David Chaum
Unquestionably the biggest pioneer in the cryptography space, David Chaum’s influence gained him nicknames such as “The Godfather of crypo'' and “the father of online anonymity”. Astonishingly, Chaum’s ideas around digital cash were proposed 25 years prior to Bitcoin but bear staggering similarities.
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Age
67
Loc
CAL
Nat
USA
Timeline
1982
GROUND-BREAKING DISSERTATION
David Chaum’s dissertation ‘Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups’ is the first known proposal for a blockchain protocol and considered one of the biggest influences on the cryptography space. Incredibly, Chaum’s dissertation proposed all but one element of the blockchain outlined in the Bitcoin whitepaper over 25 years later.Source
1983
BLIND SIGNATURES
Chaum argued that early electronic banking services negatively impacted personal privacy. His paper ‘Blind Signatures For Untraceable Payments’ was the first to propose a way of verifying a digital document whilst hiding the content of the message - a principle that was built on by Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto.Source
1989
DIGICASH
Building on his work around blind signatures, Chaum founded DigiCash. The company created one of the first attempts at an anonymous digital currency: eCash. Whilst DigiCash eventually failed as a business, it succeeded in laying the groundwork for modern day cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin.Source
1994
WORLD’S FIRST
David Chaum demonstrated the first international eCash payment at the World Wide Web conference. An iconic win for decentralised payments and arguably the start of a road which led us to Bitcoin.Source
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