2025-12-05

• In October 2021, I had zero experience with coding, so I started a three-month JavaScript/Solidity bootcamp. Less than four years later, I found myself trying to solve the hardest problem in cryptography, having conversations with legends such as Dan Boneh or Amit Sahai.
• Still cannot explain why blockchains and Ethereum make sense. I sense it has something to do with it being a globally verifiable time-stamp machine. When people ask me a reason to be bullish on crypto, I always answer "the density of visionary talents". They will figure it out.
• Across the various products and research that I built, none of them has been used in production or had a single paying user. The closest I got is with Greco, which was forked and improved by Enclave, which will eventually use it in their mainnet. The reason why Greco was the only one that worked must be its cool and memorable name.
• Ended up having a job as a cryptography researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, even though I haven’t attended even a single class in linear algebra at Uni.
• Made less than 20 onchain transactions in the last three years. The only transaction that wasn’t to pay a friend was the renewal of my ENS domain name enrico.eth. I still remember the day in 2021 when I spent around $500 to buy that domain, thinking how dumb it was. Turned out to be great for shilling how OG I am, even if I am not.
• Landed my first job at Polygon ID thanks to a tutorial on circom I wrote that went viral after Jordi reposted it on Twitter (now that I look at the post again, it doesn’t look so viral to me, but at the time it felt viral). While writing the tutorial, I had no idea whatsoever about Circom and zero-knowledge proof. I literally transcribed Jordi’s words word-for-word from a video presentation I found online. The four hours I spent writing such a tutorial had probably the highest ROI of my life.
• Found a critical bug in the proof of solvency implementation of Binance that scared the shit out of them. The bug demonstrated that they could potentially inflate their assets to prove they were solvent even if they weren’t. I dreamt that it would stir people’s consciences, but nothing really happened. At least, I now realize they fixed it.
• One thing that I often look back at when I need some ego boost is the machina iO website I designed. These subtle animations and the gorgeous minimalist font feel more beautiful than any paper or protocol I wrote.
• Less than a week after I started my first crypto job at Polygon ID, I joined my colleagues at Devconnect Amsterdam 2022. My team was invited to join a panel on digital identity happening on Saturday, one day after the conference ended. Since everyone, except for me, had already left Amsterdam, they chose me to join the panel! They told me about it just a few hours before the panel started. I panicked and went for a run to heal the anxiety. Eventually, it went well. I soon learnt that, during panels, no one actually listens to your answers, so, when in doubt, you simply answer a different question. Also, I looked much more professional back then, probably due to the time-proximity with my previous corporate life.
• Still haven’t learned how to use git. Instead, I use Github desktop (highly recommended!).
• Worked almost 4 years on privacy technologies, but I still accept any cookie that I am presented with just for sake of speed.
• In 2012 I was in high-school and my mom gifted me a jersey from Japanese football star Honda after her trip to Japan. Twelve years later, I found myself presenting at Devcon 2024 in Tokyo right after him (he is now a crypto VC). Not sure whether to interpret it as a personal success or as Honda’s downfall.

• Up to date, the coolest application of privacy tech that I found is multilateral trade-credit set-off. The nice feature of this application is that privacy enhances the economic benefits for the participants. I wrote a paper on that, while cycles.money brought this concept to production. I always hoped that some expert in game-theory would analyse how privacy influences outcomes in non-cooperative games.
• In almost four years of working in crypto, I have had 113 flights, accounting for over 17 days in the air. (This screenshot also proves the point that I don’t really care about my privacy)

So, after all that, what did we learn?