FREE WEBINAR: Building the Financial Backbone of GameFi. Register
Rewatch every panel from Permissionless, all in one place. Access the Permissionless panel recordings here.
Hear from the leading voices in crypto during three days of expert panels. Explore the Expo Hall, packed with a wide array of Web3 brands, innovative new tech and experiences.
Permie holders and featured speakers will have access to VIP exclusive events including the pre-event VIP "Gatsby Whites" Dinner at the Palm Beach National Croquet Club (May 16) and the NFT Collector’s Happy Hour with Dez Bryant in the Permissionless x OpenSea NFT Gallery.
We’ve partnered with OpenSea to highlight emerging artists and collectors in the Permissionless NFT Gallery. Collectors and artists include Dez Bryant, Trippy Labs and many more here.
May 17-18 - Spend the evening with your Web3 friends and colleagues exploring the Palm Beach nightlife during our Permissionless Warehouse Takeover & Bar Crawl events.
May 19 - Cap off your Permissionless experience with performances by 3LAU, PLS&TY and AMICAZ at the Permissionless After Party.
Chris Dixon
Andreessen Horowitz
General Partner
General Partner
Chris Dixon is a general partner and has been at Andreessen Horowitz since 2012. He founded and leads a16z Crypto, which invests in web3 technologies through three dedicated funds with more than $3 billion under management.
Previously, Chris was the cofounder and CEO of two startups, SiteAdvisor and Hunch. SiteAdvisor was an internet security company that warned web users of security threats. The company was acquired by McAfee in 2006. Hunch was a recommendation technology company that was acquired by eBay in 2011.
Chris has been a prolific seed investor, cofounding Founder Collective, a seed venture fund, and making a number of personal angel investments in various technology companies.
Chris started programming as a kid, and was a professional programmer after college at the high-speed options trading firm, Arbitrade. He has a BA and MA in Philosophy from Columbia and an MBA from Harvard. He has written about his theories and experiences as an entrepreneur and investor on Medium, and before that at cdixon.org; his a16z Podcast appearances can be found here.
Katherine Wu
Archetype
Venture Partner
Venture Partner
Katherine Wu is a Venture Partner at Archetype, a venture capital firm focused on leading early investments in high potential crypto startups. Most recently, Katherine was the Senior Lead on the Coinbase Ventures team, where she led investments on behalf of Coinbase and scaled the investment team. During her tenure at Coinbase, Katherine oversaw a record-breaking year in deal-making, putting Coinbase Ventures among the most active corporate venture funds in operation. Katherine joined the Coinbase Ventures team from Notation Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on software investments. Prior to Notation, Katherine was the first business hire at Messari, a leading provider of crypto market intelligence products.
Over the years, Katherine has also advised and worked with a number of top tier crypto protocols and companies on issues spanning from investment strategies to go-to-market and other operational processes.
Vlad Tenev
Robinhood
CEO & Co-Founder
CEO & Co-Founder
Vlad Tenev is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Robinhood Markets. In 2013, Vlad co-founded Robinhood with Baiju Bhatt to democratize investing. Before Robinhood, Vlad started two finance companies in New York City and earned his B.S. in Mathematics at Stanford University and M.S. in Mathematics at UCLA. Vlad has been recognized on the Forbes 30 under 30, Inc 30 under 30, and Fortune 40 under 40 lists. He was born in Bulgaria and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area.
Hasu
Flashbots
Strategy
Strategy
Jeff ‘Jihoz’ Zirlin
Axie Infinity
Growth Lead & Co-Founder
Growth Lead & Co-Founder
Jeff ‘Jihoz’ Zirlin is the Growth Lead and Co-Founder of Sky Mavis, the creators of the largest NFT gaming ecosystem, Axie Infinity. With over 2.2M daily active players, Axie Infinity has achieved over 2B USD in total transactions as players turn their time and effort into real value. As Growth Lead, Jeff spearheads strategic growth initiatives including partnerships, fundraising, user acquisition, community engagement, and is responsible for strengthening the Axie Infinity economy. He received a BA in History from Yale.
Mary-Catherine Lader
Uniswap Labs
Chief Operating Officer
Chief Operating Officer
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 in Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group and worked on the staff of the World Economic Forum’s Davos gatherings. 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.
Justin Drake
The Ethereum Foundation
Researcher
Researcher
Benjamin Milstein
DIGITAL
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Community Capitalist investing in the metaverse
Li Jin
Variant
Co-Founder & General Partner
Co-Founder & General Partner
Haseeb Qureshi
Dragonfly Capital
Managing Partner
Managing Partner
Haseeb is a Managing Partner at Dragonfly Capital. He was previously a partner at Metastable Capital, and has a background in software engineering at Airbnb and Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase).
Nic Carter
Castle Island Ventures
Partner
Partner
Soona Amhaz
Volt Capital
Founder & GP
Founder & GP
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.
Sam MacPherson
MakerDAO
Lead Developer
Lead Developer
Sam joined crypto during the 2017 bull run as a hobby. While looking for interesting projects he came across MakerDAO and was instantly hooked. After being part of the community for 2 years, he joined on as the first DAO smart contracts dev and later joined the Protocol Engineering team full time. Today Sam coordinates with the other DAO mandated actors across technical, business and strategy to grow the Maker ecosystem.
Baiju Bhatt
Robinhood
Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder
Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder
Baiju Bhatt is the Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Robinhood Markets. In 2013, Baiju
co-founded Robinhood with Vlad Tenev to democratize investing. Before Robinhood, Baiju
started two finance companies in NewYork City and earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in
Mathematics at Stanford University. Baiju has been recognized on the Fortune 40 under 40
list. He is the son of Indian immigrants and grew up in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.
Andy Chorlian
Fractional
Founder
Founder
Dan Tapiero
10T Holdings LLC
CEO & Managing Partner
CEO & Managing Partner
Dan Tapiero is the CEO and Managing Partner of 10T. Dan brings 30 years of experience in macro and commodity investing and trading, research and economics, as well as entrepreneurship. Dan has an extensive set of relationships in the institutional investment management space and is a thought leader that regularly speaks and contributes on macroeconomic topics.
Before founding 10T, Dan was the managing partner of DTAP Capital Advisors, a global macro investment fund, that he founded in 2003. He is the co-founder of Gold Bullion International (GBI), a physical precious metals platform for the wealth management industry that also expanded into the cryptocurrency universe in 2014. He is a co-founder of the Agricultural Company of America (AGCoA), one of the largest farmland REITs in the U.S. at the time of its sale in 2013.
Previously, from 1992-2012, Dan was a macro-focused portfolio manager and analyst at Tiger Management, Duquesne Capital Management, Steinhardt Management Co., and SAC Capital Advisors. Dan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University, where he earned his B.A.'90 and M.A.'91 in European History. Dan has been on the Board of Trustees of the Lawrenceville School for the past 12 years and currently leads the Investment Committee for its endowment.
Sarah Buxton
Gala Games; Gala Music
COO; CEO
COO; CEO
I never had ‘a job’, in part because I always wanted power over my choices. My entrepreneurial nature, for better or worse, is driven by wanting to feel a true sense of freedom and ownership. That is something blockchain gives you and so Gala Games is a natural place for me.
Before joining Gala just over a year ago, I spent a lot of time in FinTech amongst other major industries and realised a real discrepancy between the people who have and the people who have not, and realised that technology alone is not going to fix that. Blockchain in a gaming environment really enables the general public who want to play games to access a fairer and more equitable world and that excites me. If games can do that, so can music and I’m delighted to be part of building a new decentralized future with Gala Music now too.
Eric Peters
One River Asset Management
Founder, CEO & CIO
Founder, CEO & CIO
Eric Peters is the Founder, CEO, and CIO of One River Asset Management and its subsidiary, One River Digital Asset Management. One River is an innovative investment manager dedicated to delivering high-conviction discretionary and quantitative strategies that help its clients build superior portfolios. One River sees the world in a period of major economic and political transition, with the investment landscape shifting in ways that will make the coming ten years look profoundly different from the past decade. Its strategies are built to profit from this dynamic environment while providing strong diversification benefits to traditional investment portfolios.
Prior to founding One River in 2013, Eric served as Chairman of Grant Capital Partners, a $1.25 billion discretionary global macro hedge fund. In that role, Eric focused on thematic investment opportunities and was responsible for all non-investment activities including the direct oversight of the Chief Risk Officer. Over the course of his career, Eric has held various positions that include portfolio manager for Peloton Partners, proprietary trader for both Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse, and Founder and Chief Executive Officer of a TH Lee Putnam funded technology firm.
Eric travels extensively, exchanging ideas, debating policy, and identifying investment opportunities with many of the world’s top investment managers, economists, strategists, political consultants, academics, scientists, and business leaders. The content of those discussions often finds its way into his weekly investment letter - Weekend Notes - which is read by investment professionals who directly deploy over $1trln in alternative assets.
