Alice: Brandon, thank you for being here today. I’m really excited to have this interview with you.
Brandon: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Alice: Of course. I’d love to start with your origin story. Can you share your journey into Web3, ZK, and how you eventually found yourself at 01 Labs?
Brandon: Sure. I’ll try to keep it brief - I’ve been known to talk about this for far too long! My first exposure to crypto was when I saw a Slashdot post about Bitcoin back in high school. I tried installing the client on my parents’ computer but failed. That was when Bitcoin was at one cent.
A few years later, when I saw it at $122, I realized I couldn’t miss the opportunity again. So, I built a computer with money from an internship and mined Bitcoin using my university’s free electricity. I managed to mine several hundred BTC, but then I deleted my hard drive. And if that wasn’t enough, I also stored some on a public cloud service that got hacked - so I lost everything.
After that, I was pretty disillusioned with crypto and didn’t pay much attention when Ethereum launched. I did get involved in the Tezos ICO because of their use of OCaml, but mostly, I was in and out of the space.
In my professional career, I tended to follow whatever was exciting at the time. I was at a mobile location social startup that got acquired by Pinterest, where I found a great niche and worked on really interesting problems. But after a while, I wanted something even more challenging.
One of my college friends was working on a new cryptocurrency project, which eventually became Mina. I started contributing nights and weekends while still at Pinterest, and after a few months, I joined full-time. I started as an engineer, moved around the company a lot, and fast-forward to now - I’m the CEO of 01 Labs.
Alice: That’s quite a journey - from mining Bitcoin in college and losing it all, to working at Pinterest, and finally, leading 01 Labs. I imagine those experiences shaped a lot of your perspective. One of the key visions Mina and 01 Labs emphasize is building an internet powered by programmable cryptography. Can you elaborate on what that means to you?
Brandon: Absolutely. First, let me clarify that Mina is a decentralized project with many contributors. What I’m expressing here is the vision of 01 Labs and my personal perspective.
We see programmable cryptography as the foundation for a new internet—one that enables developers to build applications with more powerful guarantees. Today, the internet has moved through distinct phases. Initially, it was just about information sharing - decentralized and community-driven. Then we added cryptography, things like SSL and TLS, which enabled applications like online banking and social media. But in doing so, we lost a lot of decentralization.
With programmable cryptography - using tools like ZK, FHE, and MPC - we can bring back decentralization while maintaining privacy and security. These cryptographic tools allow us to build new types of applications that simply weren’t possible before.
Mina’s role in this vision is as a decentralized transport layer—where proofs from different systems can come together, interact, and be delivered efficiently to end users. Since Mina is a succinct blockchain, users can verify everything with just a single proof, without sacrificing decentralization, liveness, or censorship resistance.
Alice: That progression makes a lot of sense. Web1 was about information sharing, Web2 added cryptography but lost decentralization, and now programmable cryptography allows us to reclaim it. Given that ZK is a key enabler of this, do you see ZK dominating, or will there be a mix of approaches like MPC and FHE?
Brandon: I definitely see a combination of approaches. 01 Labs has been focused on ZK for a long time - we were the first project to use recursive ZK proofs in production. But we’ve also experimented with MPC and FHE. Each has different trade-offs, and I think they’ll be used together rather than one replacing the others.
That said, ZK has some unique properties that make it especially powerful. The proofs are small, they’re easy to recombine through recursion, they provide verifiable computation, and they offer privacy and compression benefits. So while other cryptographic techniques will play a role, ZK will likely be central.
Alice: That makes sense. You also mentioned the concept of a “proof of everything”. What does that mean, and why is it important?
Brandon: The “proof of everything” is the idea that we can have a single recursive proof representing a vast amount of verified computation. Think of it as a knowledge database that anyone can contribute to, with each new proof building on previous ones.
For example, imagine a collaborative effort to prove mathematical theorems in ZK. Each new theorem adds to the collective knowledge, and because it’s a recursive system, proofs can be efficiently combined. Another example is user data - updates can be made incrementally, rather than recomputing everything from scratch. This makes proving much more scalable and efficient.
Ultimately, the proof of everything is like a global computation layer that continually expands in knowledge but remains lightweight and accessible.
Alice: That’s a really powerful way to think about it. Now, shifting to real-world applications - what use cases are being built on Mina, or what future applications do you hope to see?
Brandon: There’s already a lot happening. We recently hosted the first MinaCon, where experienced builders showcased what they’re working on. Some exciting projects include:
Mina’s architecture is uniquely suited for these use cases because it allows users to verify computations without trusting centralized services.
Alice: That’s an impressive range of applications. Another important aspect of Mina is developer experience. You’ve built tools like SnarkyJS. What was the reasoning behind creating a custom DSL, and what limitations did you see in existing languages?
Brandon: When we started in 2017, there were no good tools for writing ZK circuits. We were basically writing assembly-level code in libsnark. That was unsustainable, so we developed Snarky, an embedded DSL in OCaml, to abstract away the complexity. Over time, we realized that most developers didn’t want to learn OCaml, so we created SnarkyJS in TypeScript.
The key design principle was layering - providing low-level access for optimizations while also making high-level development easy. Developers don’t want to learn a new language just to write ZK circuits; they want to use familiar tools. That’s why embedding into existing ecosystems, like TypeScript and potentially Rust, is crucial.
Alice: That user focus really stands out in your approach. We’ve covered a lot - your journey, the proof of everything, real-world applications, and developer tooling. Any final thoughts?
Brandon: I’d just emphasize that programmable cryptography is the foundation for the next generation of the internet. We need decentralized systems that preserve privacy, composability, and scalability. Mina provides a critical part of this infrastructure, and I’m excited to see how developers will use it to build the future.
Alice: Well said. Brandon, thank you so much for the insights - it’s been a fascinating conversation.
Brandon: Thanks, Alice. Appreciate the discussion!
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