2022 was a meme. Skeptics danced, believers believed. Eventually, newcomers turned away, drained of liquidity and hope. Now, the tide is shifting and it&#8217;s time to rebuild.



Permissionless II is the brainchild of Blockworks and Bankless. It’s not just a conference, but a call to action for those who want to build a better future together.



Permissionless II embodies the ethos, electricity and excitement for crypto and Web3, all while acknowledging that somewhere in 2022, we lost the script.&nbsp;



If you’re still here, you can see the opportunity before us. Together, we can get it right this time.&nbsp;



Permissionless II: Coming to theaters in Austin, TX this September.

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Speakers

Erik Voorhees

Anatoly Yakovenko&nbsp;is the co-founder of Solana and CEO of Solana Labs. He has almost two decades of experience building high-performance operating systems, including leading OS development at Qualcomm and holding engineering roles at Dropbox and Mesosphere. Yakovenko has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Anatoly Yakovenko

Mary-Catherine (MC) Lader is the Chief Operating Officer of Uniswap Labs, a developer of foundational web3-based products and applications. In this role, she oversees the company’s growth efforts, strategic initiatives, and operations. Previously, she held various leadership roles at BlackRock, including as the Global Head of the firm’s digital sustainability business, Chief Operating Officer of the firm’s digital wealth business, and leader of the firm’s strategic fintech investments and blockchain activities. MC began her career as an investor in Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group. She received her J.D. and M.B.A. degrees at Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, respectively, and her B.A. at Brown University.

Mary-Catherine Lader

Congressman Tom Emmer was sworn in for his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 6, 2015. He is currently serving his fifth term.



After serving as the Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee for the 116th Congress and again for the 117th Congress, Tom was elected by his fellow Republican colleagues to be the House Majority Whip. Currently, he sits on the House Financial Services Committee.&nbsp;



Born in 1961, Tom grew up in Minnesota and attended St. Thomas Academy. He received his BA in Political Science from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and his JD from William Mitchell College of Law.



After practicing law for several years, he opened his own law firm. The next 20 years were spent balancing family, business, coaching hockey, and serving on the city councils in Independence and Delano.



Before coming to Congress, he served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2004-2008.



He and his wife Jacquie have been married for over 30 years and have seven children. They reside in Delano.

Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN)

Raj Gokal&nbsp;is the co-founder of Solana and COO of Solana Labs. He previously was director of product at Omada Health; an entrepreneur-in-residence at Rock Health; the co-founder of Sano, a minimally invasive glucose sensor company; and an investor at General Catalyst Partners. Raj has a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.&nbsp;

Raj Gokal

Jesse Pollak is the creator of Base and is the Head of Protocols at Coinbase, where he works on Ethereum L1, L2, and new onchain efforts. Prior to Base, Jesse led all of Coinbase’s consumer-facing engineering from early 2017 to middle 2021, including building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet. Jesse joined Coinbase through the acquisition of Clef, a company he founded and ran for five years that built passwordless identity solutions for crypto companies.

Jesse Pollak

Zaki Manian is a Co-Founder of Sommelier, the most powerful coprocessor yet for DeFi traders and Liquidity Providers. He’s also a Co-Founder of iqlusion, which provides infrastructure like a data center and a Cosmos validator for next-gen crypto technologies. Previously, Zaki helped build the Cosmos ecosystem, including launching the first public Cosmos testnet, and served as a director of Tendermint. Zaki has been a leading developer in the blockchain space since 2014, when he taught himself cryptography and began contributing to projects including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, and Tendermint. Having studied history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, Zaki’s skill sets in software engineering, programming, and computer science are largely self-taught.

Zaki Manian

At Alluvial, Chief Growth Officer Mara Schmiedt focuses on advancing industry participation and adoption of Liquid Collective, seeking out world-class partnership opportunities, and overseeing Business Development, Sales, and other strategic functions. Mara recently joined Alluvial as Chief Growth Officer from Coinbase, where she served as the Head of Sales for Coinbase Cloud, the leading developer platform for blockchain-based infrastructure products and APIs. She expanded Cloud's staking business, supporting large-scale organizations, enterprises, and institutional investors. Prior to joining Coinbase, she managed Business Development at Bison Trails, a leading provider of blockchain-based infrastructure acquired by Coinbase in February 2021. Mara also served as Strategy Manager at ConsenSys, where she supported the strategic development of Codefi, the blockchain application suite for Web3 Commerce and Finance.



