Dean Tribble is the CEO of Agoric, a Proof-of-Stake blockchain platform for smart contracts on JavaScript that’s onboarding developers into the fabric of web3. Dean had his first startup founded shortly after high school, thanks to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. Ever since, Dean has founded multiple companies and developed an array of software products, most involving large-scale distributed systems, smart contracts, and novel computer security. After studying computer science at Stanford, Dean went on to co-architect the Xanadu hypertext publishing system, co-design the first production smart contractat AMiX, design the Joule secure, distributed programming language, and serve as Principal Architect at Microsoft, where he co-designed the Midori distributed object-capability operating system. An OG cypherpunk, Dean was also an early contributor to the development of Inter-Blockchain Communications Protocol (IBC). He is a Director at both the Foresight Institute, which researches high-impact technologies, and the Decentralized Cooperation Foundation, which advocates software and technology to improve human cooperation.