Polkadot co-founder Robert Habermeier named 2018 Thiel Fellow

The Thiel Foundation announced the 2018 class of Thiel Fellows, and Parity’s own Robert Habermeier has been selected as a recipient. The 20-year-old Washington D.C. native will receive $100,000 over the next two years to further the development on his current project Polkadot, as well as mentorship from the foundation’s large network of entrepreneurs, inventors, and scientists.

Gavin Wood, founder of Polkadot alongside Rob said, “Rob’s decision to halt formal education and pursue a path-less-trodden in co-founding the Polkadot project was a decision I very much supported. I knew about the application and had been hoping that between his 1337 h4x0r skills and leading role in the Polkadot project, his efforts would be recognised, so it’s great to see this support come through.”

Rob’s been spending his time at Parity Technologies heading up the Polkadot project and focusing particularly on the underlying consensus algorithm.

“The crypto space has more hype and noise than ever,” said Allyson Dias, Director of the Thiel Fellowship. “We are selective about which crypto projects we support, and we believe Robert and Polkadot are necessary for the future of cryptocurrencies.”

The Thiel Fellowship was launched in 2011, and encourages talented young people to pursue big ideas and start companies instead of attending college.

Polkadot is a heterogeneous multi-chain technology aimed at solving current issues in blockchains such as scalability, security, and interoperability. The Polkadot network will enable any application, smart contract or token to communicate with other blockchains, setting the foundation for a landscape of innovative state-transition machines to flourish autonomously, without being isolated.

Watch Robert present Parity Substrate, the underlying technology behind Polkadot.