Mara is passionate about open-source technology and has published multiple research reports and papers on liquid staking, such as <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-s15SvCIUBukhSZiNkpd0sTff3izQ5G/view">The Internet Bond</a> and <a href="https://consensys.net/insights/eth-2-staking-ecosystem-report/">Ethereum 2.0 Staking Ecosystem Report</a>.&nbsp;



Additionally, she has led various industry initiatives, including leading the working group with the Ethereum Foundation that developed the Ethereum Launchpad and the first distributed validator technology (DVT) PoCs. Mara's deep experience in bringing technology and blockchain-based products and services to market — as well as her track record of building world-class business and sales organizations — bolsters Alluvial's support of Liquid Collective.

Mara Schmiedt

Stani Kulechov

Hasu

Christine is a Partner and Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Apollo Global Management, Inc. In this newly created position, Christine leads digital asset strategy across the firm, exploring more ways to apply blockchain technologies to Apollo’s business. She also plays a key role in Apollo’s strategy to invest in some of the most innovative digital asset companies and founders, with a specific focus on those transforming the financial services sector where Apollo can serve as a validator and enabler of new technologies. Previously, she was a Managing Director at J.P. Morgan and led its Blockchain/Crypto/Metaverse program through initiatives in digital assets, tokenized payments, internet of-things, decentralized identity, NFTs, and virtual worlds. She is a graduate of Brown University. Christine was named in Fortune’s The Ledger 40 Under 40 list of “the most impressive, young superstars transforming business at the leading edge of finance and technology.”

Christine Moy

Media and entertainment executive with 14 years experience scaling and monetizing premium IP. Most recently the President of Billboard and was responsible for transforming the brand from a stale music trade magazine to a global multi-platform experience for fans. Under Julian’s leadership Billboard has developed new products and businesses with partners like Twitter, Meta and Google, ultimately propelling the company to record revenue and profitability. He has previously held leadership positions with MRC Studios, Dick Clark Productions, and NBC Universal.

Julian Holguin

Trevor McFedries is the founder of Friends With Benefits, Web3’s premier Social DAO, as well as the Founder and former CEO of Dapper Collectives, an organization dedicated to decentralizing media and social via DAOs. McFedries is the creator of virtual pop star Lil Miquela and founded technology startup Brud, which was acquired by Dapper Labs. Since its inception in 2017, Brud has raised funds from Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital, and SV Angel amongst others. Friends With Benefits pioneered social tokens and counts Andreesen Horowitz, Spark, Pace Capital, and Kindred Ventures as investors.



Before creating Brud and FWB, Trevor was known professionally as Yung Skeeter and worked as a DJ, producer, and director for acts including Ke$ha, Azealia Banks, and Katy Perry. McFedries has performed at music festivals Lollapalooza and Coachella, served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Bad Robot, and was an early employee at Spotify. He currently serves on the board at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and Rhizome (New Museum, NYC).

Trevor McFedries

Santiago Roel Santos (CryptoPunk #9159) is an investor focusing at the intersection of DeFi and the Web3 metaverse (NFTs/gaming). Most recently was a Partner at ParaFi Capital, one of the largest crypto funds specializing in DeFi. Prior to that, he was at Sageview Capital investing in Internet and software and, before that, at JP Morgan investment banking. Santiago began investing in crypto in 2012.

Santiago Roel Santos

Michael Anderson is the co-founder of Framework Ventures, one of earliest and largest VC firms to enter the “DeFi” or Decentralized Finance industry. With over $1B in AUM, the firm has since expanded into additional maturing verticals like blockchain gaming and social crypto. Prior to Framework, Michael and his co-founder Vance Spencer launched Hashletes, a digital collectible startup with official licensing from the NFL. Before entering crypto, Michael served as a product manager at both Snapchat and Dropbox, where he helped build out their monetization platforms.

Michael Anderson

Soona Amhaz is founder and GP of Volt Capital, a venture firm that focuses on pre-seed and seed companies in the digital assets space. Soona is also an advisor to On Deck, Forbes 30 under 30 in VC, and an alum from the University of Michigan School of Engineering.

