maraoz

I studied Computer Science and Engineering at Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires. I'm originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, currently living in Uruguay.

I cofounded and was formerly CTO at OpenZeppelin. I created Proof of Existence, one of the first non-financial bitcoin apps. I also helped create Decentraland.

For more detail on what I'm up to lately, see my "now" page.

Latest Blog Posts

• Nov 4, 2024 — Texting While Driving
• Aug 26, 2024 — Weird People
• Jun 10, 2024 — The Meaning of Bitcoin
• Jun 5, 2024 — In Search of the Lost Web
• May 16, 2024 — What Do You Optimize For?

Projects

Web3

• Proof of Existence, a web service to anonymously and securely store an online distributed proof of existence for any document.
• OpenZeppelin, an open-source library for secure smart contract development in EVM-compatible blockchains.
• Decentraland, a blockchain-based virtual reality world.
• Rewilder, a non-profit that coordinates the global purchase of land for wildlife conservation.
• Streamium, a p2p livestreaming application using payment channels smart contract for micropayments.

Game development

• ComboCombat, a multiplayer wizard combat game.
• Singular Journey, a VR exploration puzzle game that lets you explore alternative physics. Collaboration with Mariano Merchante.

Miscellaneous interests

• Indie games, especially Braid, a game about time and causality that showed me that videogames can be as deep and enjoyable as books, music or art. Other games I enjoyed a lot are osu!, Today I Die, Undertale and The Witness.
• Esports, or competitive play of videogames. I once trained and played in Starcraft 2 tournaments. Valuable resources for learning were Sean Plott's Day[9] TV and Shaun Clark's Terran Tutorials. More recent, Vibe's Bronze to GM series are an amazing way to get better fast, focusing on fundamentals. I usually suck at most games but deeply enjoy the journey of improving myself and the life lessons learned along the way.
• Creative Coding, or making art via code. I've seen some mind-bending examples like this fantastic video from FITC Tokyo 2015, or the paintings of StyleNet.
• Educational Videos on YouTube. My favorite channels are Kurzgesagt, Vsauce, Vi Hart, PBS Spacetime and theodds1sout.
• Music. I play some guitar, bass, piano and flute. During 2020 I ventured into EDM production in a duo project called Alpaca Brothers. You can find our tracks on soundcloud or Spotify.
• Podcasts. My favorite hosts are Lex Fridman (my favorite episode), Dan Carlin (my favorite episode), and Tim Ferris (my favorite episode) .

Credit

avatar designed by Marian. is a variation generated by DALL·E 2.