Eli Ben-Sasson | Founder of StarkWare — Scaling Blockchain With Zero-Knowledge

In this episode of BeaconLayer Podcast, Kenzi Morikawa, Sachi Miyasaki, and Diksha Wells sit down with Eli Ben-Sasson, Co-Founder and President of StarkWare, to unpack the story behind one of the most important breakthroughs in blockchain scaling: zero-knowledge proofs.Eli shares how a career in core theory and academia ultimately led him into Web3 — from earning his Ph.D. under Avi Wigderson to postdoctoral work at MIT and Harvard University. With deep roots in probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs), Eli explains the moment it clicked: at a 2013 Bitcoin conference, he realized these ideas could compress verification and directly attack blockchain’s scalability limits.We dive into how StarkWare’s tech compresses computation into proofs, what it takes to onboard the next billion users without compromising security, and why decentralization remains the hardest long-term problem. Eli also shares a sober warning: as systems become valuable, incentives naturally push toward concentration — and the real mission of Web3 is to resist that by broadening participation and influence.Expect a deep conversation on the StarkWare journey, scaling with zero knowledge, and the tradeoffs that will define the next era of crypto infrastructure.