Karl Floersch

Karl Floersch is the CEO and Co-Founder of Optimism Labs, a software development company that is building the critical infrastructure to scale Ethereum's technology and values. Floersch has been in the Ethereum and blockchain space since 2016 and is a big advocate in public goods funding. Floersch was previously the CTO of OP Labs, where he architected the Optimism Rollup which aims to scale Ethereum, and additionally he is the visionary behind the Retroactive Public Goods Funding program, a grants funding mechanism to create the market incentives to ensure the creation of open source software. 

Before co-founding Optimism Labs, Floersch was a researcher for the Ethereum Foundation where he created a blockchain education course and was involved in the core research team for consensus protocols (PoS) & scaling (sharding). Additionally, he served as a blockchain engineer at Consensys where he developed Ujo Music, building a rights management platform for artists and labels on the Ethereum blockchain. Floersch is one of the primary advocates in the space for public goods funding whose deepest passion is building technological infrastructure to incentivize ethical behavior