Stephane Gosselin
Flashbots
Architect, Steward, & Founder
Architect, Steward, & Founder
Kyle Samani
Multicoin Capital
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Kyle Samani is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital, a thesis-driven cryptofund that invests in tokens and companies reshaping entire sectors of the global economy. Prior to Multicoin Capital, he co-founded Pristine (Upskill, 2017), an enterprise software company that enables deskless workers with solutions for smart glasses. Based in Austin, Texas, Samani is widely recognized as a thought leader on blockchain and cryptoeconomics. He holds degrees in Finance and Management from NYU Stern and has been programming since he was 10 years old. Follow him on Twitter @KyleSamani.
Kevin Owocki
Gitcoin.co
Founder
Founder
Kevin Owocki is the founder of Gitcoin.co — Where builders & funders come together to build the open web. Gitcoin has delivered $50mm worth of value 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.
Santiago Roel Santos
ex-ParaFi Capital
Web3 Investor
Web3 Investor
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.
Stani Kulechov
Aave
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO
Surojit Chatterjee
Coinbase
Chief Product Officer
Chief Product Officer
Surojit is Chief Product Officer at Coinbase where he is responsible for Product Management, Product Design, User Research, and Program Management. Before Coinbase, Surojit was Vice President and Head of Product for Google Shopping. Before that he worked as Senior Vice President and Head of Product & Design at Flipkart, India from 2015-2017. Previously, Surojit was a founding member of Google's mobile search ads product and helped make mobile search ads a growth engine for Google, growing it into a multi-billion dollar business.
Surojit has an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, a B. Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kharagpur and an MS in Computer Science from SUNY at Buffalo. Surojit has 33 US patents to his name in distributed computing, payments, mobile advertising, and location based technologies. Surojit is an active angel investor in many technology companies in Silicon Valley and India.
Alex Golding
Delphi Digital
Ventures Associate
Ventures Associate
Kain Warwick
Synthetix
Founder
Founder
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. In 2020, Kain popularised the concept of yield farming that sparked the 2020 DeFi boom, earning the moniker: ‘the father of modern agriculture.
Preston Van Loon
Prysmatic Labs & Cryptex
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Preston Van Loon is a co-founder and core developer at Prysmatic Labs focused on building mission critical client software for Ethereum's switch to Proof-of-Stake and other scaling efforts.
Christine Moy
Apollo Global Management
Partner, Head of Digital Asset Strategy
Partner, Head of Digital Asset Strategy
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.”
Vance Spencer
Framework Ventures
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
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.
Colleen Sullivan
BH Digital
Head of Directional Strategies
Head of Directional Strategies
Colleen Sullivan is Co-Founder and CEO of CMT Digital Holdings LLC and has been a partner with the broader CMT Group since 2013. Ms. Sullivan oversees CMT Digital’s trading, investments, and regulatory initiatives in the crypto assets / blockchain technology space. Ms. Sullivan is also a Co-Founder and Managing Member of Sullivan Wolf Kailus LLC, a boutique law firm based in Chicago that specializes in hedge fund, private equity, venture capital, digital assets, and other alternative investment products. Ms. Sullivan 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 Board of Directors of Silvergate Bank and on the Advisory Board of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.
Catherine Gu
Visa
Director, Head of CBDC & Crypto Infrastructure Build
Director, Head of CBDC & Crypto Infrastructure Build
Catherine Gu heads Visa’s Global CBDC program and asset protocols, building digital payment solutions with central banks, financial partners and global infrastructure technology companies. Prior to Visa, Catherine has worked at J.P. Morgan and Man Group in quantitative finance. She spent 2 years on stablecoin research while studying at Stanford University with Prof. Dan Boneh. She also worked at 2 crypto startups: Anchorage and Gauntlet. Catherine graduated with M.S. in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University, and First Class B.A. and M.Phil in Economics from Trinity College, University of Cambridge.
Kieran Warwick
Illuvium
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Kieran is a proven serial entrepreneur. Working alongside his brother Kain Warwick in e-commerce, Kieran was exposed to Bitcoin and Ethereum early on. His enthusiasm for the crypto space led to joining Blueshyft. While there, Kieran successfully onboarded major Australian Exchanges and started the world’s first OTC cryptocurrency exchange.
Additionally, Kieran helped The Burger Collective amass 100,000 unique reviews, 20,000 monthly web app users, and established a partnership with the global business, DoorDash. At the same time, DeFi was quickly growing, and Kieran and Kain (Synthetix.io) wanted to explore the uncharted areas of opportunity. With his background and interest in trading penny stocks, Kieran wanted to pioneer a DeFi project that would be a game-changer (pun intended) for the industries it represented. With this in mind, he tapped his brother Aaron (Co-Founder/Game Designer) to develop what will be the first AAA gaming title on the Ethereum blockchain, and Illuvium was born.
Avery Akkeneni
VaynerNFT
President
President
Avery Akkineni serves as the President of VaynerNFT. She leads the company's mission to build long-term strategic NFT projects for the world's leading intellectual property owners serving brands, celebrities, athletes, and associations looking to incentivize and reward brand advocacy and customer loyalty. Avery previously led VaynerMedia's expansion into APAC, growing a team from 0-150+, opening offices in Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Sydney, and was awarded SEA Independent Agency of the Year within years. Before joining Vayner, she worked at Google in both Silicon Valley and New York City. Avery will drive meaningful cultural relevance for others to unlock the potential of one of the technology shifts of our time.
Robert Leshner
Compound Labs
CEO & Founder
CEO & Founder
Robert is the CEO and founder of Compound Labs. Compound Labs created the Compound Protocol, a leading algorithmic, autonomous interest rate protocol; and Compound Treasury, a crypto-powered cash management solution designed for corporate treasuries and institutions.
Robert began his career in finance with Discover Financial Services and HPM Partners. He subsequently founded two software companies and worked as a product lead at Postmates. Robert graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Economics, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He is also an investor at Robot Ventures, which focuses on seed investments in fintech and crypto companies.
Tegan Kline
Edge and Node
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Tegan Kline is co-founder of Edge and Node, (prev. Business Lead for The Graph), an indexing and query protocol organising the world’s open blockchain data and making open data a public good. Tegan helps leaders and innovators connect more deeply with stakeholders across the blockchain ecosystem. Tegan is the former International Business Development Manager and OXT Relations Lead for Orchid, an A16z and Sequoia backed blockchain company that created tools and protocols for users to obtain digital freedom and an open and accessible internet. Tegan successfully helped to launch Orchid at a 400m valuation on Coinbase. Tegan’s professional experience has been with Fortune 500’s and startups, prior to Orchid, Tegan was the Executive VP of a patent marketplace powered by blockchain, analysed by AI. She began her career in Investment Banking at BAML and, prior to discovering blockchain, worked in Sales and Trading at Barclays.
Tom Schmidt
Dragonfly Capital
Partner
Partner
Tom is a Partner at Dragonfly Capital. He previously led product at 0x, worked as a product manager at Facebook and Instagram, and worked in software engineering at Apple and Microsoft.
Mariano Conti
Angel Investor
Angel Investor
Mariano Conti was Head of Smart Contracts at the Maker Foundation and is currently an angel investor in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Kate Rouch
Coinbase
Chief Marketing Officer
Chief Marketing Officer
Kate is Chief Marketing Officer at Coinbase, where she oversees Coinbase’s global brand, product, and performance marketing. Prior to joining Coinbase, Kate spent more than a decade at Facebook in various roles, including Global Head of Brand and Product Marketing for Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook app, Public Affairs, and the Facebook company. She’s worked in global product marketing across both consumer and platform roles, building a variety of teams along the way.
Ryan Selkis
Messari
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Ryan is co-founder and CEO of Messari, a leading crypto asset data and research company. Prior to founding Messari, he was an entrepreneur-in-residence at ConsenSys, and was on the founding teams of Digital Currency Group, where he managed the firm’s seed investing activity, and CoinDesk, where he led the company’s restructuring and annual Consensus conferences. He has been an investor and prolific writer in the crypto industry since 2013.
Cooper Turley
Music NFTs
Angel Investor
Angel Investor
Cooper is actively shaping the Creator Economy as an operator and an investor. He contributes to DAOs like Friends with Benefits and advises Audius and the Variant Fund. He is an avid NFT collector and was featured in Fortune’s 2021 NFTy 50.
Jim Bianco
Bianco Research, L.L.C.
President & Macro Strategist
President & Macro Strategist
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).
Matt Hougan
Bitwise
CIO
CIO
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.
Ryan Sean Adams
Bankless
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Ryan Sean Adams is a crypto investor & co-founder of Bankless. He’s an open finance maximalist who propagates the message of financial sovereignty. His mission is to help onboard the first billion people to crypto through memes, media, and education.
David Hoffman
Bankless
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
David Hoffman is co-founder of Bankless and is a steward of crypto culture. David focuses on writing fundamental investment theses for Ether and Ethereum, while also making deep connections to impacting culture and the psyche of those who adopt a crypto lifestyle. David holds 99% of his wealth outside of Banks and inside of Ethereum, and is focused on leading the way for others to do the same.
