David Wong
Co-Founder at Archetype
New York, New York, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDavid Wong is a cryptography-focused security engineer and entrepreneur with 12 years of experience building and auditing secure systems across blockchain, web, and embedded contexts. As co-founder of zkSecurity and author of Real-World Cryptography, he blends hands-on protocol design (Disco, contributions to TLS 1.3 and Noise) with practical security engineering at projects like Diem and Mina. He has a track record of finding critical vulnerabilities in major libraries, running public open-source audits (OpenSSL, Let’s Encrypt), and teaching at Black Hat, demonstrating both deep research chops and real-world impact. Now advising Archetype and leading zkSecurity from New York, he continues to bridge applied cryptography, decentralised systems, and developer-oriented tooling. An unusual thread through his career is combining academic-style cryptanalysis (published cache, timing, and backdoor research) with production-focused work such as hardening consensus and automation in high-profile crypto projects.
12 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's degree, Math, Bachelor's degree, Math at McMaster UniversityChinese, Chinese at 北京语言大学Bachelor's degree, Mathematics, Bachelor's degree, Mathematics at Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1Master's degree, Cryptography, Master's degree, Cryptography at University of Bordeaux
Chinese, English, French, Spanish, German, Romanian
Github Skills (15)
algorithm10
consensus10
hashing-algorithm10
rust10
cryptography10
blockchain10
ocaml10
security10
dockers9
python9
logging9
automation9
automations9
error-handling9
docker9
Programming languages (34)
Github contributions (5)
diem/diem
Jun 2019 - Mar 2021
Diem’s mission is to build a trusted and innovative financial network that empowers people and businesses around the world.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Security Engineer
Back-end Developer & Security EngineerContributions:261 reviews, 156 commits, 301 PRs in 1 year 8 months
Contributions summary:David primarily focused on enhancing the security and stability of the Diem blockchain project. Their contributions involved identifying and mitigating potential vulnerabilities, such as removing panics in critical functions and adding additional validations on proposals. They also refactored code, improved logging, and worked on performance improvements within the core consensus mechanisms.
diemfinancialtrustedethereumblockchain
MinaProtocol/mina
Apr 2021 - Jan 2023
Mina is a cryptocurrency protocol with a constant size blockchain, improving scaling while maintaining decentralization and security.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Automation EngineerContributions:360 reviews, 455 commits, 137 PRs in 1 year 9 months
Contributions summary:David primarily worked on the backend of the Mina protocol, introducing new features and improvements to the codebase. This included adding a development flow for Docker and fixing merge issues within the automation scripts used for testnet validation. Furthermore, the user contributed to a JavaScript implementation of the Poseidon hash function with tests and addressed field-related issues.
blockchaincryptocurrencysecurityocamlzk-snarks
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