Hi there ๐
Hi! I am Danny Willems. I try to use my developer and mathematician skills to build softwares, libraries and companies to reach a better society according to my values. My values include, but are not restricted to, privacy, egalitarianism, (effective) altruism and more recently veganism. When possible, my work is released publicly in open-source and for free.
I spend most of my time trying to provide a better Internet for everyone. With this mission in mind, I co-founded LeakIX with Gregory Boddin and we aim to be the Internet red team.
I am also a cryptography engineer at O(1) Labs, a company catalyzing a new generation of applications powered by zero-knowledge cryptography.
Previously I was a cryptography engineer at Nomadic Labs in the cryptography team. I was also the first engineer at B2C2.
During my study, I did an internship in the Gallium team at INRIA for my master thesis titled "To a typed language for modular programming" which consisted on unifying the core and modular language of OCaml.
Over the years, I also gained experiences in web and mobile development, DevOps and project managemenent.
My current interests are research works on arithmetization-oriented cryptographic primitives efficient in zero-knowledge protocols and in standard CPU architectures, cybersecurity and low-level code optimisations. Nowadays, I like getting my hands dirty coding in C, OCaml and Rust. Constantly requiring to be in an intellectually stimulating environment.
Regarding my personality, I am a curious person, I appreciate debating respectfully. I enjoy being surrounded by self-minded and respectful people, but I need to be in my world more than the average.