Soona Amhaz

Colleen Sullivan is Co-Head of Ventures at Brevan Howard Digital. Prior to joining Brevan Howard Digital, Colleen co-founded and served as CEO of CMT Digital, where she was also a partner with the broader CMT Group and commenced activities in the crypto industry in 2013. Prior to starting CMT Digital, Colleen co-founded Sullivan Wolf Kailus, a boutique law firm that specializes in hedge fund, private equity, venture capital, digital assets, and other alternative investment products. Colleen also previously practiced law in the Investment Funds and Derivatives group at Sidley Austin LLP and, at age 25, co-founded a company called iOptions Group LLC, which developed hedging and monetization strategies for holders of employee stock options. Ms. Sullivan currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.

Colleen Sullivan

Tarun is an alumni of D. E. Shaw Research (DESRES), Vatic Labs, an HFT firm, and Cornell. He fell into the blockchain world in 2011, when he was working on ASICs at DESRES and observed Bitcoin ASIC mining rigs substantially delay DESRES’s ASIC production. He has spent the last seven years working on simulation-based R&amp;D at the intersection of high-performance computing and AI and is applying this knowledge to the blockchain ecosystem.

Tarun Chitra

Kevin Owocki is the founder of Gitcoin.co — Where builders &amp; funders come together to build the open web.  Gitcoin has delivered <a href="http://gitcoin.co/results">$50mm worth of value</a> to OSS devs in the last several years. He has a BS in Computer Science, 15 years of engineering leadership experience in Open Source Software and Web Startups. Kevin is a community organizer in the Boulder Colorado Tech Scene.

Kevin Owocki

Meltem Demirors is Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares, a publicly listed investment firm that manages over five billion in digital assets on behalf of a global investor base, and is a trusted partner to investors and entrepreneurs navigating the digital asset ecosystem.



 An established veteran of digital asset investing, Meltem draws on her substantial experience and widespread influence to accelerate growth and acceptance of the asset class. Prior to joining CoinShares, Meltem helped build and grow Digital Currency Group, raising capital from the world’s largest corporations and managing a portfolio of 120 companies and 4 subsidiaries. Before she was bitten with the bitcoin bug, Meltem worked in the Oil &amp; Gas industry in trading, corporate treasury, and M&amp;A roles. 



Meltem has been recognized for her personal contributions to the industry and serves as an outspoken advocate. She is a founding member of the World Economic Forum Blockchain Council. Meltem teaches at her alma mater MIT as well as Oxford, and is passionate about privacy and civil rights.

Meltem Demirors

Vance is the co-founders of Framework Ventures, a thesis-driven venture capital firm whose team of technologists, researchers, and investors partner with founders and teams to build token-based networks and develop the requisite cryptoeconomics, governance, and community to scale.

Vance Spencer

Jim Bianco is President and Macro Strategist at Bianco Research, L.L.C. Since 1990 Jim’s commentaries have offered a unique perspective on the global economy and financial markets. Unencumbered by the biases of traditional Wall Street research, Jim has built a decades long reputation for objective, incisive commentary that challenges consensus thinking. In nearly 20 years at Bianco Research, Jim’s wide ranging commentaries have addressed monetary policy, the intersection of markets and politics, the role of government in the economy, fund flows and positioning in financial markets.



Jim appears regularly on CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox Business, and is often featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Grants Interest Rate Observer, and MarketWatch. Prior to joining Arbor and Bianco Research, Jim was a Market Strategist in equity and fixed income research at UBS Securities and Equity Technical Analyst at First Boston and Shearson Lehman Brothers. He is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) and a member of the Market Technicians Association (MTA). Jim has a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Marquette University (1984) and an MBA from Fordham University (1989).

Jim Bianco

Mr. Forman is the Founder and Managing Partner of ParaFi Capital. ParaFi is a leading investment firm focused on the blockchain and digital asset markets, and an early pioneer in decentralized finance (“DeFi”). ParaFi is one of the largest investors, users, and governance participants within the DeFi ecosystem, spanning the full network lifecycle from pre-launch to full decentralization. Mr. Forman serves as the Chief Investment Officer across the firm’s strategies, which include investing in public and private cryptoassets, systematic credit and market neutral DeFi strategies, and blockchain-focused venture capital and growth equity investing.



