# Wei Dai

> Wei Dai is a people that works as a researcher and investment professional focused on blockchain, cryptography, and AI.

- Canonical URL: https://iq.wiki/wiki/wei-dai
- Categories: People in crypto
- Tags: Investor, Researcher
- Created: 2026-09-20T23:50:30.526Z
- Last updated: 2026-09-20T23:50:30.526Z
- Source: IQ.wiki — the world's largest blockchain and crypto encyclopedia (https://iq.wiki)

---

**Wei Dai** is a cryptographer and [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) investment researcher who serves as a Research Partner at 1kx, a crypto investment firm.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31) He earned a doctorate in cryptography from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied under Mihir Bellare, and his work has centered on zero-knowledge cryptography, protocol design, and the intersection of blockchain, artificial intelligence, and frontier technologies.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31)​

## Early Life and Education

Dai completed his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, earning a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science through the university's College of Creative Studies between 2012 and 2015.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31) He remained at UC Santa Barbara for a further year to complete a Master of Science in Computer Science, which he received in 2016.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31)​

From 2016 to 2021, Dai pursued a Doctor of Philosophy in Cryptography at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering in La Jolla, California, working under the supervision of the cryptographer Mihir Bellare.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31) His academic training in cryptography formed the technical foundation for his later work on zero-knowledge systems and protocol design in the [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) industry.

## Career

Dai's career has moved from research internships at established technology and research institutions toward specialist roles in cryptography and, subsequently, into [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) investment research.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31)​

### Early Research Internships

Dai's first industry role was a research internship at Visa in Palo Alto, California, which he held from June to September 2018.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31) He later completed a second research internship at NTT Research from June to October 2021.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31)​

### Heliax

From November 2021 to June 2022, Dai worked remotely as a cryptographer at Heliax, described as a public goods laboratory of creators, researchers, and builders deploying open-source protocols and mechanisms.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31) In this position he focused on the design and implementation of zero-knowledge circuits and their intermediate representations — the low-level building [blocks](https://iq.wiki/wiki/block) used to construct cryptographic proofs that allow one party to demonstrate a statement is true without revealing the underlying data.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31) 

### Bain Capital Crypto

Dai served as a Research Partner at Bain Capital Crypto from January to December 2022 in a hybrid capacity.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31) There he worked on the sourcing and diligence of [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) startups as well as portfolio company support, with a particular emphasis on zero-knowledge cryptography and protocol design.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31)​

### 1kx

In April 2023, Dai joined 1kx as a Research Partner, a role he continues to hold.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31) 1kx is a crypto investment firm specializing in ecosystem growth, focusing on the design and iteration of token models and acting as a hands-on advisor to founders building token networks.[\[1\]](#cite-id-zxqun0kt31) Alongside his role at 1kx, Dai has identified himself as a Computer Science PhD affiliated with UC San Diego.[\[2\]](#cite-id-haa8tcddft)​

## Cost of Trust Investment Thesis

Dai has publicly discussed 1kx's investment thesis, which he frames around the concept of a "cost of trust." He described "Cost of Trust 2.0" as an iteration and refinement of the firm's earlier thesis, arguing that generative and agentic artificial intelligence are creating new categories of trust gaps.[\[2\]](#cite-id-haa8tcddft) In elaborating the idea, he wrote that generative AI has produced "an authenticity crisis for digital media," while agentic AI is increasingly bottlenecked on trust rather than raw computation or capability.[\[2\]](#cite-id-haa8tcddft)​

The thesis rests on a claim that trust-establishing work — performed by auditors, notaries, attorneys, courts, custodians, and compliance officers — constitutes the single largest category of the modern economy, accounting for an estimated 35% of United States employment.[\[2\]](#cite-id-haa8tcddft) According to this framing, that category of work is being "repriced," a process that began in financial infrastructure and, in Dai's account, is now extended by the disruptions AI introduces to authenticity and verification.[\[2\]](#cite-id-haa8tcddft)​

## Public Commentary

Dai regularly shares views on technology, engineering, and cryptography through short public posts. He has reflected on the effect of artificial intelligence on technical work, writing that "when the systems & problems you work on get 'solved by AI,' you have to move on to higher-level systems," and adding that such higher-level systems "almost always exist in applied STEM," where practitioners "ship the outcomes for real people & businesses."[\[2\]](#cite-id-haa8tcddft)​

He has also raised questions about the relationship between building systems and understanding them, framing as a choice whether one must retain full comprehension of a system if one can control how it works, verify that it works, continuously improve it, and [leverage](https://iq.wiki/wiki/leverage) it as a subcomponent of a larger system.[\[2\]](#cite-id-haa8tcddft) His posts additionally touch on developments in the field, including a remark that public rankings of inference providers for AI had become, in an overheard characterization, "the new L2beat" — a reference to the analytics site tracking layer-two [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) networks.[\[2\]](#cite-id-haa8tcddft)​