Independent Cryptography Researcher and Engineer at BaDaaS
For the most up-to-date overview of my work, see my GitHub, LinkedIn, and Twitter profiles.
Mathematician and engineer with 10+ years of experience in cryptography research, infrastructure, and production systems. First engineer at B2C2, one of the earliest institutional crypto liquidity providers (acquired by SBI Holdings in 2020), leading the real-time accounting systems, blockchain node infrastructure for real-time transaction monitoring, and exchange interfaces for PnL detection. Co-founder of LeakIX, an attack surface management platform serving 100+ clients and multiple national CERTs. Cryptography researcher and engineer at o1Labs (Mina Protocol), and led a team to reimplement the node in Rust. Contributed to core cryptographic infrastructure and the protocol itself at Nomadic Labs (Tezos), and co-authored peer-reviewed publications on arithmetization-oriented hash functions and PlonK optimizations. Research interests include SNARK-friendly primitives based on elliptic curves and incrementally verifiable computation. Currently running BaDaaS, an independent mathematics research boutique, building tools to formally verify the world's cryptographic knowledge.
BaDaaS is a Belgium-based mathematics research boutique founded in 2020, bridging abstract mathematics and concrete applications. Currently specialized in cryptography, formal verification, and distributed systems. Consulting, research, and engineering for protocol design, cryptographic library development, and security auditing.
Current projects:
o1Labs incubated the Mina Protocol, a layer-1 blockchain using zero-knowledge proofs for succinctness.
As Head of Cryptography, oversaw the cryptography architecture across an engineering team of 15-20 people, and led a team of up to 5 engineers on the full rewrite of the Mina node from OCaml to Rust.
As Senior Cryptography Engineer, contributed to o1VM, a zkVM for MIPS built as a team effort. Implemented the RISC-V interpreter, focused on the folding aspect, and designed and started building Arrabbiata, a folding scheme for arbitrary custom gates and degrees. Contributed to Pickles, the recursion layer used in Mina based on Halo2 (Plonk-ish implementation of Halo), and to the proof-systems library (Kimchi, custom gates, lookups).
Co-founded with Gregory Boddin. LeakIX is an attack surface management platform combining a search engine that indexes public information by scanning the Internet and an open reporting platform for vulnerability disclosure. Serving 100+ clients and multiple national CERTs.
Our goal is prevention: we intend to provide a preemptive solution by trusting individual researchers and security companies on the most sensitive data we index. We deliver clear incident reports, help identify what information has or could be affected, and explain how to resolve the issue. All voluntary reports are free and no sales attempts are made on LeakIX’s side. We ban sales attempts that take advantage of incidents to sell shady security services.
Nomadic Labs are Tezos blockchain experts. Cryptography engineer in the cryptography team, contributing to the Tezos protocol and its zero-knowledge research and development.
Also enrolled at Institut Polytechnique de Paris (IPP) for a PhD on SNARK-friendly primitives based on elliptic curves, under the direction of Benjamin Smith (INRIA, Ecole Polytechnique). Discontinued to join o1Labs.
First engineer at B2C2, one of the earliest institutional crypto liquidity providers, later acquired by SBI Holdings in 2020. B2C2 serves brokers, exchanges, hedge funds, and family offices worldwide with 24/7 crypto and fiat liquidity.
Led the real-time accounting and risk infrastructure:
Social network around sports. The platform is built using OCaml and the Ocsigen technology. During the internship, I was responsible to improve the framework Ocsigen Start, which consists of a template to bootstrap a complete standard application requiring user management, displaying tips, and sending notifications to the users.
Online pharmacy shop based in Brussels, Belgium, built using Prestashop. Leading the iOS and Android mobile applications development, written in Cordova.
Research internship in the Gallium team, focusing on module systems in functional programming languages.
Topic: SNARK-friendly primitives based on elliptic curves. Under the direction of Benjamin Smith (INRIA, Ecole Polytechnique). Discontinued to join o1Labs.
Grade: Summa Cum Laude
Bachelor degree: minor in Physics. Awarded with the prize of the Mathematics Department.
Piscine C in July 2014, joined in 2015. Stopped 1 year after to focus on master degree in mathematics at UMONS.