Prior to founding ParaFi in 2018, Mr. Forman spent 10 years at leading alternative investment managers, including KKR and TPG. While at KKR, Mr. Forman served as a Director in the Credit business, investing across a wide array of industry sectors and strategies, including distressed special situations, private credit, and opportunistic and liquid credit. Prior to KKR, Mr. Forman served as a Vice President with TPG’s former credit business, Sixth Street Partners, as one of the first investment professionals to join the platform, helping scale its private credit vehicle, TPG Specialty Lending, which listed publicly in 2014. Earlier in his career, Mr. Forman worked in private equity at Littlejohn &amp; Company and investment banking at Rothschild &amp; Co. Mr. Forman graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ben Forman

Vanessa Grellet is a Managing Partner at Aglaé Ventures. Vanessa is a Global Executive with over 20 years of expertise in the Financial Services and Tech industry. At Aglaé Ventures she manages the Web 3 focused fund. Prior to joining Aglae she has Head of Portfolio growth at CoinFund and Executive director at ConsenSys where she focused on driving adoption for Ethereum based products,  Strategic initiatives, Alliances and Channels.  She was involved in setting up the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the Accounting Blockchain Coalition (ABC) and the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition (BSIC). Prior to ConsenSys she was a Strategy Executive at NYSE focused on investments and M&amp;A and a key member of PwC’s global wealth management team. Vanessa is a Founding Board member of AABC focused on Blockchain and Art, a member of the Advisory Council of ConsenSys, a Milken Institute Associate, a contributor to the  World Economic Forum Digital Future Council and part of <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/top-people-in-crypto-and-blockchain-2022/vanessa-grellet">Cointelegraph’s list of 100 most influential people for 2022</a>. Mrs. Grellet graduated Cum Laude from Law School (Paris II Assas) and Business School (HEC).

Vanessa Grellet

Mihailo Bjelic received his MSc in CS from the University of Belgrade. Prior to entering Web3/blockchain industry, he co-founded an AI/ML-powered platform for automotive industry and several other smaller startups and side projects. In 2017, he decided to join the Web3 movement full-time, primarily as a researcher interested in Ethereum scaling and multi-chain paradigms. In parallel with his work, he became one of the prominent Ethereum proponents and community members. In 2019, he started working on Polygon and conceptualized its architecture, vision and brand. In 2020, he joined hands with the Matic Network team and they have been working together on Polygon since then.

Mihailo Bjelic

Ben is a co-founder of Optimism, a leading Ethereum L2 ecosystem. He served as Chief Scientist before becoming a director at the Optimism Foundation. In his free time, he makes Ethereum-based parody songs under his stage name, Weird ETH Yankovic.

Ben Jones

Kristin is the CEO of the Blockchain Association, the Washington, D.C.-based trade association representing more than 100 of the industry’s leading companies. She also serves as a board member of the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. Kristin serves as a liaison between policymakers and the cryptocurrency industry to assist in the creation of legislation and regulation that promotes the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the U.S. She is also a leading, public voice advocating for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry through top-tier media interviews, op-eds and letters to the editor, and global speaking engagements. Kristin is a renowned voice for the industry, having been featured on Fortune’s 2020 40 under 40 list, CoinDesk’s 2021 50 people who defined the year in crypto, and CoinTelegraph’s 2022 top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. Prior to leading the Blockchain Association, Kristin helped blockchain and technology companies achieve their public policy objectives in Washington. She served as a Senate and congressional aide on Capitol Hill for nearly ten years, much of which was spent focusing on technology policy.

Kristin Smith

Avichal is a successful entrepreneur with executive experience at Google and Facebook, which acquired his previous company. As an angel investor, Avichal has invested in 15 unicorns and 5 decacorns including Airtable, Boom Supersonic, Color Genomics, Cruise, Deel, Figma, Newfront Insurance, Notion, Nova Credit, Pulley, and others. He co-founded Electric Capital in 2018 and has grown it to one of the largest crypto venture firms globally. Electric is an investor in many of the leading web3 protocols and companies such as Bitwise, Bitnomial, dYdX, Frax, Kraken, Magic Eden, NEAR, and Solana.

Avichal Garg

Matt Hougan is one of the world’s leading experts on crypto, ETFs, and financial technology. He is Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise Asset Management, a pioneer in cryptoasset index funds with more than $1.2 billion in assets under management. He was previously CEO of ETF.com, where he helped build the world’s first ETF data and analytics system, the leading ETF media site, and the world’s largest ETF conference, Inside ETFs. Hougan is co-author of both “A Comprehensive Guide to Exchange-Traded Funds” and “Cryptoassets: The Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies for Professional Investors” from the CFA Institute’s Research Foundation. He is a crypto columnist for Forbes, and a three-time member of the Barron’s ETF Roundtable.

