Awa Sun Yin is a blockchain researcher, developer, and entrepreneur known for her work in privacy-preserving technologies and decentralized protocols. She is a co-founder of Cryptium Labs, Metastate, and Heliax, the company that developed the Anoma Network, and currently serves as president of the Anoma Foundation. ^[1]

Education

Yin completed her Bachelor of Business Administration in Business Administration and Management from Esade in 2015. As part of her undergraduate studies, she participated in an exchange program at HEC Montréal in 2014, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in International Business. She later obtained a Master of Science in IT Management from Copenhagen Business School in 2017. ^{[2] [3]}

Career

Yin's work in the blockchain industry began during her graduate studies in Copenhagen, where she undertook a university project that involved applying machine learning techniques to analyze Bitcoin data. This project led to a collaboration with the blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, which she joined full-time as a data scientist in 2017. In this role, she focused on analyzing on-chain data to identify transaction patterns and information leakage, an experience that provided her with early insights into the privacy challenges inherent in distributed ledger systems.

In 2018, after attending industry conferences such as Devcon 3 and ETHDenver, Yin's focus shifted from data analysis to decentralized protocol development, with a particular interest in consensus mechanisms, proof-of-stake (PoS) systems, and interoperability. She left Chainalysis in mid-2018 and, with co-founders Christopher Goes and Adrian Brink, established Cryptium Labs. The company provided secure validation infrastructure for early PoS networks, including Tezos and Cosmos, and became an active participant in their ecosystems. Cryptium Labs was later acquired by Chorus One in 2021.

In early 2019, Yin and her partners founded Metastate, a research and engineering firm dedicated to advancing distributed systems. The company's work centered on cryptographic tools like zero-knowledge proofs and compiler development, and the team contributed to protocol upgrades and on-chain governance mechanisms for various blockchain ecosystems. The firm grew to approximately 15 members during its operation.

In 2021, Yin became a director at Heliax, the research and development company responsible for building the Anoma Network. In the same year, she was appointed president of the Anoma Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports the development and coordination of the Anoma ecosystem. In these roles, she continues to focus on designing and building privacy-preserving and self-sovereign decentralized infrastructure. ^{[4] [5]}

Interviews

Novel Architectures

In November 2022, on Bankless’s Green Pill podcast, the host interviewed Yin, the co-founder of Anoma, a decentralized application architecture designed to facilitate complex applications through a fundamentally new primitive called "intents." These intents describe users' desired outcomes, such as financial transactions or contributions to funding projects, and are broadcast within a decentralized network. The architecture includes a gossip layer for counterparty discovery and a network of solvers that combine these intents into executable transactions on-chain. The discussion explored the implications of Anoma's architecture for decentralized coordination in applications such as decentralized exchanges and quadratic funding mechanisms, emphasizing its potential to address the coordination failures inherent in multi-polar traps. Yin shared that Anoma aimed to enhance the flexibility of decentralized applications while providing valuable tools for public goods funding, and that they planned to launch several applications based on this architecture in the near future. ^[6]

Yin’s Journey

During an interview with Tech Snippets Today at Consensus in June 2022, Yin shared insights about her unconventional journey into the tech industry, which began in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Initially working with algorithms for analyzing blockchain data, she then transitioned to building privacy-focused technologies at Anoma. The company aimed to create protocols that prioritize user intent, enabling more complex, nuanced interactions with blockchain technology beyond simple transactions. Yin explained that current architectures fail to support intricate user needs, leading to the development of Anoma as a platform that enhances flexibility and privacy for user intents.

She discussed the importance of integrating party discovery and self-sovereign identity into their systems and detailed Anoma's vision to enable users to express complex intents in a user-friendly manner. Furthermore, she emphasized the need for a more privacy-centric approach in financial systems to ensure user data remains protected while fostering the development of decentralized applications. The conversation concluded with Yin expressing hope for the evolution of governance models through decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and the role of technology in enhancing societal structures. ^[7]

Presentations

Anoma

In July 2024, Yin gave an introduction to an Intents Discussion event hosted by Anoma, which featured various discussions on decentralized protocols and infrastructure aimed at transitioning from traditional financial systems to more equitable alternatives, referred to as "game B." Participants were reminded of the program's structure, which included panels, chats, and a chocolate tasting break. The discussions highlighted the concept of Anoma, emphasizing a new architecture for decentralized protocols that prioritize user intent over traditional transaction models. This shift aimed to enhance user control, facilitate cooperation, and remove dependence on intermediaries. The session concluded with a call for exploration within the Anoma framework, likening it to a deep journey of discovery into an evolving technological landscape. ^[8]

Size Matters

At EthCC in July 2023, Yin, co-founder of Anoma and Namada, discussed the challenges of on-chain privacy in the cryptocurrency space. Reflecting on her previous experience as a data scientist, she emphasized that the understanding of privacy issues among protocol builders, cryptographers, and end users was lacking. Yin explained the methods used by chain analysts to de-anonymize transactions, highlighting the growing efficacy of their techniques as more specific data became available, particularly with the introduction of Ethereum and NFTs. She noted that current privacy solutions were inadequate, often forcing users to resort to centralized exchanges to protect their privacy. Yin concluded that the size of anonymity sets is crucial for enhancing privacy and proposed strategies to improve user experience and privacy protection in blockchain technology. ^[9]

Privacy

Yin discussed the concept of privacy as a public good at the Privacy Evolution event in July 2022, highlighting the current state of Web3 privacy protocols, particularly those that operate pseudonymously. She explained that while pseudonymity hides user identities behind random strings of characters, blockchain interactions can reveal significant amounts of data that could be used for data correlation and analysis, potentially compromising user privacy. Yin elaborated on advancements in cryptography, mentioning protocols such as Monero and Zcash that offer enhanced privacy through techniques like ring signatures and zero-knowledge proofs. She proposed treating privacy as a public good, benefiting all users collectively, and introduced projects like Namada and Anoma that aim to design privacy solutions that enhance anonymity for all participants in the ecosystem. Her overall message emphasized the need for equitable design in digital infrastructure to prevent a few from extracting value at the expense of many and to foster a more inclusive Web3 environment. ^[10]