Currently a Founding Engineer at Raiku, where I'm building high-performance infrastructure for the Solana ecosystem. I architect and implement core protocol systems that push the boundaries of what's possible in blockchain technology - our node processes 60,000 transactions per second through carefully optimized networking stacks and direct validator-level modifications. My work spans from designing the initial MVP to implementing comprehensive observability systems that enable seamless deployment and monitoring for node operators worldwide.
At Raiku, I focus on the entirea core protocol stack: from off-chain transaction processing components to low-level Agave validator modifications, always optimizing for minimal latency and maximum throughput. The systems I build leverage Rust's zero-cost abstractions and Tokio's async runtime to achieve performance metrics that rival traditional financial infrastructure while maintaining the security guarantees of decentralized systems.
Before Raiku, I spent 18 months at RISC Zero advancing the frontier of zero-knowledge proofs. I worked on improving zkVM internals for enhanced performance and observability, built Bonsai - a proving network that dramatically reduced execution and proving times, and developed a high-throughput Ethereum relayer capable of processing millions of transactions daily. This experience gave me deep insights into cryptographic systems and the intersection of theoretical computer science with practical engineering challenges.
My journey in blockchain began in DeFi at Composable Finance, where I developed a derivatives exchange that reached over $21M in TVL. This role taught me the importance of rigorous testing in financial systems - I implemented comprehensive property-based testing suites to ensure mathematical correctness of critical components. Combined with backend engineering experience at traditional tech companies, I've built a strong foundation in distributed systems, high-performance computing, and systems programming.
In what feels like a previous life, I was a bioinformatics researcher at the University of Brasília, developing computational models for vaccines against tropical diseases. I was immersed in protein folding algorithms and genomic analysis pipelines, genuinely believing I'd spend my career at the intersection of biology and computation. The elegance of biological systems still fascinates me - nature's solutions to information storage and processing problems are remarkably sophisticated. But somewhere between optimizing a protein analysis pipeline with Rust (achieving a 30x speedup) and diving into distributed systems, I discovered that my true passion lies in building the computational infrastructure itself. The transition from researching biological systems to engineering digital ones has been transformative, though I still approach software with the same scientific rigor I once applied to vaccine research.
I'm passionate about continuing to push the boundaries of what's possible on Solana, focusing on high-performance computing and systems programming in Rust. The challenges of building infrastructure that can handle internet-scale throughput while maintaining cryptographic security are exactly the kind of problems I want to solve.