Let’s Encrypt Wins Levchin Prize for Real-World Cryptography

The Let’s Encrypt project, launched in 2015 by the Internet security research group ISRG, recently won the prestigious Levchin Prize for real-world cryptography. This award was created by Max Levchin to encourage individuals or teams that provide security and convenience in the real world.

Thanks to the free digital certificates provided by Let’s Encrypt and the vigorous promotion of Google Chrome, more than 90% of the world’s websites have adopted HTTPS encrypted connections. It can protect users’ information from being stolen by MITM attacks, and the contribution of Let’s Encrypt is undoubtedly huge.

In the past, digital certificates had to be paid for. Later, Let’s Encrypt went online and began to provide free certificates to save money for small and medium webmasters.

The Levchin Prize was established in 2015 by internet entrepreneur, Max Levchin. The prize honors significant contributions to real-world cryptography and celebrates recent advances that have had a major impact on the practice of cryptography and its use in real-world systems.