# Ryan Zarick

> Ryan ‘Raz’ Zarick is the co-founder and CTO of LayerZero Labs. A University of New Hampshire computer science graduate, he built companies with longtime collaborators Bryan Pellegrino and Caleb Banister before co-authoring LayerZero’s cross-chain protocol and later research on blockchain storage and execution.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CTO at LayerZero Labs
- **Organizations:** LayerZero Labs, Minimal AI, 80Trill, Coder Den, Buzzdraft
- **Education:** BS, Computer Science, University of New Hampshire, MS, Computer Science, University of New Hampshire
- **Known for:** Co-founded LayerZero Labs with longtime collaborators Bryan Pellegrino and Caleb Banister., Co-authored the 2021 and 2023 LayerZero protocol papers., Co-authored 2025 papers on QMDB, FAFO and ZeroOS.

## Career timeline

- **2006–2011** — Studied computer science at the University of New Hampshire and worked in its InterOperability Lab, where he met future co-founders Bryan Pellegrino and Caleb Banister.
- **2011–2013** — Served as CTO of fantasy-sports company Buzzdraft.
- **2018–2020** — Co-founded 80Trill, a smart-contract development and auditing business.
- **2019–2021** — Co-founded Minimal AI.
- **2021** — Co-founded LayerZero Labs and co-authored the first LayerZero protocol paper.
- **2023** — Co-authored a second LayerZero protocol paper describing modular verification.
- **2025** — Co-authored research papers on QMDB, FAFO and ZeroOS.
- **2026** — LayerZero announced Zero, a blockchain architecture built around research on storage, scheduling, proofs and networking.

## Achievements

- Co-founded LayerZero Labs with longtime collaborators Bryan Pellegrino and Caleb Banister.
- Co-authored the 2021 and 2023 LayerZero protocol papers.
- Co-authored 2025 papers on QMDB, FAFO and ZeroOS.
- Named among the core developers of the LayerZero v1 endpoints in the project repository.

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — LayerZero introduced Zero, a blockchain architecture drawing on QMDB, FAFO and related research; Zarick discussed it in a founder interview.
- **2025-12** — Zarick was listed as a co-author of the ZeroOS research paper.
- **2025-07** — Zarick co-authored the FAFO research paper and joined a technical podcast discussion of FAFO and QMDB.
- **2025-01** — Zarick co-authored the QMDB research paper.

## Links

- Website: https://ryanzarick.medium.com/
- LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/ryanzarick
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/ryanzarick
- GitHub: https://github.com/ryanzarick

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/ryan-zarick
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-29