My name is Jae Kwon. I'm a software engineer. I created Tendermint, co-founded Cosmos, and founded NewTendermint and Gno.land.

Education

Cornell University, B.S. in Computer Science, class of 2005.

Early career

Lead mobile developer at Yelp, where I built Yelp's first iPhone app.

Tendermint

In 2014 I published Tendermint: Consensus without Mining, the first protocol to secure a proof-of-stake blockchain with classical Byzantine fault tolerant consensus. Validators post a bond that is destroyed if they sign conflicting blocks, so equivocation is punishable rather than merely unrewarded. That combination — BFT agreement plus bonded, slashable stake — is what makes proof of stake work, and it is the design later systems adopted.

“Repurposing BFT algorithms for proof of stake was first introduced by Tendermint, and has modern inspirations such as [Algorand]. Casper follows this BFT tradition, though with some modifications.”

The protocol's formal specification, with safety and liveness proofs, is Buchman, Kwon and Milosevic, The latest gossip on BFT consensus (2018). Development history is public at github.com/tendermint/tendermint (repository created May 2014).

Timeline

2005

B.S. Computer Science, Cornell University.

2014

Tendermint whitepaper. Co-founded All in Bits, Inc. (Tendermint Inc.) with Ethan Buchman; began the Cosmos project.

2018

The latest gossip on BFT consensus — formal specification of Tendermint.

2020

Stepped down as CEO of Tendermint Inc.

2022

Founded NewTendermint; began Gno.land, whose contracts are written in Gno, a deterministic interpreted variant of Go, and published on-chain in source form.

2026

Gno.land mainnet launched in September (announcement).

Elsewhere

github.com/jaekwon · newtendermint.org · gno.land

Written and maintained by Jae Kwon. Last updated 18 September 2026.