Amy Oldenburg
Morgan Stanley Investment Management
Head of Emerging Markets Equity
Head of Emerging Markets Equity
Amy is head of the emerging market equity investment business with investors based in New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mumbai and Riyadh. She joined Morgan Stanley in 2001 and has over 21 years of experience. She was previously chief operating officer of the emerging markets equity business, and held roles in FX trading, portfolio management support, and product development and strategy. Amy started her career in internet consulting before transitioning to finance. Amy received a B.A. in business administration, with a concentration in finance, from Fordham University and a Master of Science, in Applied Psychology, from the University of Southern California.
Jake Brukhman
Coinfund
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO
Jake Brukhman is the founder and CEO of leading web3 Venture Capital firm CoinFund. Coinfund was established in 2015 and was one of the earliest investors in the NFT and Web3 Infrastructure space.
Jake is also a writer, an artist, and a technologist who has a background in mathematics and computer science. He started his career working at hedge fund’s including Highbridge Capital Management and then moved to Amazon as a technical product manager and engineer. Following this, he was appointed to the role of CTO at Triton Research, a company which sources publicly available data about private companies and then performs financial analysis on them before they go public.
Richard Muirhead
Fabric
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Richard is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Fabric Ventures. Fabric backs the founders of the Open Economy. investing in builders, businesses and digital assets from inception to scaling since 2012. Fabric invested in the likes of Polkadot, Ocean Protocol, Orchid, Sorare, 1inch, The Graph, and NEAR.
Richard combines a pedigree in open source, developer-oriented tools, and early stage venture investing with blockchain focus since 2012, and has invested in Pantera Venture Fund I, Bitstamp, Bitrise, Tray.io, TransferWise, and Citymapper. Richard has previously exited 3 software companies as an entrepreneur, building/ scaling Automic (CA), Tideway (BMC), and Orchestream (Oracle) – reaching a cumulative market cap of $2.2bn.
Brett Tejpaul
Coinbase
Head of Coinbase Institutional
Head of Coinbase Institutional
As an experienced business builder and innovator in Financial Services, Brett has accelerated revenue growth with institutional clients and mobilized FinTech companies. At Coinbase, Brett is making connections between finance 1.0 and the crypto economy. Coinbase is focused on the continued institutionalization of crypto. This includes continuing to expand the institutional client base, building out the Sales team, introducing new features and services that institutional investors expect, and continuing to educate the institutional community about crypto as an asset class and its role within a diversified portfolio. Previously, as the Global Head of Sales at Barclays, Brett hired and developed large teams while incubating and launching multiple lines of business. Brett pioneered the Digital role across sales & trading adopting new technologies and transforming existing platforms, including the creation of a digital bank prototype.Brett is currently on the Advisory Board of Eightfold.ai. helping them scale their AI based hiring and retention platform for Financial Services.In earlier experience, Brett held leadership roles in sales, trading, and structuring at JP Morgan, innovating credit derivatives and structuring platforms.
Vanessa Grellet
Aglaé Ventures
Managing Partner
Managing Partner
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&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 Cointelegraph’s list of 100 most influential people for 2022. Mrs. Grellet graduated Cum Laude from Law School (Paris II Assas) and Business School (HEC).
Bill Barhydt
Abra
Founder and CEO
Founder and CEO
Bill Barhydt - born in New York City, and currently residing near San Francisco - is a serial entrepreneur and pioneer in Internet and media technologies for 30 years.
Bill is the founder and CEO of Abra. Forbes describes Abra as "the Robinhood of Crypto!” Abra enables myriad crypto banking services for consumers and institutions including trading, high yield interest accounts, borrowing and lending. Abra has customers in over 100 countries.
As a recognized expert in Internet and Mobile technologies Barhydt has presented at over 100 conferences including The World Economic Forum, The US State Department, The Mobile World Congress and TED where he gave the first ever TED Talk on Bitcoin in 2012.
Bill started his career working in R&D at the CIA and NASA. Bill also spent several years working at Goldman Sachs in Fixed Income Trading. As one of the early team members of Netscape, Bill was involved in building some of the core infrastructure that helped grow the consumer Internet we all use today. Today Bill is globally recognized as a technology pioneer and as an avid investor in companies across the broader technology ecosystem.
Brian Quintenz
CFTC
Former Commissioner
Former Commissioner
Brian D. Quintenz was nominated by both Presidents Obama and Trump to serve as a Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in August of 2017, and served four years in his role at the agency until stepping down in August of 2021.
Prior to his appointment to the CFTC, Mr. Quintenz worked in the financial markets, first at an investment firm focused on the banking sector during the financial crisis and later founding his own firm registered as Commodity Pool Operator.
Mr. Quintenz began his career on Capitol Hill, serving as a senior policy advisor for Congresswoman Deborah Pryce (OH-15), at that time the highest ranking woman in the history of the House of Representative.
Mr. Quintenz graduated Magna Cum Laude from Duke University with a major in Public
Policy Studies and received an MBA from Georgetown University McDonough School of
Business, where he was inducted into the Phi Beta Gamma honors society.
Chjango Unchained
Interchain.FM; Osmosis Labs; Cosmos
Host, Advisor; Head of Ecosystem
Host, Advisor; Head of Ecosystem
Chjango is a longstanding cryptocurrency evangelist, community builder, and technologist with specialization in Layer 1 consensus protocols and cryptoeconomics. She works on seed stage projects, growing those ecosystems from 0 to $1B market cap, having been one of the founding team members of Cosmos Network. She now advises cornerstone Cosmos ecosystem projects like Osmosis. She was formerly Ecosystem Development VP at Tendermint Inc, the team behind Cosmos.
She is an early trend spotter, identifying blue chip fungible digital currencies by their technical merits as early as 2014. She started the dWeb (decentralized web) Foundation in 2020, a not-for-profit aimed at driving Handshake adoption.
Chjango is host of Interchain.FM, a technical podcast that covers bleeding-edge cryptocurrency projects solving major problems in the blockchain sector. She runs a PoS validator called Interchain.FM for Osmosis, Umee, and Comdex. Her podcast is hosted on YouTube, which has featured guests like Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies, and Wallstreetbets founder Jaime Rogozinski.
Chjango holds a Bachelor of Science in Econometrics at the University of California, San Diego.
Harry Kalodner
Offchain Labs
Co-Founder & CTO
Co-Founder & CTO
Harry Kalodner is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Offchain Labs where he leads the engineering team. Before the company he attended Princeton as a PhD candidate where his research explored economics, anonymity, and incentive compatibility of cryptocurrencies. When not up at 3:00am writing code, Harry occasionally sleeps.
Mona El Isa
Avantgarde Finance
CEO & Founder
CEO & Founder
Co-founder of the Enzyme Protocol (formerly Melon protocol under Melonport AG), and CEO/founder of Avantgarde Finance. President of MAMA (Multichain Asset Managers Association). Nominated Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum and Digital Shaper in Bilanz magazine in 2018.
Mona is a former star-trader at Goldman Sachs, promoted to Vice President by the age of 26 and made the “Top 30 under 30” list in Trader Magazine in 2008 and Forbes Magazine in 2011 after profitably trading the 2008 and 2011 crashes. She moved to Geneva-based macro fund Jabre Capital in 2011, before deciding in 2014 that the future of finance lay in blockchain technology. She studied Economics & Statistics at the University College London.
Mihailo Bjelic
Polygon
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
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.
Michael Shaulov
Fireblocks
CEO & Co-Founder
CEO & Co-Founder
Michael is the CEO and co-founder of Fireblocks, a secure digital asset infrastructure company. Prior to Fireblocks, he co-founded Lacoon Mobile Security, which was acquired by Check Point, and was then appointed the Head of Products, Mobile and Cloud Security for Check Point. Michael is a serial cybersecurity entrepreneur and investor. He is also a recognized industry speaker, delivering talks at RSA Conference, BlackHat and Infosec. Before his commercial endeavors, Michael pioneered the mobile security field in an elite military technological unit (8200), where he received the Israeli Presidential Excellency Honor for his contributions. He holds a BSc in Computer Sciences and Physics from Ben-Gurion University, Israel.
Tyrone Lobban
Onyx by J.P. Morgan
Head of Onyx Digital Assets & Blockchain Launch
Head of Onyx Digital Assets & Blockchain Launch
Tyrone leads J.P. Morgan’s Blockchain & Crypto team and is responsible for creating innovative Web3-focused products & 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. Tyrone sits on the Board of Directors of The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and The Hyperledger Foundation, and prior to joining the blockchain team in 2015, Tyrone was a software engineer within the Credit Markets business and spent several years managing and delivering large strategic programs across various businesses within J.P. Morgan, covering Front, Middle and Back Office risk and trading systems.
Alex Mashinsky
Celsius
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO
Alex is one of the inventors of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) with a foundational patent dating back to 1994 and is now working on MOIP (Money Over Internet Protocol) technology. Over 35 patents have been issued to Alex, relating to exchanges, VOIP protocols, messaging and communication.
