I’m Lúcás, currently a cryptographer at Penumbra Labs, working on Penumbra.
My main interest is cryptography. I’ve done both applied work as well as more theoretical research. In particular, I like thinking about multiparty computation (MPC), zero-knowledge proofs, as well as engineering concerns like constant-time arithmetic and performance optimizations. I enjoy applying cutting edge techniques to real-world problems. There’s a virtuous cycle between the needs of users and pushing the frontier of research, and I like being in that loop.
I’ve also been programming since 2017 or so, and I try to have a somewhat public profile on the things I do. Topics I’ve enjoyed here include functional programming, distributed systems, and programming languages. I’ve programmed in a plethora of languages, but I mainly work in Rust, Go, and Python.
I also like math quite a bit, so that’s a recurring topic in my posts as well. Interests there include algebra and category theory.
I’ve written a couple of academic papers, with the help of my coauthors, of course!
I try and write blog posts on a recurring basis, hopefully at least once a month. I’ve covered various topics, from technical topics, to project updates, to guides and tutorials, but the main things on my plate at the moment are related to cryptography.
If you want to stay up to date, I’d recommend checking out the RSS feed.
I also run a podcast: The Cold Dive. This page has an episode list. I’m trying to schedule episodes regularly.
I try to orient my work around concrete projects. These range from small weekend-projects, to games, to libraries, to programming languages. My Github provides an even more complete overview.
I use this to write up share rough ideas with people. Many of these never get polished into full blog posts, but they might still be interesting to people.