Alex Gluchowski is the Co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs, a German-based company developing the ZKsync technology. ^[1][2]

Education

Gluchowski earned his Master of Science in computer science from the Berlin Institute of Technology (Technische Universität Berlin), where he studied from 2009 to 2011. ^[2]

Career

Alex Gluchowski started his career as a Junior Software Developer at Design Bureau Electronprylad from 2003 to 2004. From 2004 to 2006, he was a Software Developer at Clarity Ukraine. In July 2007, he joined Clarity AG, Bad Homburg as the Head of Software Engineering until September 2009.

In 2011 he served as the CTO of ExpoGlobus.com where he built a small remote team and created a comprehensive web-based SAAS for trade show and forum management. In December 2013, he co-founded Somuchmore GmbH and served as the CTO. Here, he created the MVP for the first European network for a holistic lifestyle (Java Play, Angular.js). Launched the platform in 4 European countries, the company was acquired by Rocket Internet GmbH, and then Urban Sports Club in December 2016. ^[3]

In October 2015, he co-founded PaulCamper^[4] and served as the CTO for the company until August 2017. Afterward, he served as the Director of R&D for Entropy Labs until 2018. ^[2]

Matter Labs

In December 2018, Alex Gluchowski co-founded Matter Labs alongside Alex V. and serves as the CEO of the company. Matter Labs is working to scale Ethereum using zero-knowledge proofs, a technology seen as essential for the mainstream adoption of public blockchains. ^[5]

Matter Labs raised $2 million in a seed round in September 2019 and another $6 million in a Series A round in February 2021 from crypto companies like Binance, Aave, Curve, and Coinbase Ventures. ^[5]

Its Series B raise in November 2021 saw another $50 million raised from venture capital funds like a16z, Dragonfly, and Placeholder. In January 2022, the company was backed with another $200 million by BitDAO. ^[5]

ZKsync

Matter Labs is the company behind the Ethereum scaling solution ZKsync, which aims to scale the Ethereum blockchain via zk-Rollup technology. zero-knowledge rollups facilitate multiple blockchain transactions on a second layer and then finalize them on the mainnet in a simplified chunk with less data. Matter Labs’ zkSync solution aims to scale the Ethereum blockchain while maintaining decentralization and security. ^[6]

"zkSync can handle up to 3,000 transactions per second. It significantly reduces transaction costs, making them just a few cents compared to the higher fees on the Ethereum mainnet." - Alex G. said in his zkSync Edcon introduction talk^[7]

In an interview with Epicenter Podcast, Alex Gluchowski shared his journey from studying computer science in Berlin to becoming involved in the crypto space after working in telecommunications and startups and also his experience working at Matter Labs and co-creating ZKsync. ^[8]

He introduced ZKsync as the first EVM-compatible zkRollup, a protocol designed to enhance Ethereum's scalability by enabling more efficient and faster transactions. He also explained how users can move assets from Ethereum layer 1 to zkSync layer 2, the current requirement for special wallets, and future plans for decentralizing the sequencer to improve security and usability. ^[8]

On the future of ZKsync, Gluchowski said:

"zkSync is going to be a decentralized protocol which is owned by the community, not by any given company."^[8]

He also talked about the ZKsync token saying:

"There will be token involved and there might be some ways to monetize the token, there might be some services we will be building, but in general, zkSync is going to be decentralized... with code snippets, with getting started guides, developer documentation, everything."^[8]