Alex is a serial entrepreneur and founder of seven New York City-based startups, raising more than $1 billion and exiting over $3 billion. Alex founded two of New York City’s top 10 venture-backed exits since 2000: Arbinet, with a 2004 IPO that had a market capitalization of over $750 million; and Transit Wireless, valued at $1.2 billion.
Alex has received numerous awards for innovation, including being nominated twice by E&Y as ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’, in 2002 & 2011; Crain’s 2010 Top Entrepreneur; the prestigious 2000 Albert Einstein Technology medal; and the Technology Foresight Award for Innovation (presented in Geneva at Telecom 99).
As one of the pioneers of web-based exchanges, Alex authored patents that cover aspects of the Smart Grid, ad exchanges, Twitter, Skype, App Store, Netflix streaming concept and many other popular web companies. Additionally, Arbinet’s fundraising story was featured as a case study in 2001 by Harvard Business School.
Melody He
Spartan Group
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Melody is a Co-Founder of Spartan Group and leads the group’s advisory business. She works side by side with the crypto industry’s leading founders and projects on their fundraising and strategic development in Asia. Since founding Spartan, Melody has worked closely with WilderWorld, BitDAO, Qredo, Dapper Labs / Flow, Solana, Blockstack, Origin, Deribit and other leading crypto projects. Melody has been an active early stage tech investor over the past decade and an early investor in blockchain companies. Prior to founding Spartan group, Melody was an investment partner at MOX/SOSV, a global top accelerator VC. She started her career in the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong where she worked on numerous financing and M&A transactions including the Baidu IPO.
Lorien Gabel
Figment
CEO
CEO
Lorien is a wannabe polymath who was born in Malaysia while his dad was curing tropical diseases with the Peace Corps. Off to a cool start, he spent the next few years of his life in Hawaii, San Diego, India…before settling into the much more exciting, colorful and exceedingly polite land of Canada.
In 1994, at the age of 24, when Lorien’s younger brother Matt asked him to run his burgeoning internet company, Lorien did what any self-respecting lawyer of 6 months would do--he quit. He moved the company from their parent’s basement and over the next four years managed the growth of Interlog, one of Canada’s first commercial ISP’s, to over 150 employees, 65,000 customers and profitability. The company was then acquired by a large multinational telecommunications provider.
Determined not to be one hit wonders. Lorien and Matt teamed up again and co-founded Bird on a Wire Networks - a managed web hosting and data-center provider which was one of the first of its kind in Canada. Within two years, the company was acquired by AT&T Canada. Their third start-up, pingg.com, based in New York City, was acquired by 1800-Flowers.
Lorien has also been known to run divisions of Fortune 500 companies (Micron), spearhead the exponential U.S. growth of a UK based tech company (MessageLabs) as Global VP Business Development, serve on the advisory board of a number of start-ups and whip up a mean breakfast of Spanish eggs.
Ray Mogg
Tracer DAO
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Ray Mogg is a Co-Founder at Tracer DAO.
Ray is building Tracer DAO, decentralised financial derivative infrastructure that will provide more transparent and effective ways for individuals and firms alike to manage risk. Tracer DAO is a free market vehicle for both digital and real world derivative markets to be unlocked through a low transaction cost framework.
Alex Svanevik
Nansen
CEO
CEO
As the CEO of Nansen, Alex drives the growth and adoption of the blockchain data analytics firm to provide crypto traders, hedge funds, institutional investors and VCs with insights into the crypto markets. Alex has over 10 years of experience in data science, management consulting, and cryptocurrencies. His academic background is in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Eric Golden
Web3 Breakdowns Podcast
Host
Host
Eric currently spends his time and energy on all things Web3 as a builder and investor. His current area of focus is digital assets and NFTs ability to unlock new economic structures in the real world as well as digital metaverses. He spent the past year diving deep into NFTs and was an early investor in TopShot, ZED, Bored Ape Yacht Club and Punks Comic. While the returns have been astronomical, it has also led to a bottoms up approach to make angel investments in Web3 companies based on a deep domain perspective. Prior to pursuing Web3, Eric was the Managing Director and Portfolio Manager of Personal Bond Management (PBM) at Fidelity Investments. In this role, Eric created a new business to manage individual bond portfolios at scale. He founded the business in 2015 and launched to the public in 2017. By March 2021, PBM grew to $18B in assets, across 23,000 clients and executing 1,500 trades per day with a team of only five people. Prior to assuming this position in January 2015, Mr. Golden held various other roles within the fixed income division, including research analyst, associate research analyst, and research associate. In these positions, he was responsible for covering not-for-profit hospitals, senior living, utilities, transportation, and tobacco credits for bond and money market funds. He has been in the financial industry since joining Fidelity full time in 2004. Mr. Golden earned his Bachelor of Science degree in corporate finance and accounting, with a minor in information technology, from Bentley University. He is also a CFA® charterholder.
Casper B. Johansen
Spartan Group
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Casper is a co-founder of Spartan Group and heads up Spartan’s M&A and investment banking advisory business. Spartan advises leading crypto-focused companies on M&A and token raises, with past clients including Solana, Dapper Labs, Blockfolio, BitDAO, Qredo, Blockstack, Origin Protocol, Wilder World and others. Spartan’s crypto asset management business manages >$500 million via its hedge fund, venture fund and managed accounts.
Based in Asia since 2004, Casper has worked as an investment banker, tech entrepreneur, corporate executive and private equity investor. Prior to co-founding Spartan in 2017, Casper spent 10 years in the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs in their London, Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore offices, where he led and worked on more than $20 billion of M&A and capital markets transactions.
Teddy Woodward
Notional Finance
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Teddy is the Co-Founder and CEO of Notional Finance, a fixed-rate lending protocol on Ethereum. Prior to founding Notional, Teddy traded interest rate swaps at Barclays Investment Bank and traded crypto at London-based family office Ayanda Capital.
Taylor Monahan
MyCrypto
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO
Taylor Monahan is the founder and CEO of MyCrypto, a security-first Ethereum interface that recently joined the MetaMask family. She has been focused on building awesome products that put the power in people's hands since 2015 and strives to provide a safe and secure experience for both new and veteran inhabitants in the space.
Mirko Basil Doelger
UniX Gaming
CEO & Founder
CEO & Founder
CEO of UniX Gaming | Metaverse Designer & a passionate Veteran Pro Gamer. Former Fleet Operations Manager in the Cruise Industry who has led large teams of 400+ people through multiple $480M openings. Pivoting to build a team that can change communities across the globe & lead the era of play-to-earn.
Chris Aruliah
BCB Group
Chief Product Officer
Chief Product Officer
Chris is an industry veteran, passionate about financial innovation, and was previously at Bitstamp, where he held the role of Head of Business Development and was responsible for helping financial institutions enter the crypto market and focused on identifying opportunities for integrating crypto with traditional finance. Prior to that, he launched the open banking payments platform, Token, and built the pipeline for the business in Europe.
Jack O'Holleran
SKALE
CEO & Co-founder
CEO & Co-founder
Jack is a veteran entrepreneur with a deep background in machine learning, AI, security, and blockchain. Prior to co founding SKALE, Jack was a founder at multiple Silicon Valley based enterprise technology companies including IncentAlign, a digital currency platform, and Aktana, the leading machine learning analytics platform for the life science industry. He also held an executive role at Good Technology which was acquired by Motorola for ~$500M and subsequently held executive positions in Motorola. Jack has been actively involved in cryptocurrencies and decentralization as an investor since early 2013 and began working full-time in the space in early 2017. Jack holds a BS from the University of Nebraska and calls the Bay Area his home.
Perianne Boring
Chamber of Digital Commerce
Founder & President
Founder & President
Perianne Boring is the Founder & President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the world's largest trade association representing the blockchain industry. The Chamber’s mission is to promote the acceptance and use of digital assets and blockchain-based technologies. Working with policymakers, regulatory agencies, and industry, the Chamber advocates for a pro-growth policy environment that fosters job creation, innovation, and investment. Perianne was named America’s Top 50 Women in Tech by Forbes. In 2016, she was named 10 Most Influential People in Blockchain by CoinDesk.
Joe Hoffend
Foundry
VP of Product Development
VP of Product Development
Joe Hoffend is Foundry’s VP of Product Development. He started his career co-founding an eSports media company, and prior to joining Foundry, was at Fastly, helping improve the user experience of their Edge applications and partner offerings. Joe first became interested in blockchain in 2012 as he saw Bitcoin as the intersection of sound money and technology. Since then, he’s spent a good deal of time learning about blockchain technology and what problems it can help solve in the world and believes every asset will eventually be digitized. Joe has led Foundry’s Staking business as well as productizing other areas of the business.
