Add Thomas Coratger

[b-wagn]

Name: Thomas Coratger / @tcoratger
Working Group: Cryptography
Start Date: 2024-12-01
Proposed weight: 1

Note. This PR replaces #436 and its revert #442

Background and Collaboration

Before joining the Ethereum Foundation (EF), Thomas was a regular open-source contributor to key Ethereum infrastructure projects. For over a year, he made around 500 commits to Reth (an Ethereum execution client).

Now, Thomas is a researcher / research engineer at the Ethereum foundation.
He does excellent work on questions related to all sorts of cryptography engineering.

I have worked with Thomas (and still do) on all practical aspects of the post-quantum signature proposal for Ethereum.
In addition, Thomas actively works on zkEVM- and proof system-related topics in the context of Ethereum.
Both post-quantum cryptography and zkEVM are highly relevant to the Ethereum ecosystem.

Links to his Work

LeanEthereum cryptography and cryptography engineering

Thomas is actively helping to shape the cryptography that is used in post-quantum Ethereum (or LeanEthereum):

• The leanSpec in Python for the clients
• Commits for the leanVM
• Commits/review and for the proposed XMSS-like signature scheme
• WHIR for the pcs of our VM

zkEVM Book

To help others understand zkEVM field and how zkVMs can help scaling Ethereum, Thomas co-authored several sections of the zkEVM book.
He was also one of the people who came up with the idea to have such a book.
This is an educational resource that explains how ZK technology can scale Ethereum, making it more accessible to developers and researchers:

• Link to book

Work on Proof Systems (e.g., crucial for zkEVMs)

• A lot of work on Plonky3
• EthResearch post on WHIR in Ethereum (another one in preparation)
• Proximity proof explainer
• Some explorations with Plonky3 recursion team
• Hashcaster exploration with Lev/binary field things on binius

Other

• Thomas' hackmd with many interesting and useful notes

[jsign]

I can vouch for Thomas. He is a top-notch cryptography engineer who has been working on areas that could unlock fundamental breakthroughs in the protocol.

[gballet]

Thomas is the guy we need, where we need him.

[asanso]

big +1 Thomas adds a ton of value to the project.