Matt Hougan

Li Jin

Ethan is the co-founder of the Cosmos network and serves as the CEO of Informal Systems. Informal Systems is a member-driven worker’s cooperative building software that enables trustworthy relationships between protocols and people to flourish. Ethan also serves as the President of the Interchain Foundation which funds and coordinates development of public goods in the Cosmos ecosystem. Ethan sees local money systems as the basis for self-sufficient local economies to prosper. With a background in cell biology, neuroscience, mathematics, machine learning, and distributed systems, his goal is to build systems that encourage humans to work cooperatively through methods of self-organization. He is currently focused on blockchain technology as a means to bring greater political and economic sovereignty to local communities around the globe. Prior to Informal Systems, Ethan co-founded the Tendermint and Cosmos projects, and served as CTO of Tendermint Inc. Today, dozens of projects are adopting technology conceived in the original Cosmos whitepaper, including the Inter-Blockchain (IBC) Communication protocol – an industry-standard for permissionless communication between sovereign blockchains. Today, the Cosmos ecosystem continues to pioneer technological paradigms for building interoperable application-specific blockchains.

Ethan Buchman

As founding partner and COO, Cynthia oversees the business operation and leads global business development and sales. Previously Investment Director at Bitmain Technologies, Cynthia focused on investments in blockchain technology and decentralized applications.



Prior to venturing into crypto, Cynthia was Vice President at Hong Kong Exchange (HKEX), responsible for derivatives product development and institutional sales. She started her career in HK as a commodities trader.

Cynthia Wu

Tyrone leads J.P. Morgan’s Blockchain team and is responsible for creating innovative Web3-focused products &amp; solutions for J.P. Morgan’s businesses and clients, and for engaging with the industry at large in order to provide a holistic blockchain strategy for the firm. Tyrone is also the Head of Onyx Digital Assets, a multi-asset tokenization platform that enables the exchange of value for various types of digital assets. Tyrone was previously a Senior Blockchain Product Manager in J.P. Morgan’s Blockchain Center of Excellence and was also the Head of Product for Quorum, an open-sourced Ethereum-based blockchain platform built for Enterprise use. Prior to moving into the blockchain industry in 2015, Tyrone was a software engineer within J.P. Morgan's Credit Markets business, and before that he spent several years in Product transformation, managing and delivering large strategic programs across various businesses within J.P. Morgan, across Front, Middle and Back Office risk and trading systems. Tyrone sits on the Board of Directors of The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and The Hyperledger Foundation.

Tyrone Lobban

Rich is a Co-Founder and President of GSR and leads the group across strategic initiatives and growth. He began his career at Goldman Sachs where he spent 11 years between New York and London in commodities trading as a Managing Director and Global Head of Crude Oil and Derivatives Trading. Prior to joining GSR, he spent a few years on the buy-side, running energy trading teams at two New York-based hedge funds. Rich earned a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Columbia University.

Rich Rosenblum

Jelena is CEO and Co-Founder at Noble, a purpose built native asset issuance chain for the IBC ecosystem. She is also Co-Founder of the Canadian Web3 Council, a national advocacy organization for the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem

Jelena Djuric

Kain Warwick is an Australian cryptocurrency entrepreneur most-known as the founder of Synthetix protocol. Synthetix is a financial primitive that enables the creation of synthetic assets, offering unique derivatives and exposure to real-world assets on the blockchain.&nbsp;In 2020, Kain popularised the concept of yield farming that sparked the 2020 DeFi boom, earning the moniker: ‘the father of modern agriculture.

Kain Warwick

Brian Quintenz is the Head of Policy for a16z crypto, where he helps to translate between the crypto and policy communities.



Brian has long stood out as an innovative thinker in crypto and DeFi and was one of the earliest leaders in Washington to recognize the value of crypto. Brian initially joined a16z crypto as a senior advisor. In December 2022, he moved to the full-time role leading its policy team.