Angela Dalton
Signum Growth Capital
CEO & Founder
CEO & Founder
Angela Dalton founded Signum Growth Capital, an M&A Advisory and capital raising firm, which also invests, with a focus on the intersection of video gaming, art, esports, music, blockchain, crypto and the emergence of digital economies in “the Metaverse.” She served as a Managing Director for three investment banking firms - UBS, Evercore and Guggenheim Partners - and has 20 years of experience in Technology, Media and Telecom capital markets. At Evercore, she was an initial investor and Co-Founder of the Equities business in 2010, building out its Research, Sales and Trading teams prior to Evercore’s acquisition of ISI. Signum Growth Capital serves as Lead Advisor to ARK Invest in the US and to the Web3 Foundation in Zug, Switzerland. Angie serves on the Advisory Boards of Mythical Games, a next generation video gaming company in LA, Wall Street Blockchain Alliance in NYC, and Perpetual Altruism in London, UK. She serves as a Venture Partner for Griffin Gaming Partners and a Nexus Partner for Gaingels. Education: BS and a BA from The University of Kansas, MBA from The University of Chicago.
Josh Goodbody
Qredo
COO
COO
Josh began his career in traditional finance — working on the legal side of the commodities and derivatives markets. While at a commodities fintech company in 2017, he encountered blockchain for the first time and was blown away by its potential to fix the fragmentation and antiquated processes found in legacy finance.
His first role in crypto was at the cryptocurrency exchange Huobi where he joined as Global General Counsel, later moving on to lead their Institutional Business. His most recent role before joining Qredo was at Binance, where he led and scaled the EMEA organization, helping it to become one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges by trading volume.
John Patrick Mullin
MANTRA DAO & SOMA.finance
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
John Patrick Mullin is a FinTech entrepreneur, investor, and educator living in Hong Kong. He’s a Co-founder of MANTRA DAO, a popular Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform and SOMA.finance a US-regulated Decentralized Exchange (DEX). Prior to this he served as the Managing Director of Tritaurian Capital, a FINRA-regulated boutique investment bank focusing on providing financial services and capital raising solutions for startups and SMEs. He also has a traditional investment banking background having worked at Guotai Junan Securities in Shanghai, China. As an educator, he has spoken at leading universities across the world, including Harvard, London Business School, and Peking University. Additionally, John is an active investor as General Partner (GP) of UNKNOWN VC, an early stage venture capital firm investing in DeFi and Web 3.0.
Johann Bornman
MetaMask Institutional
Product Lead
Product Lead
Johann is the Product Lead for MetaMask Institutional. Since launching the product in February 2021, Johann has managed the product strategy and roadmap, design and operations, and also crypto custodian integrations. Prior to joining ConsenSys, Johann spent time as a Fintech founder, Director of Product for a Pan-European Robo-advisor, and Global Macro Portfolio Manager, where he helped to start and build the business.
Rebecca Rettig
Aave
General Counsel
General Counsel
Rebecca Rettig is the General Counsel of the Aave Companies, a group of software development companies that build blockchain-based software for the web3 world. In addition to handling legal matters, Rebecca works with policymakers across the globe on regulatory matters relating to decentralized finance (“DeFi”) and cryptoassets. Rebecca began her legal career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York, litigating complex commercial disputes and defending regulatory enforcement matters; for more than a decade, she’s been representing clients on the cutting edge of technology, and, over the last 5+ years, in the crypto and DeFi sector. Immediately prior to joining the Aave Companies in March 2021, Rebecca was a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP in the financial services group, serving these types of client. In 2019, Rebecca was recognized as one of the top 100 women lawyers in New York by Crain’s New York Business. Rebecca currently serves on the Board of Directors of Silvergate Bank, a public company, and the Board of the DeFi Education Fund, a 501(c)(4) promoting education about DeFi for regulators and policymakers.
Mark Richardson
Bancor
Product Architect
Product Architect
Mark Bentley Richardson is the Product Architect of Bancor. Mark was previously a research scientist; he received his BSc (Hons) from Macquarie University, and his PhD from the University of Melbourne. He switched from a career in the physical and life sciences to DeFi in January of 2021. Mark leads the research and development efforts at Bancor, creating new concepts to better service the liquidity needs of cryptocurrency markets. He values decentralization, user safety, and operational simplicity, and imbues his product designs with these ideals.
Cynthia Wu
Matrixport
Founding Partner & Head of Business Development & Sales
Founding Partner & Head of Business Development & Sales
Cynthia leads business development and sales across international markets at Matrixport. She was previously Investment Director at Bitmain Technologies, focused on investments in blockchain for the financial services sector.
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 as a commodities trader.
Liko Subakti
Project SEED
CEO
CEO
Entering the crypto space in 2017, Liko founded J8 Venture that incubates and advises blockchain and traditional start-ups. He is now the CEO and Co-founder of Project SEED - a GameFi Metaverse Ecosystem built by an AAA Game Studio with the goal of revolutionizing the whole next-gen gaming industry.
Hugo Philion
Flare Network
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Hugo Philion is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flare Network. Flare is a scalable, EVM based layer 1 blockchain, designed to enable trustless and secure interoperability between any blockchain. Hugo’s previous career was as a derivatives trader managing portfolios at several large funds. Subsequently Hugo studied Machine Learning at University College London where he met Flare's Co-Founders, Sean Rowan and Nairi Usher.
Scott Stuart
Kava Labs
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Scott Stuart is the Co-founder and CEO of Kava Labs, the primary development team behind the Kava Network and App.
The Kava Network is a builder-owned Layer-1 blockchain that combines the speed and interoperability of Cosmos with the developer power and support of Ethereum in a single network.Since the company’s founding in 2017, Scott served as the Head of Product, later assuming the role of CEO in 2021. Following his graduation from the University of Wisconsin Madison, Scott led a 7+ year career in professional poker, topping leaderboards world-wide. Prior to founding Kava Labs, he founded AppEase, a successful mobile advertising technology company.
James Smith
Elliptic
Founder
Founder
James founded Elliptic and has a strategic focus on new product initiatives and key industry developments. James sits on the Elliptic board and loves finding innovative solutions for customers that apply Elliptic's best-in-class blockchain data capabilities. He has a Computer Science Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and a Computer Science MPhil and MA from the University of Cambridge
Moti Levy
DeviantArt - DeviantArt Protect
CEO
CEO
Moti joined DeviantArt in 2017, initially as COO, and recently assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer.
DeviantArt, the world's largest online art community, has flourished under Moti's leadership and now proudly hosts over 70 million users and 500 million pieces of art.
Prior to joining DeviantArt, Moti co-founded Mobilibuy, a venture that aimed to revolutionize the retail world by converting any media, digital screen, or print into a virtual storefront using image recognition technologies.
Morgan Beller
NFX
General Partner
General Partner
Morgan is a General Partner at NFX, a seed-stage venture capital fund.
Most recently, Morgan was at Facebook where she originally joined as part of the Corporate Development team in May 2017. Her main project was trying to answer the question "how should Facebook be thinking about blockchain?" This evolved into the creation of the dedicated blockchain team which later became Diem and Novi. Morgan was Head of Strategy for Facebook's Novi.
Morgan graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor's in Statistics and Information Science.
Eric Parker
Giddy
CEO
CEO
Eric is the CEO and co-founder of Giddy. Eric’s career as a software developer led him to get involved in crypto early, mining Bitcoin and Ethereum and eventually developing his own projects. He got heavily involved in DeFi in 2020 which led him to cross paths with people who sought help getting involved in DeFi and others who needed help retrieving lost tokens. This work led Eric to begin developing the Giddy app with the mission of democratizing access to wealth by making DeFi easier and safer to access than ever before.
Ken Timsit
Cronos
Managing Director
Managing Director
Ken Timsit is a web3 industry veteran, he is the managing director of Cronos chain and its Particle B ecosystem accelerator.
Cronos is a public Layer 1 blockchain protocol that interoperates with both Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems. It is backed by Crypto.org, Crypto.com and more than 200 Dapp developers, validators and infrastructure partners. Cronos is powered by the Cronos ($CRO) cryptocurrency. Within 4 months of mainnet launch, Cronos attracted more than 400,000 end-users and skyrocketed to being a top 10 blockchain by total value locked.
Previously, Ken was chief revenue officer at ConsenSys, a co-founder at two start-ups in Southeast Asia, and a partner and managing director at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). He has co-authored several publications on Fintech and blockchain, and served as management committee member of the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum.
Lauren Halstead
Chainlink Labs
Business Development Lead - Entertainment
Business Development Lead - Entertainment
Lauren Halstead leads business development for the entertainment sector at Chainlink Labs as well as Chainlink Labs' program for early-stage blockchain projects, Startup with Chainlink. She focuses her time pushing the boundaries of what is possible with NFTs by leading the dynamic NFT movement by inspiring others to build new creative projects using off-chain data sources and Chainlink’s VRF. She was first exposed to Crypto in 2012 and is an active participant in Meta Gamma Delta, a DAO focused on giving away grants to women-found projects.
Allan Gulley
Index Coop
Product Operations Lead
Product Operations Lead
Allan Gulley is the Product Operations Lead at the Index Coop, the leading decentralized community powering on-chain index products. Allan is engaged in every stage of the product lifecycle, from R&D and product design to go-to-market and post-launch management. Before joining the Index Coop, he has worked in the crypto and blockchain space since 2016 as an academic researcher, solution architect, and management consultant. His work and writing have also been included in educational curricula developed by the Linux and Ethereum Foundations.
