Emin Gün Sirer

Emin Gün Sirer is the co-founder and CEO of Ava Labs (/tags/ava-labs) and the lead designer of the Avalanche consensus protocol underlying Avalanche (/tags/avalanche).

Who is Emin Gün Sirer

Before founding Ava Labs, Sirer was a computer science professor at Cornell University and co-director of Cornell's Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts. He holds a PhD in computer science and engineering, and his academic research covered distributed systems, cryptocurrency scaling, and the economics and security of blockchain networks.

Notable Work

Sirer designed the Avalanche consensus protocol, which uses repeated random sampling among validators to reach agreement quickly rather than requiring every validator to communicate with every other one. The Avalanche project was incubated at Cornell, where Sirer worked alongside PhD students including Kevin Sekniqi (/tags/kevin-sekniqi) before the two co-founded Ava Labs to bring the protocol to a production network. His earlier research included work on proof-of-work currency design and on the centralization risks of existing blockchain networks.

Social Presence

Sirer is active on X as el33th4xor, where he discusses Avalanche's development, protocol research, and broader blockchain industry topics.