Prior to joining a16z, he was nominated by both Presidents Obama and Trump to serve as commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and, in August 2017, was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He also led the agency’s Technology Advisory Committee, which hosted the most comprehensive set of public crypto-related policy discussions and briefings of any federal financial regulator. During his service, the CFTC oversaw the listing of the first U.S. regulated Bitcoin and Ether futures contracts on derivatives exchanges, and the rapid expansion of DeFi. All the while, he was a champion for tailored, risk-calibrated regulation.



Prior to his appointment to the CFTC, Brian was the Founder and Managing Principal of Saeculum Capital Management, LLC where he developed and implemented Saeculum’s long term, momentum-based investment process for both traditional discretionary accounts as well as a managed-futures, commodity pool hedge fund.



Brian began his career on Capitol Hill, where he worked for 6.5 years and served as senior policy aid to a Member of Congress. He received his B.S. from Duke University and M.B.A. from Georgetown University.

Brian Quintenz

Robby Yung, Animoca Brands’s CEO of Investments, partner at Animoca Capital, a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification with a portfolio of products and games including the REVV and SAND tokens, as well as investment and partnerships with companies like Axie Infinity,  OpenSea, Dapper Labs, and Alien Worlds and subsidiaries like The Sandbox, Gamee, Quidd, and Lympo. Robby has been in gaming since 2012 and blockchain gaming since 2018. He served as the first CEO of Animoca Brands after taking the group public in 2015. Prior to that, he cofounded magazine publisher, One Media Group, which he listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. He also founded Chinese television and outdoor media concern, Redgate Media Group, which was acquired by  Inno-Tech Holdings . He began his career in technology, building wireless telecom networks in China and Indonesia with Metromedia.

Robby Yung

Papua New Guinean-Australian Paff Evara (they/them) is a marketing director turned creator, speaker and web3 founder. A natural storyteller, Paff went viral during lockdown, building an audience of over 110K people as they empowered people to take up more space as their authentic selves.



In 2022, Paff and their wife Han founded Take Up Space, a web3 community turned media DAO and metalabel for change-makers. Through intersectional media, community and events, their mission is to create culture in motion both on and off-chain.&nbsp;

Paff Evara

Motty Lavie serves as the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Braavos, a cutting-edge smart contract wallet designed to offer a seamless UX and prime security through true multi-factor authentication.. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Motty has established companies within the traditional web2 sector and successfully scaling them into multimillion-dollar global enterprises. Motty holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Mathematics from the prestigious Technion Israel Institute of Technology

Motty Lavie

Lucas Vogelsang is the CEO and Co-founder at Centrifuge, focusing on bringing Real World Assets to DeFi since the early days of Ethereum. Before diving into crypto in 2017 Lucas has been working at the intersection of tech and business since dropping out of University. He co-founded the Swiss e-commerce startup DeinDeal as its CTO. After its successful sale, he helped the German startup KaufDA with their international expansion. Lucas spent 6 years in Silicon Valley where he was working at early stage startups including Taulia where he met his Centrifuge co-founders.

Lucas Vogelsang

Matt&nbsp;McElroy&nbsp;is Vice President, Digital Business Operations &amp; Innovation for Warner Brothers Discovery Sports. In this role, Matt oversees business operations for NBA Digital, live PPV events on Bleacher Report as well as WBD Sport’s growing efforts to put live sports on Max.&nbsp; He also leads a number of emerging Web 3 initiatives for the company including Blocklete Golf and B/R Watch to Earn, among others.



Previously&nbsp;Matt&nbsp;helped launch B/R Live, Turner Sports' premium live sports streaming subscription product, which transitioned into Bleacher Report in 2021.  During his 17-year tenure at Turner/WarnerMedia/Warner Brothers Discovery,&nbsp;McElroy&nbsp;has worked in various roles across the media portfolio including time at Cartoon Network, <a href="http://pgatour.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">PGATOUR.COM</a>, <a href="http://ncaa.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NCAA.COM</a>, as well as Corporate Strategy and Emerging Media teams.



McElroy&nbsp;earned his MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and his bachelor’s degree in communications from Florida State University.

Matt McElroy

Tara is a growth-oriented leader who believes blockchain technology will fundamentally alter the way the world works and what is possible. As Cofounder &amp; CEO of Co:Create, she helps innovative brands unlock the power of their community with gamified, self-owned loyalty and reward programs. She began her crypto journey as Chief Revenue Officer of Alto, a leading cryptoIRA and digital asset IRA custodian. There she established partnerships with institutional crypto asset managers and grew company revenue by 25X in 18 months. She previously was Chief Commercial Officer at a consumer lending FinTech firm, where she led an advocacy campaign to change the tax treatment of employer-sponsored student loan repayment programs that was passed into law as part of the CARES Act. She is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the University of South Carolina.

