alkenes · dihydroxylation · organocatalysis · oxygen heterocycles · peroxides Theoxidativefunctionalizationofalkenesisamongthemost extensively investigated synthetic transformations in organic chemistry. Simple oxidative cleavage, [1a-d] halogenation, [1e] halohydrin formation, [1f] and Wacker oxidation [1g] are widely applied in academia and industry. Moreover, transitionmetal-catalyzed epoxidation, [2a-e] dihydroxylation, [2f-h, 3] and aminohydroxylation [2i,j] reactions, for which enantioselective variants with broad scope have been developed, serve as the cornerstone of many complex-molecule syntheses.A stunning example of the progress in organocatalytic oxidation is the development of the epoxidation of alkenes with dioxiranes. Early examples with simple dimethyldioxirane generated from acetone (1) and Oxone (potassium peroxymonosulfate) in situ were reported in 1979 by Edwards et al., [4a] and the scope of the reaction was expanded by Curci et al. in 1980.[4b] The same group developed the first asymmetric epoxidation in 1984 with dioxiranes derived from chiral ketones 2 and 3;[4c] however, only low asymmetric induction could be achieved at this time (Figure 1). Quite a number of other chiral ketones were subsequently investigated [4d,e] to improve the enantiomeric excess until in 1996 the readily available fructose-derived ketone 4 was introduced by Shi et al.[4f] While stoichiometric amounts of 4 were initially necessary to achieve high enantioselectivity, only one year later the same group was able to establish a catalytic variant by adjusting the pH of the reaction;[4g] under these conditions the reaction rivalled the efficiency of metalbased asymmetric epoxidations (Scheme 1).Another class of organic compounds, organic acyl peroxides, could potentially break the dominance of metalcatalyzed processes for the oxidative functionalization of alkenes. So far, the primary oxidant OsO 4 is still the reagent of choice for the syn dihydroxylation of alkenes [2f-h, 3] for both asymmetric and non-asymmetric metal-catalyzed reactions.