David Chaum is a pioneer of cryptography applied to the digital medium. He was one of the first people to develop tools to protect privacy in the transfer of information and value.
Es one of the greatest cryptographers in the world and his name is David Lee Chaum. Chaum was born in 1955 in the United States. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Business Administration from the University of Berkeley, California. Considered the father of digital moneyChaum has an extensive career as a professor, researcher, and developer of cryptographic protocols.
A life dedicated to cryptography
He was a promoter and organizer of the first annual crypto and cryptology conferences held in Santa Barbara (California) since 1982. This annual conference was called CRYPTO, and there were professionals with high knowledge in the field to make exhibitions of new developments.
In the conference CRYPTO '82, David Chaum presented a paper that would be the seed of the first digital money protocol that it could be really anonymous. His proposal allowed to create a cryptography-based digital payment system introducing the concept of blind signature.
*Read about blind signature in Spanish on Wikipedia or blind signature in english on Bitcoin wiki
In 1990 David Chaum creates DigiCash Inc.., a company to create electronic money services implementing its own research. With this company it develops eCash- An enhanced version of your own cryptographic digital payment system. At the same time, Chaum worked with quite relevant cryptographers such as Eric Hughess o Nick Szabo, among others.
In 1994 the WWW94, first World Wide Web conference held in Geneva, Switzerland. In it, David Chaum announced and demonstrated, for the first time in the world, how eCash allowed to make payments with electronic money through computers using only software.
Master of masters
David Chaum has never stopped working and after finishing his studies he founded the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR)
Similarly, he created a research group on cryptography in the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) in Amsterdam.
In addition, he has also been a professor at the Graduate School of Business Administration at the following universities: University of New York y University of California, Berkeley.
As a consequence of his contributions, David Chaum is also a benchmark for people who started and promoted the movement and culture Cypherpunk. So much so that his name is cited more than 70 times in The Cyphernomicon, a document published by Timothy May on September 10, 1994.
Outstanding contributions on digital money
When they are reviewed David Chaum's publications The conclusion is clear: the defense of privacy has accompanied him throughout his life.
Here are some of his most notable contributions to the world of crypto and digital money:
- Reliable Voting System (1981) Chaum proposed a system for public elections with electronic voting. The original title is 'Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms'
- Blind signature for non-traceable payments (1982) First approach to digital money through blind signature cryptography.
- Zero Knowledge Protocol (1988) In collaboration with Gilles Brassard y Claude Crepeau, They developed secure channels that allow transactions to be made without leaving traces of the sender, receiver and what was sent.
- Non-Traceable Electronic Money (1988) In collaboration with Fiat Masters y Moni Naor, implementation of offline transactions with detection system double-spending.
- DigiCash (1990) Cash company based in Amsterdam to market your research ideas.
Elixxir & Praxxis, their own crypto projects
Finally, comment that today David Chaum works on the development of his own projects related to cryptocurrencies. The first of them is called Elixir, and its proposal is based on a decentralized blockchain network for fast, secure and confidential messages and payments. To know how the roadmap of this project is progressing, we recommend you follow its official channels.
Praxxis It is a project that proposes a quantum computer resistant coin that will use the infrastructure created in Elixxir. In the words of its official website, Praxxis is a new high-performance digital currency backed by a quantum attack resistant blockchain. Using denominated coins and a new consensus approach, Praxxis harnesses the power of her sister Elixxir's privacy protection platform.