# Zhuojie Zhou

> Zhuojie “Rex” Zhou is a co-founder and chief engineer of Magic Eden. A George Washington University computer science PhD who studied online social-network sampling, he previously worked at Uber, Checkr and Facebook AI. His open-source work includes Flagr and OpenMock; at Magic Eden he helped build the first Solana marketplace and later worked on its broader infrastructure.

- **Role:** Co-founder and Chief Engineer at Magic Eden
- **Organizations:** Magic Eden, Facebook AI, Checkr, Uber, Kong open-source community
- **Nationality:** Chinese
- **Education:** PhD in Computer Science, The George Washington University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Magic Eden in 2021 and led engineering., Earned a PhD in computer science for research on faster sampling of online social networks., Created the open-source Flagr feature-flagging service and OpenMock testing tool.

## Career timeline

- **2014** — Began exploring cryptocurrency through mining, according to his Magic Eden biography.
- **2015** — Defended a PhD dissertation, “Faster Sampling Over Online Social Networks,” at George Washington University.
- **2017** — Published Flagr, an open-source feature-flagging and experimentation service, while at Checkr.
- **2018** — Published OpenMock and described Checkr’s integration-testing workflow.
- **Before 2021** — Worked as an early engineer at Uber and Checkr, then as a staff engineer on Facebook AI’s PyTorch developer infrastructure.
- **2021** — Co-founded Magic Eden with Jack Lu, Sidney Zhang and Zhuoxun Yin; helped code its first Solana marketplace.
- **2022** — Magic Eden raised $130 million in a round valuing the company at $1.6 billion.
- **2023** — Discussed creator tools and open source at Solana Breakpoint; a colleague credited a weekend project with Kevin Faveri for the Bitcoin Ordinals push.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Magic Eden in 2021 and led engineering.
- Earned a PhD in computer science for research on faster sampling of online social networks.
- Created the open-source Flagr feature-flagging service and OpenMock testing tool.
- Worked on PyTorch developer infrastructure at Facebook AI.
- Helped build Magic Eden’s initial marketplace during its roughly ten-day launch sprint.

## Latest updates

- **2023-12** — At Solana Breakpoint 2023, he discussed creator tools and the need for more open-source infrastructure in the ecosystem.
- **2024-01** — On LinkedIn, he described Magic Eden’s plan to open-source trading and minting protocols as the platform expanded across chains.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhouzhuojie
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/rexzh0u
- GitHub: https://github.com/zhouzhuojie

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