Alessandro Sforzin

Senior Software Engineer • Arc Team • Aug, 2025 — present

Working on the core of Arc, a new open Layer-1 blockchain based on a rust implementation of Tendermint (named Malachite), designed to serve the next era of stablecoin-native applications.

Senior Software Engineer • CometBFT/Malachite Team • Jul, 2024 — Aug, 2025

• Maintained and improved CometBFT, the open-source Go implementation of the Tendermint distributed, Byzantine fault-tolerant, deterministic consensus protocol.
  • Reduced memory usage during a node's bootstrap by up to 99%.
  • Optimized database keys creation, increasing speed by up to 85% and reducing heap allocations by up to 50%.
  • Refactored the multi-database layer, reducing support from six backends to one, to streamline maintenance and reduce complexity.
  • Extended core protocol to support Ethereum EIP-4844 blobs.
• Worked on Malachite, the rust implementation of the Tendermint distributed, Byzantine fault-tolerant, consensus protocol. In particular, focused on bridging Malachite with EVM-compatible execution engines, such as reth.

Lead Go Engineer • Linea Team • Oct, 2023 — Mar, 2024

• Lead Go developer of Linea's zkEVM rollup, an Ethereum L2 solution handling over 36.5M transactions with 3.7M active users.
• Responsible for defining and executing a roadmap to reduce tech debt: led the refactoring of legacy code, established documentation best practices, wrote internal wikis, and set code style guides to write readable and idiomatic Go.
• Worked with DevOps and SRE teams to deploy software in production Kubernetes clusters and debug deployment issues; wrote Helm charts as well.

Software Engineer • System Security Group • Jul, 2020 — Jan, 2023

• Led teams of up to 3 people as the lead engineer on several blockchain software projects, delivering all projects as a CLI client interfacing with a containerized (REST) API server. Designed, developed, and tested backend and application layers for each project, resulting in successful implementation of, among others, the following solutions:
  • Implemented a privacy-preserving solution for storing users’ biometric data on public clouds.
  • Developed an NFT-based marketplace that enabled secure and transparent transactions.
  • Used graph algorithms to detect and solve network bottlenecks, optimizing network performance.
  • Developed an application layer of a supply-chain that reduced both time and costs for dispute resolution by 75%.
• Lead engineer of CyberSec4Europe, leading up to 25 EU-based organizations to design, implement, and test advanced cybersecurity prototypes. Oversaw engineering roadmaps and documentation deliverables for each project, resulting in successful completion and deployment of solutions that enhanced security measures.
• Mentored interns by planning milestones, reviewing their code, and helping them become autonomous in translating requirements into concrete implementations.
• Responsible for the infrastructure and security of the IT equipment, a cluster of about 20 servers, of the group.

Technical Project Manager • System Security Group • 2018 — 2020

• Designed and implemented a secure method for optimizing Bitcoin's disk storage that achieved up to 95% reduction in disk storage footprint.
  • Conducted statistical analyses of Bitcoin's transaction spending trends and data fields distribution to develop the solution.
  • Developed a parser to decode Bitcoin's data format and edit its data as needed.
• Secured research funding for the group and planned technical contributions for research projects.
• Managed budgets and led distributed teams of 8-10 organizations to successfully execute research projects, ensuring on-time and on-budget delivery of high-quality solutions.

Junior Software Engineer • System Security Group • 2016 — 2018

Designed and developed NEC enterprise blockchain with a 3-person team, resulting in a reliable platform used in all NEC commercial and research blockchain-based software. Contributed to microservices architecture, backend API design, and implemented both APIs and client web app.