The View From Tel Aviv: Ouriel Ohayon

Ouriel Ohayon is CEO of KZen Networks, maker of the keyless ZenGo crypto wallet.

This year Tel Aviv played host to its first Blockchain Week, a sign that the crypto industry is starting to recognize Israel's capital as a center of innovation in the field.

Many of the first-wave crypto startups founded there are slowly suffocating.

A transplant from France, Ohayon has lived between Paris and Tel Aviv for the past 15 years, with stops in Silicon Valley.

Can you give a sense of the crypto scene in Tel Aviv?There has not been a lot of positive advancements in Israel this year.

Kik, kin has shut down in Tel Aviv, where a lot of engineering took place.

Though at the research level - pure research, not into projects and services - Israel is making progress in fields related to crypto, like zero-knowledge proofs, security and custody and multi-party computation.

Facebook has a huge operation in Tel Aviv, right around the block from my office.

Lots of things will be built and designed in Tel Aviv.It seems to be contradictory that the startup scene is cratering, but research is popping.

In crypto, there is so much research at the core level to improve how bitcoin works and how security works and improve the protocol transaction speed.