Vinay Gupta is a technologist, futurist, and author who has been at the forefront of innovation in disaster management, energy policy, and the technical and legal aspects of blockchain technology. He is best known as the release coordinator of the Ethereum blockchain in 2015, and the inventor of the open source hexayurt refugee shelter.
He is CEO of Mattereum, a world leader in integrating blockchain technology with the legal requirements of real world business processes like buying and selling real estate or lending against physical collateral. Mattereum creates legally binding digital twins of real world assets, providing a flexible abstraction layer which gracefully handles all meaningful differences between the digital twin and physical reality of a valuable object.
Vinay started his career as a software engineer, working on medical imaging, flight simulators and cryptography. He became active in the blockchain technology arena in the early 2010s and joined the Ethereum Foundation in 2014, going on to project manage the 2015 launch of Ethereum and create “Programmable Blockchains in Context” the standard Ethereum explainer released at the launch.
Vinay is a prolific writer, commentator, and futurist, building upon decades of research and strategic expertise across energy policy, pandemic management, defense, disaster relief, and critical infrastructure, with stints at the Rocky Mountain Institute, working on technology futures for the US Office of the Secretary of Defense and the UK Royal College of Defence Studies, and an associate fellowship at the UCL Institute for Security and Resilience Studies.
A proponent of techno-realism, Vinay argues that technology and engineering can contribute to positive social transformation and must be invested in to help deal with resource scarcity. He is the author of The Future of Stuff, a book that explores the potential of blockchain to revolutionize the global economy and society by cleaning up the unresolved rule of law problems created by globalization of the consumer goods supply chain and enabling the efficient reuse of goods throughout their lifecycle.