“The voice of our industry needs to be the builders. Competition among builders can be fierce at times; we’re often prone to infighting. I’m certainly not immune to this. But we need a unified front to educate and fight for the importance of open, decentralized systems.”

Biography:

Steven Goldfeder captains Offchain Labs as the company’s CEO. He co-founded the company along with Princeton University professor Ed Felten and Princeton Ph.D. graduate Harry Kalodner. Offchain Labs is a company in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space that built Abritrum, a layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution. Goldfeder is also one of the authors of the book Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction. Goldfeder completed his undergraduate studies at New York’s Yeshiva University, subsequently earning his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton. He completed an internship at Google in the software engineering department and worked as a research intern at one of Microsoft’s subentities, Microsoft Research.

Offchain Labs’ Arbitrum project touts multiple solutions that look to help in scaling the Ethereum blockchain. Arbitrum Chain is the umbrella category that includes the Arbitrum Rollup and Arbitrum AnyTrust layer-2 Ethereum solutions. Subsequently, Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova fall under the classification of Arbitrum Rollup and Arbitrum AnyTrust chains, respectively. In the second half of 2021, a Series B funding effort pocketed Offchain Labs $120 million from several investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Pantera Capital and Mark Cuban. The announcement of the added capital also came at the same time as the launch of Arbitrum One’s mainnet.

Goldfeder’s 2022:

Many developments occurred during the year that were relevant to Goldfeder as CEO of Offchain Labs. Arbitrum One completed an overhaul called Nitro that added several benefits to the solution, such as lessened fees and added throughput. By November, Arbitrum’s solution showed a significant increase in usage post-Nitro.

In October, it was unveiled that Offchain Labs acquired Prysmatic Labs. The pair of companies both tout the aim of furthering the Ethereum blockchain, with Prysmatic Labs being the company behind Ethereum consensus client Prysm. Goldfeder complimented Prysmatic Labs concerning its team and product in tandem with the announcement.

In a year that saw significant sums of funds stolen via multiple bridge attacks, one white hat hacker tipped Abitrum off to a bridge-related weakness pertaining to Abritrum Nitro. News surfaced in September that the white hat received 400 ETH from the Arbitrum team as thanks for noting multiple methods for potential exploit when sending funds to Abritrum Nitro from Ethereum via bridging.

Goldfeder’s 2023:

Arbitrum and Offchain Labs continued pushing forward through 2022 and will presumably continue onward through 2023. Arbitrum may continue focusing on the Ethereum blockchain while Offchain Labs oversees the project. As CEO of Offchain Labs, Goldfeder will lead the charge throughout the year. 

Goldfeder was active on Twitter in early 2023, in part noting the ongoing development of the Arbitrum project. January headlines also revealed continued notable activity for Arbitrum in terms of transaction traffic. In general, the start of 2023 showed evident growth for layer-2 Ethereum solutions, with Arbitrum included among performers. Goldfeder will likely continue to play a part in leading the efforts for the forward progression of Arbitrum.