Alan Chiu
Boba Network
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO
Alan Chiu is the founder and CEO of Boba Network, a Layer 2 optimistic rollup scaling solution built to make Ethereum faster, cheaper, and smarter. Alan has experience growing distributed systems startups, designing DAO-like incentive systems (years before DAOs), and investing in top startups through XSeed and Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs. Through it all, Alan has retained a purposeful, mission-driven attitude when building startups, a mindset best represented by his penchant for teaching and the phrase “WAGMI” (we’re all gonna make it).
Weso
Beefy Finance
Lead Developer & Strategic Partnership Coordinator
Lead Developer & Strategic Partnership Coordinator
Weso is Beefy's Lead Developer and Strategic Partnership Coordinator, providing daily direction to the project’s globe-spanning team. Beefy’s success relies on his roles in managing multiple partners, stakeholders, and user groups in one of the world’s fastest-moving industries. Weso’s extensive background in business and program development is an essential factor in Beefy’s position as an industry leader. Using his extensive knowledge, Weso has developed a key strategic vision for a project that handles over $1 billion in TVL.
Through Weso, Beefy’s customers rely directly on these skills to keep their deposits safe in an industry that values bank-grade security. Over 10 years of experience have provided him the background needed for heading one of the DeFi space's most-known and loved yield optimizers.
Rachel Mayer
Circle
VP of Product
VP of Product
Rachel Mayer is VP of Product at Circle, responsible for overseeing product design and user research for the Circle Account, go-to-market and growth strategies teams. Since joining Circle in 2017, her leadership in launching a core suite of APIs and the Circle Account has been integral in furthering the company’s mission to raise global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of financial value.
Mayer joined Circle through its acquisition of Trigger Finance, a company she had co-founded. Prior to Trigger Finance, Mayer had extensive experience in digital currency and financial services, including as a trader at JP Morgan where she ran the FX e-commerce platform for emerging market currencies and rates. She is a recent honoree on the “40 Under 40” list from Fortune.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in computer science from Cornell University. Outside of work, Miami-based Mayer enjoys spending time with her two young children and adopted dog.
Mounir Benchemled
ParaSwap
Founder
Founder
James Wang
Amun
Head of Tokens
Head of Tokens
James Wang is Head of Tokens for Amun. He is focused on building the future of crypto investing. Previously he was an analyst for ARK Invest for six years. He began his career as a tech columnist before moving up to work as editor-in-chief at Nvidia. He resides in New York City and attended UNSW in Australia.
Rex Hygate
DeFiSafety
Founder & President
Founder & President
Tobias Jung
T-Systems MMS
Product Owner
Product Owner
Tobias Jung is a Product Owner in the Staking unit at T-Systems MMS a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom where he builds infrastructure for public blockchain networks. Previously he worked in various tech software start-ups. Tobias graduated from Lund University with a MSC in Business administration. Since several years he has been passionately involved in the crypto space.
Kinga Bosse
Lukka
CFO
CFO
Genevieve Bos
Poplar
Co-Founder & CRO
Co-Founder & CRO
Genevieve Bos is a successful technology and media entrepreneur who launched and sold multiple privately held companies. Her newest venture, called Poplar, is a high-yield sweeper account designed exclusively for businesses. It's a SaaS platform called YaaS(Yield as a Service) and it delivers 3-20% APY automatically on idle cash and working capital. Poplar uses bank-grade security to tap hard-to-access, high-yield DeFi smart contracts so business customers enjoy higher yields, full liquidity with built-in business rules and full trackability — all while having no exposure to the volatility of crypto. As a tech executive, board member, and professional speaker, Genevieve is a global connector of people and ideas and a strategic business developer. She is also known for launching then selling the publishing lifestyle brand PINK with over 1 million readers - created exclusively for professional women – described as “Fortune Meets Oprah.” She is a sought after speaker for companies like Cisco, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, GE, The Home Depot, P&G and has been featured in Forbes, and on CNBC, NBC and CNN. Genevieve is an investor, board and advisory member for some ground-breaking tech companies like Software Automation (sewing machine robots), Optios.com (helping the world’s most elite performers unlock their brain’s exponential capacity using proprietary neuroscience technology in the financial trading and sports industries), Steady (customized on demand job opportunities for the gig economy) and Advanced Data Cooling Technologies (making the carbon capture of Bitcoin mining profitable). Her mission every day is to help people harness their own positive human energy to elevate themselves and humanity.
Evgeny Gaevoy
Wintermute
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO
Evgeny has 15+ years of experience growing fintech businesses. He has consistently grown market share in Europe’s top fiat exchanges, developed and executed ambitious expansion projects and led agile cross-functional teams. Prior to founding Wintermute, Evgeny built and ran the Optiver’s European ETF business (HFT and OTC) – one of the largest in the EU. Evgeny holds MSc in Finance and EMBA from London Business School.
Konstantin Richter
Blockdaemon
CEO & Founder
CEO & Founder
Blockdaemon founder & CEO, Konstantin Richter has been active in the blockchain ecosystem since 2015. He created Blockdaemon in 2017. It has grown to become the world’s largest institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure provider for node management and staking.
Derek Yoo
PureStake
CEO
CEO
Derek is the CEO of PureStake, the company building Moonbeam. Prior to PureStake, Derek was the co-founder and CTO of Fuze, where he led the product and engineering teams in the creation of a global Unified Communications-as-a-Service cloud platform with points of presence all around the world. During his time at Fuze, the company grew to 700 employees and a $150M run rate. As a professional tech entrepreneur with over two decades of success building software and cloud companies, Derek can speak to the importance of blockchain infrastructure to eliminate operational complexity and allow developers to focus on building unique applications and projects.
Asaf Meir
Solidus Labs
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO
Recently listed as one of the top-25 crypto executives to watch in 2022, Asaf Meir is Founder and CEO of Solidus Labs. Before founding Solidus in 2018, Meir spent a decade leading complex technological and financial products for various firms, including Microsoft and Goldman Sachs’ equities trading desk.
Joseph Edwards
Solrise Group
Head of Financial Strategy
Head of Financial Strategy
Joseph Edwards is the Head of Financial Strategy for Solrise Group, a development company building on the Solana blockchain, with products including the Solrise Finance asset management protocol, the Solflare wallet, and the Solrise Pulse ecosystem of permissioned products. Previously, he was Head of Research for London-based brokerage Enigma Securities. Joseph is also an acclaimed professional esports coach and analyst, working with a number of notable organisations including TSM and Team Liquid.
Isaac Lee
ZKSpace
Interim CIO
Interim CIO
Isaac is the Interim Chief Information Officer at ZKSpace. Isaac has been instrumental in the technical development of ZKSpace, a layer 2 ecosystem comprised of three major components: ZKSwap, an innovative Layer 2 AMM DEX powered by ZK-Rollups technology; ZKSquare, a payment service; and ZKSea, an NFT minting center and marketplace. ZKSpace aims to implement EVM-compatible ZK-Rollups and provide the community with more layer 2-based products in the near future through an optimized user interface, NFT support, unlimited token listing, smoother withdrawal, increased efficiency, and multi-chain support.
Shayne Higdon
HBAR Foundation
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Shayne is the Co-Founder and CEO of the HBAR Foundation. Prior to the HBAR Foundation, Shayne spent the better part of a 25-year career focused on building, scaling, and operating enterprise software businesses ranging from $5M to $400M+ in revenue.
Prior to the HBAR Foundation, Shayne was General Manager at HighRadius, a FinTech Unicorn. He served several years with BMC Software in multiple executive roles over his tenure as SVP of Strategy and Operations and President of the Performance and Analytics business. He’s also had several board roles with JAMF Software (Nasdaq: JAMF), CodeNotary, and Symplified.
Shayne holds a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Mary Hardin-Baylor University.
Fun Facts about Shayne:
- Minored in music with voice as his primary instrument
- Played college baseball on scholarship
- Loves freshwater bass fishing
Casey Wagner
Blockworks
Senior Reporter
Senior Reporter
Casey Wagner is a New York-based business journalist covering digital assets and macro economics. Prior to joining Blockworks, she reported on markets at Bloomberg News. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Media Studies.
Alvin Lee
DeGate DAO
Lead Evangelist
Lead Evangelist
Alvin Lee is Lead Evangelist at DeGate DAO. DeGate is an ZK-rollup based Decentralized Trading protocol built on Ethereum. .
Jake Dwyer
GSR
Head of DeFi
Head of DeFi
Jake is the Head of DeFi at crypto market maker GSR. As the Head of DeFi, Jake leads product development for GSR's DeFi liquidity, trading platform, and blockchain infrastructure. He also leads GSR's venture capital efforts and expansion into new markets. GSR is an active, multi-stage investor in more than 100 leading companies and protocols in the crypto/Web3 industry. Prior to GSR, he spent over four years as a Senior Vice President and GM of Venn at Two Sigma.
