# Jon Stephens

> Jon Stephens is the CEO and co-founder of Veridise, an Austin-based blockchain security firm that brings academic formal verification to smart contract and zero-knowledge audits. A computer science PhD researcher at UT Austin, he built tools like SmartPulse and Zequal that grew out of his work on formally reasoning about programs, and turned that research into a company that has audited protocols including RISC Zero, Succinct, Semaphore, vLayer and Ankr. His mission is to make everyday users secure without asking them to think about security at all.

- **Role:** CEO and Co-founder at Veridise
- **Organizations:** Veridise, University of Texas at Austin, University of Arizona
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** PhD research in Computer Science (formal methods, UToPiA Group), University of Texas at Austin, M.Sc. in Computer Science, University of Arizona, B.Sc. in Computer Science, University of Arizona
- **Known for:** Co-founded Veridise, a blockchain security firm applying formal verification to smart contract and ZK audits., Built SmartPulse, the temporal-property verification tool credited as the foundational research behind Veridise., Developed Zequal for verifying consistency in zero-knowledge proof circuits.

## Career timeline

- **—** — Studied computer science at the University of Arizona, researching malware detection evasion, covert channels and static/dynamic analysis under Saumya Debray.
- **—** — Began PhD research at UT Austin in the UToPiA Group, working with Isil Dillig and Kostas Ferles on formal verification.
- **—** — Developed SmartPulse, a tool for formally verifying temporal properties of smart contracts, the research that seeded Veridise.
- **2022** — Co-founded Veridise with Isil Dillig; became CEO.
- **—** — Built and contributed to ZK security tools including Zequal and the Picus / Orca fuzzer line of work.
- **—** — Led audits of protocols including RISC Zero, Succinct, Semaphore, vLayer, Ankr and Unirep.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Veridise, a blockchain security firm applying formal verification to smart contract and ZK audits.
- Built SmartPulse, the temporal-property verification tool credited as the foundational research behind Veridise.
- Developed Zequal for verifying consistency in zero-knowledge proof circuits.
- Audited leading protocols including RISC Zero, Succinct, Semaphore, vLayer, Ankr and Unirep.
- Ran a large-scale ZK tooling workshop for Secureum using parallel automated tools.
- Published formal-methods and security research during his PhD at UT Austin.

## Latest updates

- **2024-11** — Spoke as CEO of Veridise at L2CON Bangkok 2024.

## Links

- Website: https://veridise.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-stephens-729ba622a/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/FormallyJon
- GitHub: https://stephensj2.github.io/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/jon-stephens
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-16