# Riad Wahby

> Riad Wahby is the co-founder and CEO of Cubist, a key management infrastructure company building hardware-backed, policy-driven signing for Web3. He is also an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and an applied cryptographer known for co-inventing the proof systems Lasso, Hyrax, and Brakedown and co-authoring the BLS signature standard (RFC 9380) used across Ethereum, Avalanche, and other chains. Before academia and entrepreneurship he spent a decade designing analog and mixed-signal chips at Silicon Labs and researched cryptography at Algorand.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Cubist; Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University
- **Organizations:** Cubist, Carnegie Mellon University, Algorand, Silicon Labs, Stanford University, NYU, UT Austin, MIT
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** SB and MEng, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), PhD, Computer Science (advisors Dan Boneh & Keith Winstein); dissertation 'Concretely efficient interactive proofs and their applications', Stanford University
- **Known for:** Co-inventor of the proof systems Lasso, Hyrax, and Brakedown, Co-author of RFC 9380 and the BLS signature standard used by Ethereum, Avalanche, and other blockchains, Distinguished Student Paper Award at IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2016 for 'Verifiable ASICs'

## Career timeline

- **~2003-2013** — Analog and mixed-signal integrated circuit designer at Silicon Labs (roughly a decade)
- **—** — Visiting Researcher at UT Austin and Junior Research Scientist at NYU, working with Mike Walfish
- **2021** — Completed PhD in Computer Science at Stanford, supported by a Ripple Fellowship
- **—** — Cryptographic researcher at Algorand
- **2022** — Co-founded Cubist with Ann Stefan, Fraser Brown, and Deian Stefan; became CEO
- **2023-03** — Cubist raised $7M seed round led by Polychain Capital
- **2023-04** — Cubist launched hardware-backed key management platform
- **2023-11** — Cubist released CubeSigner wallet-as-a-service for low-latency remote signing inside secure hardware
- **ongoing** — Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University

## Achievements

- Co-inventor of the proof systems Lasso, Hyrax, and Brakedown
- Co-author of RFC 9380 and the BLS signature standard used by Ethereum, Avalanche, and other blockchains
- Distinguished Student Paper Award at IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2016 for 'Verifiable ASICs'
- Best Paper Award at USENIX ATC 2018 for 'Pantheon: the training ground for Internet congestion-control research'
- Raised a $7M seed round for Cubist led by Polychain Capital

## Latest updates

- **2023-11** — Cubist launched CubeSigner wallet-as-a-service for millisecond-latency remote signing inside secure hardware.
- **2023-03** — Cubist closed a $7M seed round led by Polychain Capital with dao5, Amplify Partners, Polygon, Blizzard, and Axelar.

## Links

- Website: https://wahby.net
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwantam/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/cubistdev
- GitHub: https://github.com/kwantam
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIiJLqRnheA

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/riad-wahby
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-21