david wong

Hey! I'm David, cofounder of zkSecurity and the author of the Real-World Cryptography book. I was previously a crypto architect at O(1) Labs (working on the Mina cryptocurrency), before that I was the security lead for Diem (formerly Libra) at Novi (Facebook), and a security consultant for the Cryptography Services of NCC Group. This is my blog about cryptography and security and other related topics that I find interesting.

!(Spotting the promising cryptography-related start ups) posted January 2019

In my free time in the last years, I have helped (for free) some VCs and friends to figure out what are good opportunities in the cryptography field. I'm at an excellent position to see what is serious cryptography, and even what a promising start up looks like. This is because my day-to-day job is to audit them.

It turns out that it is often quite easy to quickly spot the bad grapes by noticing common red flags. Here's a list of key words that you should probably stay away from: patented, proprietary protocol, one-time pad, AES-256, unbreakable, post-quantum, ICO, supply-chain, AI, machine learning, prime numbers, re-inventing TLS, etc.

In general, if a company focuses its pitch on the actual crypto they use instead of the problems they solve, you might want to turn around. If something doesn't seem right, find an expert to help you. Even Ycombinator got fooled.

Well done! You've reached the end of my post. Now you can leave a comment or read something else.

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