Emin Gün Sirer is a Turkish-American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. Sirer developed the Avalanche Consensus protocol underlying the Avalanche blockchain platform, and is currently the CEO and co-founder of Ava Labs. He was an associate professor of computer science at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, and is the former co-director of The Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts (IC3). He is known for his contributions to peer-to-peer systems,

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

and

computer networking A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...

Education

Emin Gün Sirer attended high school at

Robert College The American Robert College of Istanbul ( or ), often abbreviated as Robert or RC, is a Selective school, highly selective, Independent school, independent, mixed-sex education, co-educational, Education in Turkey#Private schools, private Second ...

, received his undergraduate degree in computer science at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, and finished his graduate studies at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering in 2002 under the supervision of Brian N. Bershad.

Career

Prior to his appointment as a professor at

, Sirer worked at AT&T Bell Labs on Plan 9, at DEC SRC, and at

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered at the NEC Supertower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Inte ...

. Sirer is known for his contributions to operating systems, distributed systems, and fundamental cryptocurrency research. He co-developed the

SPIN (operating system) The SPIN operating system is a research project implemented in the computer programming language Modula-3, and is an open source project. It is designed with three goals: Flexibility (engineering), flexibility, Defensive programming, safety, and Co ...

, where the implementation and interface of an operating system could be modified at run-time by type-safe extension code. He also led the Nexus OS effort, where he developed new techniques for attesting to and reasoning about the semantic properties of remote programs. In March 2023, Sirer was appointed to the

Commodity Futures Trading Commission The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US government created in 1974 that regulates the U.S. derivatives markets, which includes futures contract, fut ...

’s Technical Advisory Committee. In June 2023, Sirer was an expert witness before the

United States House Committee on Financial Services The United States House Committee on Financial Services, also referred to as the House Banking Committee and previously known as the Committee on Banking and Currency, is the United States congressional committee, committee of the United States ...

for a hearing on

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

and

digital asset A digital asset is anything that exists only in digital form and comes with a distinct usage right or distinct permission for use. Data that do not possess those rights are not considered assets. ''Digital assets'' include, but are not limited t ...

Cryptocurrency

Introduced by Sirer and co-authors in 2003, five years before Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper, Karma is a virtual currency for peer-to-peer systems, introduced by Sirer and co-authors in 2003. It is designed to eliminate the free-loader problem, i.e. preventing malicious users from consuming resources without giving anything in return. It is the first peer-to-peer currency with a distributed mint. Sirer and Ittay Eyal wrote and published the paper "Majority is not Enough, Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable" which describes the selfish mining attack, an attack on

Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

which is profitable even for an attacker with only 33% of total hash power, which is less than the 50% required by the original security analysis in

Satoshi Nakamoto Satoshi Nakamoto ( – 26 April 2011) is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the ...

's Bitcoin whitepaper. Sirer, Eyal, and other co-authors developed Bitcoin-NG, a bitcoin scaling solution, and Bitcoin Covenants, a security solution. Sirer is also co-founder of bloXroute, a company offering a solution to the scalability bottleneck of the Layer-0 network layer. In 2020, he was the co-director of IC3, the Initiative for Cryptocurrency And Contracts.

Avalanche protocol

Sirer led the development of the Avalanche Consensus protocol, and its native token, AVAX. The Avalanche project was incubated at

, where Emin Gün Sirer was assisted by

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

candidates Maofan Yin and Kevin Sekniqi. Ava Labs is a technology company founded by Sirer in 2019, with the expressed purpose of developing an alternative blockchain technology for the financial sector. In August 2022,

whistleblower Whistleblowing (also whistle-blowing or whistle blowing) is the activity of a person, often an employee, revealing information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe, unethical or ...

"Crypto Leaks" published a report accusing Ava Labs and CEO Emin Gün Sirer of secret deals with a law firm, Roche Freedman, aimed at attacking

Avalanche An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a Grade (slope), slope, such as a hill or mountain. Avalanches can be triggered spontaneously, by factors such as increased precipitation or snowpack weakening, or by external means such as humans, othe ...

's competitors. Sirer denied any sort of illegal or unethical deal but the alleged partner Kyle Roche was subsequently forced out of his law firm.

Awards

*Brilliant-10 by

Popular Science Popular science (also called pop-science or popsci) is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad ranging. It may be written ...

* National Science Foundation CAREER Award

Patents

"A Process for Rewriting Executable Content on a Network Server or Desktop Machine in Order to Enforce Site-Specific Properties." Emin Gun Sirer and Brian N. Bershad. US Patent #6865735, issued February 3, 2005.

References

External links

*
Official Blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sirer, Emin Living people People associated with cryptocurrency American computer scientists Turkish computer scientists Robert College alumni Princeton University alumni University of Washington alumni Cornell University faculty Year of birth missing (living people)