Exponential: A Nexus Podcast Episode 7: Beyond Blockchain
Sep 10, 2025
Grigore Roșu, a professor and computer scientist, dives into the future of web3 with insights from his work at Pi Squared. He argues that traditional blockchains are just the beginning. Roșu discusses the revolutionary FastSet protocol for decentralized applications and the importance of formal verification for scalability. He envisions a system where transaction validation is flexible and transparent, unlocking new possibilities in digital trust. With a focus on zero-knowledge proofs, he sheds light on how these innovations could reshape our interaction with technology.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
From Romania To Founding Pi Squared
- Grigore Roșu moved from Romania to the US for a PhD and later worked at NASA before becoming a professor and entrepreneur.
- He founded Runtime Verification in 2010 and Pi Squared in 2024, bringing his academic work into industry.
Three Pillars Of Pi Squared's Vision
- Pi Squared targets three core problems: scalability, language universality, and universal proofs for correctness.
- They transform program executions into mathematical proofs and then cryptographic proofs to guarantee correctness.
Automate Proof Generation
- Automate proof generation instead of writing mathematical proofs by hand to scale verifiability.
- Use tooling that emits proofs from program execution to keep correctness manageable.