Tara Fung

Alex is a member of the Core Team at Velodrome Finance, the leading DEX on Optimism. Prior to getting involved in DeFi, Alex worked in politics, technology, and consulting.

Alex Cutler

Mike Silagadze is the founder and CEO of&nbsp;<a href="http://ether.fi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ether.fi</a>, the first ETH staking protocol that allows stakers to maintain full control of their keys throughout the entire staking process, making it the only truly decentralized liquid staking platform. Prior to founding&nbsp;<a href="http://ether.fi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ether.fi</a>, Mike was CEO and co-founder of Top Hat, which he grew into the market leader in student engagement software, with 500 employees and $60 million in annual revenue.



He is also an active speaker and lecturer in the higher education, technology, and startup communities, having lectured at the Rotman Commerce Entrepreneurship Organization, the ASU GSV Summit, MaRS, Tech Fest Toronto, SAAS North and T­E­Dx­Laurier­University, among many others.

Mike Silagadze

Dan Elitzer is a co-founder of Nascent (nascent.xyz), a team of builders who have backed over 100 early-stage founders creating products and primitives for an open financial world.



Previously, Dan co-founded IDEO CoLab Ventures, a crypto-focused venture firm associated with the renowned design agency, IDEO. During that time, he also helped launch YAM Finance.



Dan began his career in social enterprise and microfinance, working with both domestic social impact organizations and international development agencies. Dan earned an MBA from MIT Sloan, where he co-founded the MIT Bitcoin Club and MIT FinTech Club, and a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Pomona College.

Dan Elitzer

Blake Finucane is the Chief Strategy Officer for Emergent Entertainment, where she runs an NFT Fund and is building a Web 3 MMORPG called Resurgence. She is also the host of the podcast Context: Views on Crypto and Culture, presented by Boys Club. She wrote one of the first academic thesis on crypto art which was published in 2018, as part of her Master’s degree in Art History. She is based in Vancouver, BC.&nbsp;

Blake Finucane

Kevin is currently a Vice President at BlockTower Capital where he leads investments and initiatives involving tokenized assets, DeFi, and credit. Prior to joining BlockTower, Kevin completed his first year at MIT Sloan, where he served as an officer of the Sloan Blockchain Club and developed a web3 product as a founder. His career in the crypto industry started in 2017 at Deloitte Consulting, where he managed teams applying blockchain solutions to institutional clients within financial services.

Kevin Chan

Nikil Viswanathan is the co-founder and CEO of <a href="http://alchemy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Alchemy</a>, the world's leading blockchain developer platform. Alchemy is hailed as the fastest-growing company in history after going from public launch to being worth <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/08/alchemy-which-aims-to-be-the-de-facto-platform-for-developers-to-build-on-web3-raises-another-200m-and-is-now-valued-at-10-2b/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$10 billion dollars</a> in 16 months. With a team of only 37 at the $10 billion mark, the company also had one of the highest team-to-impact ratios in history. Alchemy powers over $100 billion in transactions globally including the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-21/nfts-mushroom-into-billion-dollar-market-with-help-from-alchemy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">majority of the NFT industry</a>, top web3 companies, and traditional enterprises. Alchemy is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Silver Lake, Lightspeed, Stanford University, the Google chairman, founders &amp; execs of Charles Schwab, Linkedin, NYSE, and many more.

Nikil Viswanathan

John Zettler is the Staking Product Lead at Coinbase. He was a cofounder of $cbETH and has led a number of products at Coinbase through the years including Commerce (crypto payments) and Asset Hub. Before Coinbase, John founded one of the first art NFT marketplaces (RARE Art) and the first combined crypto/stock trading platform for US investors. In a past life, John worked on Wall Street.

