Weikeng Chen
Research Partner at L2 Iterative Venture (L2IV)
Irvine, California, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolWeikeng Chen is a research-focused software engineer and Ph.D. candidate specializing in systems security and applied cryptography, with a decade of industry and research experience. He combines hands-on cryptographic engineering—contributing to notable open-source projects like snarkVM and arkworks-rs—with leadership roles as co-founder, CTO, and chief scientist at several ZK and privacy-focused startups. His work spans low-level finite field and elliptic-curve arithmetic, polynomial commitment schemes, and R1CS gadgets, reflecting deep expertise in zero-knowledge proof systems and zkVM internals. Based in Irvine and affiliated with UC Berkeley, he bridges academic rigor and product-driven research, often implementing serialization, recursion support, and protocol-verifier fixes that enable real-world DPC and recursive SNARK deployments. Notably, his contributions to Marlin verifier fixes and Edwards-curve support demonstrate an uncommon mix of protocol-level insight and practical backend implementation.
10 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Doctoral, Security, Doctoral, Security at University of California, BerkeleyHonours Bachelor of Engineering, Department of Network Information Security, Honours Bachelor of Engineering, Department of Network Information Security at University of Science and Technology of China
English, Chinese
Stackoverflow
141reputation
4kreached
1answer
0questions
Github Skills (17)
algorithm10
algorithms10
polynomials10
elliptic-curve10
data-serialization10
data-structure10
serialization10
rcs10
cryptography10
zk10
zkp10
data-structures10
finite-field10
rust10
zeroth9
Programming languages (27)
Github contributions (5)
arkworks-rs/poly-commit
Oct 2020 - Dec 2021
A Rust library for polynomial commitments
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:2 releases, 40 reviews, 51 commits in 1 year 2 months
Contributions summary:Weikeng focused on implementing and improving the polynomial commitment scheme within the arkworks-rs/poly-commit repository. They added features to commit to degree-zero polynomials and introduced traits and serialization/deserialization capabilities for key data structures like CRS, commitments, and proofs. These changes improve the usability and functionality of the library for cryptographic applications. Several commits involved modifying tests to include these new functionalities.
rustcryptographypairingspolynomial-commitmentsmarlin
arkworks-rs/algebra
Apr 2020 - Dec 2022
Libraries for finite field, elliptic curve, and polynomial arithmetic
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 release, 245 reviews, 55 commits in 2 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Weikeng primarily contributed to the `algebra` repository, which involves libraries for finite field, elliptic curve, and polynomial arithmetic. They added and modified code to support Edwards curves over MNT-298 and MNT-753. The user also prepared the Zexe for recursion, and implemented serialization for polynomials and evaluations. These changes suggest a focus on expanding the library's functionality and improving its compatibility with other cryptographic libraries.
elliptic-curvefinite-fieldrustcryptographyfinite-fields
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