Culper Cypher

I’m a solo founder and developer building a privacy enabled liquid staking protocol on Starknet. Over the last several weeks, I’ve been deep in Noir, Barretenberg, Garaga, and Cairo, learning how each layer connects to form a complete zero knowledge system.

This project is entirely self funded. I approached this hackathon as a chance to build something ambitious: private deposits, private withdrawals, and liquid staking combined into one protocol. I use AI tools to accelerate development, but every architectural choice, circuit design, and debugging step required hands on work no AI system can ship a protocol on its own.

Before working in crypto full time, I served in US Navy Cryptology (2002–2007), where I worked directly with hashing systems and cryptographic operations. That background helped me understand the primitives required for this design. I’ve been in crypto since 2017 and currently operate validators across several networks, including multiple liquid staking deployments on testnets. I also have extensive leadership experience across several business ventures.

Although I am submitting this project as a solo founder, I included one junior developer who contributed to the Zcash to Starknet bridge implementation.

My goal is to build real, user empowering DeFi infrastructure. Privacy is the next major unlock for staking, and this protocol is my attempt to push that forward.