Daira-emma Hopwood
Software Engineer at Jacaranda Software
Stevenage, England, United Kingdom
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDaira-emma Hopwood is a software engineer with 13 years' experience, currently at Jacaranda Software and formerly contributing as an R&D Engineering Manager at Electric Coin Company. She combines a strong mathematical foundation from Oxford with deep back-end and cryptography expertise, demonstrated by substantive contributions to high-profile open-source projects like Zcash's librustzcash, zips, and the Halo2 proving system. Her work spans protocol design, transaction-format changes, and implementing cryptographic primitives such as SHA-256d readers/writers and optimized square-root algorithms for zero-knowledge proofs. She is skilled at refactoring core codebases to uphold blockchain integrity while improving performance and correctness. Colleagues rely on her for rigorous, security-minded engineering that links theory to production-ready implementations. An understated strength is her ability to translate complex cryptographic research into pragmatic, maintainable code used in live systems.
13 years of coding experience
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Mathematics and Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Oxford
English, German, French
Stackoverflow
2,321reputation
1.4mreached
13answers
0questions
encoding
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windows
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cmd
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unicode
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python
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merge
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Github Skills (26)
zcash10
proofs10
proof10
merkle-tree10
cryptography10
blockchain10
rust10
transactional9
transaction9
python9
windows9
encoding9
unicode9
merge9
cmd9
Programming languages (29)
Github contributions (5)
zcash/zips
Dec 2015 - Dec 2022
Zcash Improvement Proposals
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1374 reviews, 2324 commits, 406 PRs in 7 years
Contributions summary:Daira-emma appears to be contributing to the Zcash project by modifying core protocol specifications and making updates related to transaction formats. They are directly involved in the implementation details of the shielded payment protocol, adding and changing elements for the transaction format and validating criteria, as well as refactoring the existing code base. These updates are primarily geared towards maintaining the integrity of the blockchain.
zcashcryptocurrencycryptographyspecifications
zcash/halo2
Nov 2020 - Jan 2023
The Halo2 zero-knowledge proving system
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Cryptography Engineer
Back-end Developer & Cryptography EngineerContributions:700 reviews, 194 commits, 70 PRs in 2 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Daira-emma primarily contributed to the core cryptography and mathematical foundations of the Halo2 zero-knowledge proving system. Their work includes implementing and optimizing square root algorithms using the Tonelli-Shanks and table-based methods within the codebase. The user also introduced essential functionalities such as the `sqrt_alt` function, alongside refining existing functionalities and addressing code review comments for efficiency and correctness. Furthermore, they implemented the `sqrt_ratio` implementation, expanding the library's capabilities.
cryptocurrencycryptographyzcashzero-knowledge
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