John Zettler

Steph Alinsug is the founder &amp; CEO of&nbsp;<a href="https://onvessel.world/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vessel</a>, the home of onchain luxury media, and the producer of Broadcast, a summit series and digital magazine on the future of onchain media. Prev. Seed Club. Highly online, @cryptohun3y on Twitter and many other places on the internet.&nbsp;

Steph Alinsug

Simon Jones is CEO &amp; Co-Founder of Voltz Labs, the creators of Voltz Protocol—DeFi's first synthetic interest rate swap AMM and non-custodial clearing house. Prior to creating these core DeFi rails, which recently surpassed $20B of notional trade volume, Simon was the founder/early team of two Fintech startups, one of which was majority acquired by an international bank. The guiding principle at all these businesses has been the opportunity to create a more transparent, equitable, and anti-fragile financial system. Simon completed his Executive Education at Stanford.

Simon Jones

Brandon Millman is the CEO and co-founder of Phantom, a self-custodial crypto wallet native to Solana and now available on Polygon and Ethereum. Phantom aims to become the cross-platform entry point for mainstream consumers to interact with web3 app, and has set a new UX and UI standard for web3 users. In a short time, Phantom has become the fastest-growing crypto wallet in history.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Prior to building Phantom, Millman oversaw the growth of the engineering teams at 0x, a decentralized exchange for trading ERC 20 tokens. His teams were responsible for the development of multiple cutting-edge decentralized technologies including 0x's RFQ system which provided tools for professional market makers to provide liquidity, and 0x API, the most performant multi-chain DEX aggregation engine. During Millmans time at 0x, its products powered billions of dollars of trade volume per week. Before crypto, Millman was a senior engineer at Twitter and worked on many product teams spanning recommendations, infrastructure and Twitter for iOS to build out the social medias’ explore, moments, home and search frameworks.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Brandon Millman

Ken Smith is a Rocket Scientist and member of the Grants and Management Committee at Rocket Pool, a permissionless decentralized Liquid Staking Protocol. Since its mainnet launch in 2021, Ken has served as a Node Operator with Rocket Pool. He is also the founder of NextBlock Solutions LLC, an Ethereum blockchain consulting company that offers training and educational services to web3 organizations. Currently, Ken serves as an advisor to NodeSet, a staking-as-a-service (SaaS) company that is building on top of the Rocket Pool protocol. In 2014, Ken began his journey in crypto mining altcoins using homebuilt rigs.

Ken Smith

Ben Fisch is co-founder and CEO of Espresso Systems, the developers of the Espresso Sequencer network which brings decentralization and improved interoperability to L2s. Espresso Systems are also the developers of the CAPE data privacy application. Ben is additionally an assistant professor of computer science at Yale. Previously, Ben earned his PhD at Stanford working in the applied cryptography research group. His research on Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) sparked a multimillion dollar industry initiative (see VDF Alliance) and plays an important role in several blockchains including Ethereum 2.0, Chia, and Filecoin. His research on Proofs of Replication is the basis of Filecoin's incentive layer and consensus protocol. Filecoin is a live distributed storage system that already has reached a storage capacity exceeding 1.5 exabytes.

Ben Fisch

Aidan Salzmann is the co-founder of Stride and Stride Labs. He has a background in product and engineering, having built multiple software startups before founding Stride. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Aidan Salzmann

Luca Netz is a serial entrepreneur with over $500M in CPG sales. Today, he is the CEO of Pudgy Penguins, Web3's leading IP company.

Luca Netz

Uri is a co-founder and CEO at StarkWare, and a member of its Board of Directors.



He has a B.Sc. (Magna cum Laude) in Computer Science from the Hebrew University, and an MBA from MIT Sloan. Uri is a serial entrepreneur, who has co-founded several technology companies, among them OmniGuide (an MIT spinoff developing optical fibers for endoscopic surgery), and Mondria (developer of tools for visualization of big data). Previously, Uri also served as an EIR with two Israeli VC firms, and as an analyst at McKinsey.

Uri Kolodny

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<h2>Why Sponsor Permissionless II?</h2>
If you’re serious about crypto, you have to be at Permissionless. Permissionless brings together DeFi builders, DAO participants, protocol developers, crypto companies, funds and institutions, and more. It’s a true crypto-native’s paradise, where you’ll have the opportunity to showcase your offerings and form lasting connections with the community.
We’ll work with your team to define the perfect sponsorship opportunity that best fits your needs and budget. Want to do something completely revolutionary? Our team can help design a bespoke package that brings your vision to life.
Get in touch with us at <a href="mailto:sales@blockworks.co">sales@blockworks.co</a>
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Permissionless II

September 11-13 | Austin, TX

It's Time to Reboot

speakers