Many of the problems that plague the digital world are that strangers have to trust each other. Why are you buying products from Amazon but not from an online merchant you’ve never heard of? Because you trust Amazon to deliver the goods you pay for and you don’t trust an unknown seller. You don’t want to risk your money.

This fear is rational and reflects a fundamental problem with today’s Internet. It’s a problem I’ve been working to solve for years using decentralized blockchain technology.

The path that led me to accept this challenge was unusual. It’s a journey that has shaped my view of the world and technology and shaped the way I think about progress and innovation.

I grew up in a small town of about 2 million people. My parents were doctors and they had big dreams for me – dreams of a stable, prestigious career in the region where I grew up. But from an early age I had a curiosity that I knew would lead elsewhere.

As a child I devoured books on philosophy, literature and science. My early influences included Nietzsche, Kant and Haruki Murakami. They opened my eyes to the power of storytelling and big ideas. The desire for knowledge became my compass.

I learned English through western books and TV shows. I remember being so eager to read Harry Potter that I picked up the English version when the Chinese translation was not available. Shows like Friends and The Big Bang Theory were more than entertainment; they became a way for me to understand American humor and culture. As a child in China, I felt like I knew New York. And although I didn’t realize it at the time, these early experiences were cornerstones of my personal development.

Breaking the Mould

After high school, I studied computer science at Wuhan University, which had a joint program with Carnegie Mellon, and experienced rigorous academics and cutting-edge research for the first time. I then went to Singapore to pursue my Masters in Computer Science. It was my first time living outside of China, which further broadened my horizons and deepened my desire to learn and explore.

From there, I eventually moved to the United States, where I was accepted for a PhD at the University of Washington. program, one of the best computer programs in the country. Seattle, with its endless cloudy days, was a cultural adjustment to say the least, but I made the most of it. I learned to ski in the winter and to sail in the summer. It also broadened my horizons.

Discovering Bitcoin

One day in 2018, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase sent me $20 worth of bitcoins as part of a campaign aimed at promising computer science students across the United States, I didn’t think much of it at first, but as the value of the BTC grew, so did my curiosity. Bitcoin was the big story—just the kind of thing that always appealed to me, the kind of thing that too many computer scientists dismiss as vague or frivolous. It wasn’t just about the money; it was about trust, consensus and rethinking our basic systems. A truly shared economy.

After earning my Ph.D., I joined Algorand, a blockchain startup founded by MIT professor and Turing Award winner Silvio Micali. At Algorand, I worked on coding the platform’s first smart contract. And I learned that success in blockchain and life depends on more than technical innovation. It’s about community, culture and, above all, about use.

This realization led me to launch my first startup, Manta Network, which focused on decentralized finance to protect privacy. Building Manta was a crash course in business. I learned how to build a team, develop a product, and navigate the volatile crypto market. The lessons were hard earned and prepared me for what came next.

Zero knowledge is a beautiful thing

While attending the 2022 Blockchain Summit in Montenegro, I had a moment of clarity. Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) emerged as the main vector of blockchain development. And I realized that these proofs, which verify information without revealing it, were the key to making blockchains work for many more users and use cases.

People who say that blockchains are a problem in finding a solution are making a category mistake. Blockchains solve problems that are long-standing and well-known. Since its development, the Internet has never developed a satisfactory way to ensure that a counterparty will act honestly. Its systems require the establishment of trust through increasingly invasive and cumbersome security measures, and it stores information and records in centralized databases that are vulnerable to attack or manipulation.

Blockchain is ultimately a much more efficient coordination system that can prove the validity of a transaction or identity and that can ensure that an agreement is carried out as intended. The problem with blockchains isn’t that they don’t solve a problem; it’s that they’re slow and expensive, and therefore impractical for many everyday uses. This is because they simply lack – by orders of magnitude – the computing power of a centralized internet.

With that in mind, I set myself the task of upgrading the computing power of the blockchain from something akin to computing power to that of a supercomputer. For this, I am working to reduce the cost and complexity of ZKP, which significantly speeds up the processing of transactions on the blockchain.

Turns out I had been preparing for this my whole life, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. My academic background has given me a broad knowledge of computer science, from theory to systems. My time at Algorand and Manta taught me how to navigate the startup world and solve real problems. And my natural curiosity makes me ask big and sometimes uncomfortable questions.

My goal now is to upgrade blockchains by making ZKP fast and cost effective. If I succeed, I hope to contribute to making the Internet and the entire economy more efficient, transparent and fair.

Shumo Chu is one of the co-founders of NEBRA Labs. A former assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington and was a research fellow at Algorand. His current research interest is privacy protection systems.