Dieter Shirley

Shirley has more than 20 years of software experience, going back to the dot-com era, and has shipped products for Apple, BlackBerry and Microsoft. At Atimi Software he led a team of more than 30 developers on mobile projects for large clients, and earlier, as a senior software engineer at AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry, he helped build iWeb and the iWork suite.⁠[1]

He has also served as founding CTO of Cornerstone, a real estate transaction platform developed with former Sotheby’s executives.⁠[1]

Shirley is a co-creator of CryptoKitties, a blockchain collectibles game that began as a playful project in which players collect and breed digital cats.⁠[1][2]

Shirley has said that in 2011 a friend who knew of his interest in cryptography shared the Bitcoin white paper with him; cryptography and economics had been side hobbies, and Bitcoin brought them together with his work as a software engineer.⁠[3]

Shirley is one of four authors of ERC-721 (“ERC-721: Non-Fungible Token Standard”), the Ethereum standard for non-fungible tokens, alongside William Entriken, Jacob Evans and Nastassia Sachs. Created on January 24, 2018, and now in Final status, the standard provides an interface for tracking and transferring NFTs within smart contracts; the document notes that CryptoKitties is compatible with an earlier version of the standard.⁠[4]

The popularity of CryptoKitties overloaded the Ethereum network, and in early 2018 the team spun out as Dapper Labs, which went on to build Dapper Wallet to make crypto easier to use and its own blockchain, Flow, to handle scale; Shirley serves as Dapper Labs’ chief technology officer and lead architect.⁠[2]

In a team profile published on the Flow website on May 8, 2020, Shirley introduced himself as CTO of Dapper Labs and chief architect of Flow, and said CryptoKitties had taught the team about the strengths and limitations of blockchains. “Flow is the blockchain I wished someone else would have built,” he said.⁠[3]

On September 30, 2020, he discussed the history of CryptoKitties, the NFT standard, why Dapper Labs built its own blockchain and how Flow works on episode 149 of the Zero Knowledge Podcast.⁠[5]

On May 18, 2021, 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 published on its website the videos of the NFT Virtual Summit it co-hosted with the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research. One session, “NBANBAThe National Basketball Association (NBA) is a North American professional basketball league with 30 teams.Open the full entry Top Shot and Other NFTs on the Flow Blockchain,” featured Shirley, as a cofounder of Dapper Labs, in conversation with Dan BonehDan BonehDan Boneh is a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University, where he heads the applied cryptography group and co-directs the computer security lab; his research applies cryptography to computer security. He received the 2013 Gödel Prize and serves as a senior research advisor at a16z.Open the full entry, professor of computer science at 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. The video was uploaded to the a16z 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 on May 21, 2021, as “NBA Top Shot and the Flow Blockchain.”⁠[6][7]

Shirley traced the development of NFTs from CryptoKitties to the creation of the Flow blockchain and presented NBA Top Shot, a sports collectibles experience built in partnership with the NBA, as an example of what Flow makes possible. The two also discussed challenges for the NFT space, including distinguishing teams and projects that are building real communities and making the experience easier for newcomers.⁠[6]

With Benjamin Ebner he co-wrote “Blockchain Networks and the Human Factor: How to Know Whether They're Accessible” for Future, a publication of Andreessen Horowitz, on how to judge whether blockchain networks are accessible.⁠[8]

Flow: Official website: https://flow.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]