Benedikt Bünz

Professor Benedikt Bünz is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, and a co-founder and Chief Scientist of Espresso Systems. His research focuses on the science of blockchains, drawing on tools from applied cryptography, consensus, and game theory to improve the privacy, security, and usability of cryptocurrency and distributed ledger systems. He is particularly interested in problems that require both novel theoretical insights and real-world deployment at scale. Professor Bünz has made foundational contributions to blockchain cryptography, including the development of Bulletproofs, a widely deployed zero-knowledge proof system enabling confidential transactions on blockchains such as Monero and Mobilecoin; Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs), a key building block for environmentally friendly consensus mechanisms used in systems like Chia, Filecoin, and Ethereum 2.0; and HyperPlonk, a scalable SNARK designed for large and complex statements such as ZK-EVMs. His work bridges theory and practice and has had significant impact on modern cryptographic infrastructure for decentralized systems.