Nicki Sanders
TaxBit
Principal Software Engineer, Blockchain
Principal Software Engineer, Blockchain
Nicki Sanders is the head of blockchain engineering at TaxBit where she leads blockchain research and development specifically for DeFi and NFT smart contracts.
Sanders has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Utah and has an extensive background in software engineering. Prior to joining TaxBit, Sanders worked at Medici Ventures and tZERO Group, Inc., where she designed, architected, and implemented tZERO’s Global Security Standard for digital securities. During this time, Sanders also led the mobile applications development team for tZERO’s Crypto App.
Rotem Hemo
Algorand
Director of Product Management
Director of Product Management
Rotem is a member of Algorand’s founding team and a Director of Product Management, overseeing the product development of the Algorand platform, including the Algorand Consensus protocol, smart contracts platform, and developer tools.
Prior to Algorand, Rotem served for 5 years in Israel’s elite cyber-intelligence unit 8200, leading projects of national strategic caliber. His experience, however, stretches even further back. He started his career as a software engineer for SAP AG at the age of 14 and has since developed software and conducted research for several prominent companies, including IBM Research, Akamai Technologies and Broadway Technology. He also provided strategic counsel at Sygnia, a leading cyber-security consulting firm.
Rotem Holds a Master of Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from MIT.
Darius Sit
QCP Capital
Co-Founder & CIO
Co-Founder & CIO
Darius is co-founder and CIO at QCP Capital, a full-suite crypto saset trading firm headquartered in Singapore. Formerly a Macro Trader at Dymon Asia Capital, he spent years trading cross-asset derivatives with a focus on Asian FX/NDFs and model-based strategies before moving on to manage the Asia FX & Bonds book at BNP Paribas in New York.
In addition to institutional trading, Darius has a keen interest in financial modeling. He has created and implemented asset allocation models for sovereign wealth funds and also developed predictive models for Asian currencies, many of which operate under managed float regimes. He brings this and his capital markets experience to crypto-asset trading. He has a particular passion for crypto-economics and has given advice to a number of crypto projects, including Algorand and Terra, on trading structures and strategies.
Michel Dahdah
C3 Protocol
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Michel Dahdah is the Co-Founder of C3 Protocol, a decentralized spot and derivatives markets protocol with cross-chain settlements, and Co-Founder of Rand Labs, a company building leading infrastructure on top of Algorand.
Amir Haleem
Nova Labs
CEO
CEO
Amir Haleem is the CEO of Nova Labs (formerly named Helium Inc.) and founder of the Helium Network. Today, the Helium Network is the fastest-growing decentralized wireless network across 56K cities and 170 countries globally. Prior to Nova Labs, Amir served a long career in the video game industry as CTO at gaming startup Diversion, and member of the original team behind Battlefield 1942 at DICE in Stockholm, Sweden. Outside of work, Amir is a former world champion esports gamer, co-founder of the popular esports community esreality.com, and builds and races 90's Japanese sports cars.
Mohamed Elkasstawi
Tribal Credit
Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer
Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer
Mohamed Elkasstawi is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Tribal Credit, crypto-powered payments and financing platform for startups and growing enterprises in emerging markets. Kasstawi leads Tribal’s efforts to create an innovative product offering at the nexus of TradFi and DeFi, leveraging the “DeFi mullet” ethos to accelerate growth for its startup clients. In recent months, Kasstawi spearheaded the launch of Tribal’s crypto-powered B2B cross-border payment service, as well as the company’s $40 million hybrid fiat-USDC debt round and its $41M token sale.
Kasstawi is a seasoned expert in leveraging blockchain to serve real-world use cases. In addition to his work at Tribal, Kasstawi is also the founding partner of zk Capital, a research-focused blockchain firm, and was featured by Scene Arabia magazine as a leading Middle Eastern blockchain entrepreneur. Kasstawi is a firm believer in the power of crypto to transform people’s financial lives, especially in emerging markets.
Baek
HASHED
General Partner
General Partner
Baek is a General Partner at HASHED, a proprietary crypto VC with $5B+ AUM. HASHED team focuses on incubating and funding industry-pioneering founders in Metaverse and Web3. Baek works closely with Terra, Axie Infinity, Sandbox, Dydx, ZkSync, Republic and more. Baek started his career as an engineer at AWS and studied Robotics at Carnegie Mellon
Stephen Kenny
Aave Companies
Institutional Manager
Institutional Manager
Stephen is the Institutional Manager at the Aave Companies, tasked with distributing knowledge of DeFi and Web3 to financial institutions and corporates. Stephen educates institutions on DeFi and helps them explore how they can participate in the web3 ecosystem, with discussions including various permissioned markets. Stephen worked in legacy finance for over 10 years, joining the Aave Companies from exchange traded fund provider First Trust, where he similarly worked in helping to increase adoption of a new technology amongst institutions in Europe.
Joao Reginatto
Circle
VP, Product Management
VP, Product Management
Luigi Donorio Demeo
Ava Labs
Head of DeFi
Head of DeFi
My passion is to work at the intersection of innovation, finance and analytics. I look to work with people who are focused and passionate about challenging the status quo.
When I am not working, I am usually playing with my two children, making dinner for my family, reading, or working on carpentry.
Jacquelyn Melinek
TechCrunch
Senior Crypto Reporter
Senior Crypto Reporter
Jacquelyn Melinek is a senior crypto reporter at TechCrunch based in New York City. She was previously a crypto reporter for Blockworks covering DeFi, DAOs and crypto venture capital funding and prior to that covered energy markets for S&P Global Platts and Bloomberg News.
Josh Rosenthal, Ph.D.
6ixth event; Narwhal Ventures
Co-Founder, Partner; Managing Partner
Co-Founder, Partner; Managing Partner
Josh Rosenthal, Ph.D., a former Late Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation historian turned crypto-first investor. A Fulbright Recipient to the Sorbonne’s interdisciplinary think tank (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Josh founded multiple successful startups before starting a crypto-first founders’ fund, the 6ixth Event, and crypto-first family office, Narwhal Ventures. A guest lecturer at Harvard, Hopkins, and MIT, Josh explores how communities are using decentralized technology to reshape our world in what has become known as a Crypto Renaissance.
Madeline Lieber
Crypto Chicks
COO
COO
Madi is the COO of Crypto Chicks and Women Labs. Crypto Chicks grew its roots as a women-centric NFT project and has since been acquired by Women Labs, which operates a portfolio of programs to support women across their web3 journeys. Madi has previously worked at both Meta and Google overseeing special programs for VPs and business leaders. She graduated from Cornell University, where she still regularly engages in their business and entrepreneurship endeavors as a member of the Board of Directors for Student Agencies, Inc.
Sami Start
Transak
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Sami Start is Co-founder and CEO of Transak. Transak is the fastest and securest way to by 100+ cryptocurrencies on 75+ blockchains. Users can pay via Apple Pay, UPI, Bank Transfer for use a credit or debit card. The company is trusted by more than 2 million users globally and empowers wallets, gaming, DeFi. NFTs, Exchanges and DAOs in more than 145 countries. Sami is based in London and has worked in high frequency trading and B2C fintech – his passion for fiat onboarding arose from his time at Smarkets. He has degrees in Physics from Imperial College and Computer Science from UCL.
Coleman Maher
Waves Labs
Head of Ecosystem
Head of Ecosystem
Coleman Maher is the Head of Ecosystem at Waves Labs. Previously he led business development at Origin Protocol. He has also advised numerous blockchain startups. Coleman studied math at Berkeley.
Frank Downing
ARK Invest
Cryptoasset & Cloud Computing Analyst
Cryptoasset & Cloud Computing Analyst
As an Analyst at ARK Invest, Frank focuses on Cryptoassets and Cloud Computing.
Prior to joining ARK, Frank was a Senior Technology Consultant in Deloitte’s Cloud Engineering practice with experience in data engineering, full stack web development, and product management. Frank is an active crypto miner and is passionate about the disruptive potential for decentralized applications across industries.
Frank holds a Bachelor’s of Business Administration from the University of Michigan, with a focus in Technology and Information Systems and a minor in Computer Science.
Kelvin Koh
Spartan Group
Co-Founder & Co-Managing Partner
Mara Schmiedt
Coinbase Cloud
Head of Sales
Head of Sales
Mara is the Head of Sales at Coinbase Cloud (formerly Bison Trails), the leading developer platform for blockchain-based infrastructure services and APIs.
She has broad experience in bringing blockchain-based protocols, products and services to market. Prior to joining Coinbase, Mara managed Business Development at Bison Trails (acquired by Coinbase) and served as Strategy Manager at ConsenSys. She is passionate about open source technology and has led various initiatives including the development of the eth2 launchpad and distributed validator technology (DVT).
She is an active angel investor and serves as an advisor to various blockchain projects
Robbie Ferguson
Immutable
President, Co-Founder
President, Co-Founder
Robbie Ferguson (President, Co-Founder) Forbes 30 Under 30, Thiel Fellow.
