Alex Gluchowski

Gluchowski held several software development jobs before attending university. From 2009 to 2011 he studied computer science at the Berlin Institute of Technology, earning a Master of Science degree.⁠[1]

From 2011 to 2013 he served as chief technology officer of ExpoGlobus, and he later worked as director of research and development at Entropy Labs.⁠[1]

As of November 2021, he had co-founded three companies and served as chief technology officer of four.⁠[2]

Gluchowski co-founded Matter Labs with Alex Vlasov; the company develops zero-knowledge proof technology for scaling EthereumEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry. In 2019 Matter Labs launched its first public ZK rollup prototype, and the first version of zkSync, a ZK rollup for payments, has been live on the Ethereum mainnet since July 2020.⁠[3][4]

Gluchowski has said he spent a very long time in Hong Kong. In an April 2021 interview with imToken, he described Matter Labs’ mission as “to help scale blockchains” and explained the company’s choice of a layer-2 approach: “it doesn't make sense to try building another L1 that would compete with it.”⁠[5]

In February 2021 Matter Labs closed a $6 million Series A round led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from PlaceholderPlaceholderPlaceholder is a venture capital firm founded in New York in 2017 and managed by Joel Monegro and Chris Burniske, investing in early-stage blockchain companies and open networks. Its investments include both company equity and network-native assets, and it conducts research on protocol economics, governance, and infrastructure.Open the full entry, Dragonfly, and 1kx.⁠[4][6]

On November 8, 2021, Matter Labs announced a $50 million Series B round led by Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z crypto), with participation from Placeholder, Dragonfly, 1kx, and organizations including Blockchain.com, Crypto.comCrypto.comCrypto.com is a cryptocurrency trading and payments platform founded in 2016, formerly known as Monaco and co-founded by Kris Marszalek and others. It offers a trading app, an exchange, crypto payment cards, custody, derivatives and prediction markets, and is closely associated with the Cronos blockchain and its CRO token. It is known for large sports naming-rights sponsorships and holds licenses in many jurisdictions worldwide.Open the full entry, Consensys, AaveAaveAave is a decentralized, non-custodial lending protocol deployed on Ethereum and several other public blockchains, where users can deposit crypto assets into liquidity pools to earn interest or borrow on an overcollateralized basis. The protocol is governed by the Aave DAO, made up of AAVE token holders.Open the full entry, and Gnosis. The company said it would use the funds to expand its scientific and engineering teams.⁠[4][6]

An investment note published by a16z that day described zkSync 2.0 as the first EVM-compatible zero-knowledge rollup, with its first version live on testnet and a port of Uniswap V2 available to users.⁠[2]

Speaking as chief executive of Matter Labs, Gluchowski said: “We simply don't have any other technology that can support this massive scale.” He added: “I don't see a world where optimistic rollups remain in the very near term.”⁠[6]

The same day, a16z published the video “Scaling Up Blockchains with Zero-Knowledge Proofs” on its YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel, hosted by a16z crypto general partner Ali Yahya, with Gluchowski, fellow Matter Labs co-founder Alex Vlasov, and Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry computer science professor Dan Boneh.⁠[3]

The discussion covered the technology behind zero-knowledge proofs and how zkSync enables Ethereum to scale “in a way that preserves its values of decentralization and security.”⁠[3]

In February 2022 the zkSync 2.0 testnet opened to the public. In November 2022 Matter Labs announced a $200 million Series C round and plans to open-source the zkSync 2.0 code.⁠[1]

Gluchowski was included at number 75 in the Cointelegraph Top 100 people in crypto and blockchain for 2023, which quoted him as saying: “The future is all on-chain.”⁠[1]

Matter Labs: Official website: https://matterlabs.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]