Category Labs

Last week at TOKEN2049, Category Labs CEO James Hunsaker spoke on the Hack Seasons DeFi panel (featuring other co-founders of Berachain, Canton Network and RockSolid). This panel examined hurdles to DeFi adoption, the trade-offs between decentralization and performance, and scaling for institutions.

We're excited to welcome peter rindal to the team as a Senior Researcher! Peter is a cryptography researcher and engineer building privacy- and MEV-aware blockchain infrastructure. He’s contributed real-world advances in PCGs for OT/Beaver triples and built high-performance systems for modern architectures. When Peter’s not pushing the limits of cryptography, you’ll likely find him somewhere in Yosemite, pushing his climbing grade. Welcome to Category Labs, Peter!

We're excited to welcome Xiaojun Dong, who has joined us as a Systems Researcher after completing his PhD at University of California, Riverside! He is looking forward to exploring the world of Web3 and working with an amazing team to improve transaction scalability and performance. Welcome to Category Labs, Xiaojun!

We're excited to welcome our new Senior Security Engineer to the team: Ron S.! Based out of Colorado, Ron is a hacker, security engineer, privacy advocate, and practitioner of self-sovereign technologies. With years of experience guiding and educating the information security and cryptocurrency communities, he has spoken at DEF CON and other industry conferences. Previously, he secured platforms at ShapeShift, Casa, Botanix Labs and is a committee member for the Cryptocurrency Security Standard. He is thrilled to tackle complex challenges in securing the most performant EVM-compatible protocol and the next-generation of blockchain infrastructure. Welcome to Category Labs, Ron!

We're excited to welcome Arjun Somvanshi! Based out of India, he joined us last week as a DevOps Engineer! Get to know Arjun: "Hi! I am Arjun. Usually tinkering with computers, hardcore into self-hosting software and a FOSS enthusiast! Other than that I love trekking, you can find me in the mountains - A metalhead with a passion of playing the electric guitar." Welcome to Category Labs, Arjun!

How does a global network of validators agree on Monad's next block? Rather than read the academic paper, check out monad-viz, a powerful visualization tool that shows MonadBFT consensus! You can visualize validator state and network messages in real-time, with MonadBFT compiled into WASM and running in your browser. If you're inclined, you can even create your own network by tweaking the open source configuration. 𝗗𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳! 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e-xyqfiF

We're excited to welcome Amy Wong, who joined us this week as Operations Assistant! This photo is from her previous role, where she traveled to Egypt for a work event. Welcome to Category Labs, Amy!

We're excited to welcome Jovan Komatovic to Category Labs as a Senior Researcher! 🟠 In his own words: 🎓 I'm happy to share that I’ve successfully defended my PhD thesis, "Optimal Byzantine Agreement with Little Cryptography". This wraps up an amazing six-year journey at EPFL, where I was supervised by Professor Rachid Guerraoui. I'm very thankful to Rachid, as well as to all my mentors and co-authors, for all their support and collaboration along the way. I’m now starting a new chapter at Category Labs, where I’ll continue working on problems in distributed computing. Excited for what’s to come!

🟠 We're thrilled that you're here, Mario Á.. Welcome to Category Labs! "After an almost five year stay with the star-studded Programming Languages team at Huawei Technologies Research & Development (UK) Ltd, I decided it was time to expand my horizons. I'm very excited to be joining the Compilers team at Category Labs, working with truly amazing people and tech, and I don't think I could've chosen a better company to step into the world of Blockchain. Looking forward to build cool stuff!"

Excited to share our second blog post! How do you get a block proposal across a global network quickly and securely? ⚡ Our new blog post, "RaptorCast: Designing a Messaging Layer," steps through each of the engineering design decisions associated with addressing this major challenge. RaptorCast supports performance, security and robustness needs using UDP, Raptor codes (R10), and a smart broadcast strategy. 𝗪𝗲 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗹𝗼𝗴 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 (𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗲). 𝗬𝗼𝘂'𝗹𝗹 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗮 𝘁𝗼𝗻! 🔗 Read the full blog post: https://lnkd.in/eWFFQxxA Think this kind of system design is exciting? We're hiring! Check out our open roles: https://lnkd.in/emHWPYuY! 🟠