# Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University

Source: https://startwithidentity.com/experts/dan-boneh/
Last updated: 2026-09-20
License: content by Start with Identity. Cite the source URL.

---

## Bio

Dan Boneh is a professor of computer science at Stanford, a principal contributor to pairing-based cryptography, and a co-author of BLS signatures with Ben Lynn and Hovav Shacham. His free online cryptography course and the applied cryptography textbook he wrote with Victor Shoup are how a large share of working engineers learned the subject.

Profile built from public academic and publication records.

## Where their work shows up

BLS signatures are the B, L, and S of the [BBS signature scheme](https://startwithidentity.com/standards/verifiable-credentials/) used for unlinkable credential presentation, which is the mechanism that lets a holder prove an attribute repeatedly without the presentations being correlatable. That property is what separates genuinely private credential use from selective disclosure that still leaves a fixed signature behind. The teaching matters as much: identity engineers who understand why a scheme works make better choices than those following a checklist. See [decentralized identifiers](https://startwithidentity.com/standards/decentralized-identifiers-did/) and [OpenID4VC](https://startwithidentity.com/standards/openid4vc/).