zkvm
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Uma Roy
Uma Roy is the co-founder and CEO of Succinct, the company building SP1 - the world's fastest open-source zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM). A former Google Brain AI researcher and MIT double major in mathematics and computer science, she pivoted from machine learning to cryptography to make zero-knowledge proofs accessible to every developer. Under her leadership, Succinct raised $55M led by Paradigm, launched a decentralized prover network, and positioned SP1 as critical infrastructure securing billions in TVL across major Layer 2 networks.
Markos Georghiades
Markos Georghiades is an Engineering Partner at Andreessen Horowitz's crypto division (a16z crypto), where he focuses on cryptography and core development of Jolt - a16z's open-source zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM). An undergraduate studying Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, he has co-authored multiple research breakthroughs: helping Jolt achieve a 6x throughput speedup (over 1 million RISC-V cycles/sec), enabling true zero-knowledge proofs via the NovaBlindFold technique, and implementing 64-bit proving without performance slowdown. His GitHub bio - 'sumcheck is love sumcheck is life' - says everything you need to know about where his obsessions lie.