Sam Maloney was killed on December 23, 2016 in what was the first fatal London (Canada) police shooting in 17 years.

Maloney, a 35 year-old programmer and father of two, was the creator and core developer of MORPHiS, a system for distributed file storage and encrypted messaging.

He also invented DPUSH (DMAIL), a decentralized spam resistant unsolicited messaging protocol based on Proof-of-Work. He had been working on decentralized Bitcoin microtransations networks before the publication of Lightening, which he thought MORPHiS was the missing piece to. Another reddit thread dedicated to discussing MORPHiS is this.

Sam believed his inventions would help scale up and develop bitcoin.

He was an idealist and was working towards the goal of an “incorruptible democracy”. For Sam, the ultimate goal was to create a utopic world with no ‘necessary evil’ and making the mass surveillance by the government impossible. His plan to work on a web of trust was to create this utopia which he named the Atlantis project, inspired by Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

The pre- dawn police raid that led to the tragic death of Sam Maloney is shrouded in mystery. There is still no clear account of what transpired between the police and Maloney that resulted in apparent four shots being fired as alleged by Sam Maloney’s lawyer Nick Cake.

Cake believes that Maloney was “shot in the face” while he still was on the phone with him. But he remained tight lipped about his opinion on the injuries sustained by Maloney during the police raid.

The province’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the civilian watchdog that probes deaths involving police in Ontario, is now probing Maloney’s death.

Cake recounted Maloney’s previous run-ins with law enforcement, which included a bylaw complaint that his lawn grass was too long which was countered and resolved; charges of unsafe storage of firearms in 2007 which were withdrawn and all the weapons involved were registered.

Now Cake and Maloney’s wife’s lawyer, Phillip Millar are seeking answers to why a pre-dawn raid was required in a house with two young children. “Somebody may want to ask the question as to why a pre-dawn, forced entry was necessary in this case,” Millar said, also asking for a full account of what happened on Friday.

In conclusion, the mystery around the entire encounter which resulted in the death of an innovator working towards a future that can challenge the present status quo, especially in the light of his radical bordering on controversial views, is bound to raise questions.