Muneeb Ali

Muneeb Ali is a Pakistani-American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Stacks, an open-source smart contract platform for Bitcoin. He is known for the regulatory framework that resulted in the first SEC-qualified offering for a crypto asset^[1][2] and for his doctoral dissertation which formed the basis of the Stacks network.^[3][4] He is a co-author of Protothread and Proof-of-Transfer (PoX) consensus.^[5]

Muneeb Ali
Nationality	American, Pakistani
Education	Princeton University (PhD)
Known for	Stacks, Protothread
Scientific career
Fields	Distributed Computing
Thesis	Trust-to-Trust Design of a New Internet (2017)
Doctoral advisor	Andrea LaPaugh

Career

Ali studied Computer Science at LUMS^[6] and received his PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University in 2017.^[7] Ali co-founded Stacks (formerly Blockstack) with Ryan Shea and went through Y Combinator in 2014.^[8]

His work mainly focused on sensor networks, blockchains, and cloud computing.

Ali was a technical advisor to the HBO Silicon Valley show, and appeared in the Amazon Prime Video Rizqi Presents: Blockchain show.^[9]

In 2019, he convinced the SEC regulators to allow his company to start a token offering under Reg A+ exemption, becoming the first to do so.^[1][2] In 2020, Ali released a legal framework for non-security status of Stacks.^[10]