Prabal Banerjee is a co-founder of Avail, a blockchain infrastructure project that began within Polygon. His work focuses on cryptography, data availability and the systems used to build applications across blockchains.
Research background
Banerjee began working on symmetric-key cryptography projects in 2013. After studying theoretical computer science, he entered a doctoral program in 2016, which he did not complete, and researched subjects including blockchain-based data exchange and proofs of retrievability, which allow a user to check that stored data can be recovered.
He joined Polygon, then known as Matic Network, as a researcher in 2020. His work included scaling research and the design of a dedicated data-availability chain. He worked with Anurag Arjun on the data-availability problem before Avail became independent.
Co-founding Avail
In April 2023, Banerjee announced that he was joining the independent Avail project as a co-founder alongside Arjun, with responsibility for research and engineering. The project’s approach separates data availability from application execution so developers can build specialized chains without designing every part of the infrastructure themselves.
Technical writing
Banerjee also publishes technical explanations of Avail’s work. In an October 2026 article, he described the architecture behind ShieldTX and its Nightshade zero-knowledge appchain, distinguishing privacy from public observers from the system’s remaining sequencer and execution-attestation assumptions.
