protects individual autonomy and participation.
I want to be transparent that I currently maintain independent consulting, advisory, research, and services work across the broader crypto ecosystem.
I’m applying because I believe privacy-preserving technology matters deeply, and because I think I can contribute thoughtful technical judgment, independent evaluation, and a fresh perspective to ZCG during an important stage of ecosystem growth. <3
Portfolio / Writing: https://valens.me