Israel: A Web3 Technology Powerhouse That Cannot Be Underestimated
Israel is slowly turning into a Web3 startup nation, with hundreds of new jobs already being created in the country’s growing blockchain ecosystem.
Israel’s vibrant startup scene has made it the startup capital of the world, with 97 unicorns (private companies valued at over $100 million) and the highest startup density per capita. In 2021, more than $2.5 billion will be invested in Israeli startups, a record figure for the country.
With one of the deepest tech talent pools, vibrant start-up culture, and top-notch venture capital firms – making it an ideal destination for blockchain innovation, Israel’s Web3 space has huge potential for future growth.
In addition, the Israeli government is also actively promoting digital transformation and supporting the development of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. With the growing global demand for decentralization, Israel’s Web3 field will continue to attract more investment and entrepreneurs, becoming one of the world’s leading Web3 innovation centers.
What surprised me the most is that Israel has well-known cryptographers like Eli Ben Sasson, Shaffi Goldwasser, Yehuda Lindell, Aviv Zohar, Eran Tromer, etc., and they are important promoters of revolutionary technologies such as MPC and ZKP.
The picture below is an ecological map of Israel’s Web3 project. Next, the author will select three of the most representative Web3 companies so that readers will be familiar with this Web3 technology powerhouse that should not be underestimated.
Source: Collider
Fireblocks: One of the most highly valued blockchain security companies in Israel
Founded in 2018, Fireblocks’ core technology products mainly consist of Fireblocks Networks and MPC-based wallet infrastructure.
Fireblocks is a platform for protecting digital assets in transit, focusing on protecting customers’ digital assets in exchanges, counter brokers, and during transfers.
Fireblocks enables banks, fintech firms, exchanges, liquidity providers, OTCs, and hedge funds to securely manage digital assets across a wide range of products and services.
Between 2018 and 2019, Israeli security engineer Michael Shauolov joined forces with Idan Ofrat and Pavel Berengoltz to co-found Fireblocks, with Shauolov as CEO. In the past 20 years, the three founders have been active in the field of network security.
Prior to joining Fireblocks, Michael Shauolov co-founded Lacoon Mobile Security, which was acquired by Check Point.
Why start a business? This is to mention that in 2017 the Lazarus Group hacked into four South Korean exchanges and stole $200 million in Bitcoin.
At the time, Fireblocks founder Michael Shauolov was working at Check Point as part of a task force investigating large-scale cyber breaches.
During the course of the investigation, two things became apparent: the shift of cybercriminals from hacking traditional finance to digital assets and the complexity and lack of solutions for securing digital assets in an enterprise environment.
So the obvious next challenge is securing the blockchain. So Michael Shauolov joined forces with Idan Ofrat and Pavel Berengoltz to find Fireblocks.
Secret Network is the first Cosmos-based privacy protection smart contract public chain
Secret Network is the first privacy-preserving smart contract public chain based on the Cosmos technology architecture (supporting the deployment of smart contracts + privacy attributes + the scalability and interoperability of Cosmos).
Secret Network is a Layer 1 privacy public chain built based on the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint core consensus mechanism. Through the IBC protocol, it can achieve interoperability with other Cosmos SDK application chains that have opened the IBC interface.
Secret Network mainly realizes data privacy through several main components: encrypted smart contract (Secret Contract) and trusted execution environment (TEE: Trusted Execution Environments).
The founding team of the project is SCRT Labs, and the team members include: Guy Zyskind (Founder and CEO), Itzik Grossman (Vice President Of Engineering), Nir Zyskind (Director of Operations and Business Development), Assaf Morami (Lead Software Engineer), Tom Langer (Senior Software Engineer), etc.
The founder, Guy, graduated from Tel Aviv University in Israel with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science, and a master’s degree in Media Lab from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Launched SCRT Labs in June 2016 as co-founder and CEO.
Privacy issues will become more and more important in the future, and there is a huge rigid demand, so there is a very high chance of Alpha in the privacy track in the future.
At present, the biggest problem in the privacy track is not privacy, but the high cost, low efficiency and poor user experience brought about by protecting privacy. Therefore, many privacy technologies are still not popularized.
Therefore, Secret Network, as the first smart contract public chain with a privacy function, brings new possibilities to the industry.
From the perspective of the project itself, as the first privacy public chain in the Cosmos ecosystem, it is also the complete privacy public chain with ecological development.
Starting from privacy functionality, the chain has built a privacy-specific infrastructure in the Web3 era. At present, the project has built a complete cross-chain bridge infrastructure, and the ecosystem is gradually enriched.
Starkware, a Layer 2 unicorn whose valuation has increased by $6 billion in half a year
StarkWare, a provider of blockchain privacy solutions, is headquartered in Netanya, Israel. The two co-founders of the company, Eli Ben-Sasson, and Alessandro Chiesa, are also the founders of ZCash.
Its main goal is to further promote zk-Starks, a breakthrough blockchain privacy solution developed by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
It continues the zero-knowledge proof protocol to protect information privacy on the blockchain. On the one hand, it can support the compression of massive data into smaller samples.
On the other hand, it is also more efficient, transparent and secure than quantum computing. One big advantage is that while providing private information, it can ensure computational integrity without consuming a lot of computing power.
Starkware currently has two products, namely:
- StarkEx provides customized ToB services for applications, and applications running on StarkEx can customize their business logic.
StarkEx serves applications such as Defi and games, which can speed up transactions and reduce transaction fees. It can also achieve data availability through ZK-Rollup or Validium.
- StarkNet is a permissionless, decentralized, censorship-resistant, general-purpose layer 2 network on which any user or developer can deploy smart contracts written in the Cario language.
These two products correspond to two different business models. The former provides customized services for applications and sells them, while the latter provides general-purpose services without permission and then charges transaction fees on the network or acts as a node under the principle of transaction fee priority. Extract MEVs.
Starkware’s team is from Israel, and its main members are computer science and cryptography developers with backgrounds from Hebrew University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. It can be said that it is the strongest team in the field of zero-knowledge proof.
From Starkware’s official website, it can be seen that the team currently has 77 members, plus 7 subject consultants and 5 other consultants. Key members include:
Eli Ben-Sasson: Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, PhD in Theoretical Computer Science from Hebrew University, has long been engaged in research on computational integrity, cryptography, and zero-knowledge proofs. Professor of Computer Science at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Founding scientist of Zcash, inventor of zkSNARK and zkSTARK.
Uri Kolodny: Co-Founder & CEO, Bachelor of Computer Science from Hebrew University, is a serial entrepreneur with rich business experience and good at cooperation.
Alessandro Chiesa: Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley. The founding scientist of Zcash, the co-inventor of zk-SNARKs, and the core developer of libsnark, the leading open-source library for concise zero-knowledge proofs.
Michael Riabzev: Co-Founder & Chief Architect. Ph.D. from Israel Institute of Technology worked in Intel and IBM.
Oren Katz: Vice President of Engineering. Graduated from Hebrew University, majoring in computer science, MBA from Tel Aviv University, senior engineer with 20 years of experience.
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