I'm Bob Blessing-Hartley, CTO of Shielded.io. I work at the intersection of privacy-preserving cryptography and applied systems engineering, with a focus on the Midnight Network and the broader Web3 stack. ShieldedHuman is where I write down what I'm learning and shipping.

What I work on

• Web3 and blockchain — Substrate runtimes, FRAME pallets, indexers, and the operational realities of running validator and prover infrastructure.
• Zero-knowledge proofs — circuit design in Compact, PLONK-family proving systems, ZKIR, and the tradeoffs between commitment schemes, nullifiers, and Merkle membership proofs.
• Decentralized identity — selective disclosure, anonymous credentials, and the gap between cryptographic primitives and identity systems people actually use.
• Agentic AI — building agents that can reason about cryptographic protocols, write and verify smart contracts, and operate alongside human developers without faking certainty.

Find me

• LinkedIn — work history and longer-form posts.
• X / Twitter — @shieldedbob — short takes on Midnight, ZK, and identity.
• GitHub: @bobblessinghartley (personal), @midnightntwrk (Midnight Network), @shieldedtech (Shielded Technologies).

If you want to talk about ZK circuit design, identity protocols, or how to build agents that don't lie about their tool output, get in touch on any of the above.