The story behind Juan Benet: Who is the Protocol Labs founder and what is his net worth?

JUAN BENET is one of the world’s most influential engineers and entrepreneurs. The tech entrepreneur founded the internet technology research and development firm Protocol Labs, and has built up a vast amount of public wealth in the process.

But what is the story behind the Protocol Labs founder and what is his net worth?

Who is Juan Benet?

Juan Benet was born in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on March 16, 1988. He spent his early childhood in the central American country, before moving to San Diego as a teenager where some of his family was already living. His grandmother was born in the city of New York.

Benet graduated from Stanford University in 2010 with a BS in computer science. He focused on studying distributed systems and spent two of his summers working with lecturers at the university. First on private data sharing and then on wireless sensor network routing protocols.

After graduating, he completed the first year of a Master’s degree in computer science before taking a leave of absence to work on his first company, Loki Studios.

The seed-funded mobile game studio had the aim of developing the games of the next generation and after three years of successfully growing the company, Benet sold it to Yahoo in 2013. 

From there the tech entrepreneur attempted to start a new open-source educational platform called Athena. But the project failed, having been beaten to funding by competing education platforms.

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It was in 2014 when Benet really came into his own as he founded Protocol Labs.

The company’s primary focus was to develop new technologies and protocols for the internet. It started as a decentralised project run from Benet’s laptop at home in Palo Alto, California. 

When Protocol Labs launched there was a shortage of crypto coders in California. At the time, most crypto developments occurred in New York, if they occurred at all in the United States. However, global cities such as Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, and Berlin were thriving. As a result, Benet hired students, academics, and late-night coders from all over the world.

Protocol Labs started publishing research problems on the internet to crowdsource solutions and even offered grant funding.

Some notable projects from Protocol Labs include Benet’s InterPlanetary File System project, or IPFS for short, Filecoin, and libp2p. 

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IPFS is a peer-to-peer protocol that aims to make the internet faster, more secure, and more open. It does this by creating a permanent, global file system that can be used to store and share data.

IPFS was named after J.C.R. Licklider’s vision of an “intergalactic” internet that would use peer-to-peer technologies to create an alternative system to HTTP.

The project has developed into a significant, open-source movement aimed at decentralising the web, protecting our data, and improving our applications.

Filecoin is a decentralised storage network that uses IPFS to store files. It’s a blockchain-based storage solution that allows users to earn money for hosting files.

The crypto-incentivised peer-to-peer storage network was launched in August 2017, raising over $250million in just half an hour during an initial coin offering (ICO).

Following his success, Benet has invested some of his money back into society. He has helped to fund scientific research and has set up several scholarships to help students pursue their studies in science and technology. 

What is Juan Benet’s net worth?

In November 2021, Juan Benet was named as no.38 on Entrepreneur’s list of 50 richest people in crypto. The index ranked the wealth of individuals in the crypto space based on the market valuations and trading volumes of their digital assets. It estimated Benet’s net worth at $400million.

With his success continuing to grow, so too is his net worth. Earlier this year, iWealthyfox estimated Benet’s net worth now stands at an eye-watering $450million.

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