Robbie co-founded Immutable, Australia’s fastest growing technology startup, in 2018 at the age of 21. Immutable is a $2.5 billion NFT platform which has raised more than $300M from Temasek, Tencent, Galaxy Digital, and Coinbase. Robbie previously built an automated capital gains tax platform at KPMG which was licensed to Australia’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. After graduating high school as the equal-highest ranked student in Australia with a perfect ATAR, he became obsessed with Ethereum in 2015, and dropped out of a Computer Science/Law degree at the University of Sydney to found Immutable. He was awarded the Thiel Fellowship in 2020. Robbie believes that future generations will spend most of their waking hours in virtual reality, and wants to ensure the digital worlds they live in are as economically meaningful as the one we currently inhabit.
Noah Prince
Strata Protocol
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Noah Prince is the co-founder and CEO of Strata Protocol, the first permissionless no-code token launchpad on Solana. Strata makes it simple to launch tokens for Creators, GameFi, DAOs, and Sub-DAOs, and also ships with a social mesh for creating networks of social tokens.
Noah is a technologist with a background in Computer Engineering and Mathematics. Prior to blockchain development, he worked in big data infrastructure at Akuna Capital, capturing and indexing large streams of financial data.
Yubo Ruan
Parallel Finance
Founder
Founder
Yubo Ruan is the Founder of Parallel Finance, a leading multi-chain decentralized finance platform.
A driven entrepreneur, developer, and investor, Yubo founded Parallel Finance in 2021. Prior to that, Yubo was also the founder of 8 Decimal Capital, one of the pioneer blockchain funds with over $60 million AUM. With a track record of 40 startups across 5 countries, the fund was recognized as a top fund in the crypto space. In addition, Yubo co-founded Skylight Investment, an early-stage tech investment firm, backed by education giant New Oriental (NYSE: EDU). Yubo has accepted 13 scientific and technological invention awards and 5 patents in high school and launched and sold Ali Simba Technology Co., Ltd. Yubo received the “30 under 30” award by the LA Post and the Hurun US Innovation Outstanding Award.
Yubo's organizations have been backed by top-tier investors, including Sequoia Capital, Polychain Capital, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and LightSpeed Venture. Parallel Finance is supported by a growing team of talented developers and professionals from organizations including Stanford, MIT, Facebook, Google, JP Morgan, and Polygon.
Yubo is a two-time Stanford University dropout, where he studied Computer Science and Economics. He went on to Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as a member of the Executive Education Advanced Finance Program. He dropped out of Stanford in 2014 to pursue 8 Decimal Capital, he dropped out again in 2021 to pursue Parallel Finance. Bilingual in English and Mandarin, Yubo has extensive experience in both the American and Chinese markets.
Zach Hungate
Everyrealm Ventures
Head of Gaming
Head of Gaming
Zach Hungate is Head of Everyrealm Ventures. Hungate also serves as Portfolio Manager for the Everyrealm Metaverse Alpha Fund, a venture capital fund focused on metaverse platforms, NFT/metaverse infrastructure, and gaming, and leads Everyrealm Gaming, M&A, and Strategic Partnerships. Hungate has over a decade of investment, investment banking, and technology experience, having worked at companies including Comvest Partners and Raymond James.
Natasha Hoskins
Boys Club
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Natasha Hoskins is the Co-Founder of Boys Club, a social club and proto-DAO for crypto curious women and non-binary individuals. Before Boys Club, she founded Allcall, a content marketplace and members club for the modern traveler. This past November, Allcall was acquired by Fora, where she joined as their Head of Community. Prior to Allcall, she was the second employee on Indiegogo’s post campaign business where she onboarded over 2k entrepreneurs to the Indiegogo platform.
Ben Jones
Optimism
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
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.
Ariel Seidman
Hivemapper
CEO & Co-Founder
CEO & Co-Founder
Ariel Seidman is a two-time entrepreneur. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hivemapper, a decentralized mapping network with a crypto-integrated dashcam. Prior to Hivemapper, Ariel led teams of innovators as the Co-Founder and CEO of Gigwalk. Awarded Fast Company Top 10 Most Innovative Companies (Mobile) in 2013, Gigwalk is a mobile mechanical turk platform used by all the leading mapping companies. Before Gigwalk, Ariel served as the Director of Product Management at Yahoo Maps and Search where he fell in love with geospatial tech.
Glenn Barber
Copper.co
Head of Sales Americas
Head of Sales Americas
Glenn Barber is the Head of Sales & Business Development, Americas at Copper.co. – a pioneering digital assets custody and settlement provider. Prior to joining Copper, Glenn led sales as a consultant at FalconX, an institutional digital asset brokerage, and he was also the Chief Institutional Officer at Voyager Digital, a publicly-traded holding company whose subsidiaries operate a crypto-asset platform to trade crypto assets. Glenn also has over 25 years experience in global capital markets, and was a Managing Director in Equities at Deutsche Bank and Barclays.
Glenn holds a Masters in international Management and Finance from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BSc in Business Administration and Management.
Matt Leisinger
Alluvial
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Matt is the CEO and Co-Founder of Alluvial Finance. Alluvial is building the enterprise liquid staking standard. Recently he was the Head of Liquid Staking Products at Figment, a blockchain infrastructure company focused on building web3. Prior to joining Figment, Matt spent 12 years in the proprietary trading space leading teams in building high-frequency, algorithmic trading systems. He was a Partner and Managing Director at Transmarket Group. Matt graduated from Purdue University with a degree in Computer Engineering and University of Chicago with a Master’s in Computer Science.
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Sid Powell
Maple
CEO & Co-Founder
CEO & Co-Founder
Sid Powell is the CEO & Co-Founder of Maple, and with his Co-Founder Joe Flanagan launched Maple in 2021. Maple is transforming capital markets through technology and counts traditional finance and crypto-native firms as customers. Sid comes from a background in debt capital markets and institutional banking. During his career in traditional finance, he participated in $3BN+ of corporate bond issuance, established and ran a $200M+ bond funding program, and managed Treasury at a commercial lending FinTech company.
Jumana Al Darwish
Decentralised Investment Group (DIG)
VP Corporate Communications
VP Corporate Communications
Jumana Al Darwish is an award-winning social entrepreneur and philanthropist.
She is the co-founder of international franchise The Happy Box and founder of global brands The Happy Studio and Happy Hearts Global. Her social enterprises aim to instill a love of art and creativity among children, promote family bonding and further community participation through curated educational arts and crafts boxes, workshops and interactive installations.
She believes greatly in the philosophy that "hearts that give are the happiest”, leading her to establish Happy Hearts Global, a private family foundation currently being registered under the UK Charity Commission, which aims to provide children and particularly girls with access to primary education as well as therapeutic and rehabilitation art programmes across the world. Jumana also serves as a board member of UNHCR's Solidarity Circle, which aims to further the mandate of UNHCR's programmes in support of displaced persons worldwide.
In 2020, she co-founded Made For You Global, an exclusive platform designed to connect and empower female leaders to progress towards their potential - currently incubated under Sheraa, an entrepreneurship centre in Sharjah, UAE that fosters innovation and growth opportunities for a thriving community of entrepreneurs through a series of programmes, initiatives and collaborations.
Earlier this year, Jumana combined her love of art with her need to bring people together through building solid communities, and created the 44 Club, an NFT collection of 8,888 avatars that is much more than just a form of digital art.
Currently, Jumana is the Vice President of Corporate Communications at the Decentralised Investment Group (DIG) of Dubai, a multinational blockchain technology conglomerate committed to making impactful investments within blockchain. DIG is also a seed investor in Jumana’s brainchild, the 44 Club.
As a visionary strategist, she has over 16 years of experience working for both the non-profit and public sectors, and launching entrepreneurial ventures. Jumana holds a Bachelor’s degree in Community & Ethnic Studies from Concordia University in Canada, a Masters of Science in Evidence-Based Social Intervention from Oxford University in the United Kingdom and a Strategy Execution Programme Certificate from INSEAD in France.
Anne Favre-Willis
OpenSea
VP of Special Projects
VP of Special Projects
Anne is the VP of Special Projects at OpenSea. She oversees platform development for community and creator-centric initiatives while managing the teams focused on the intersection of OpenSea and its creators. Prior to OpenSea, Anne was COO of Oasis Labs, the core contributors to the Oasis Network — a privacy-first Layer 1 blockchain network — and led their Mainnet development and token launch (ROSE). Before this Anne held roles as Product Manager / Product Marketing Manager for the iPhone at Apple, Director of Special Projects / Product Marketing at eero, and worked for former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright helping companies with regulatory issues abroad. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School and went to Georgetown for undergrad.
Charles Hamel
Ledger
VP of Product
VP of Product
Charles is the VP of Product at Ledger, the world leader in digital assets security and self-custody applications, where he is defining the firm’s Web3 strategy and product offering. Prior to this, he was the Head of Crypto at Opera and pioneered the company’s entry into Web3.He holds a degree in Software Engineering from Laval University.
Georgi Ivanov
Nexo
VP of Strategy, Risk & Operations
VP of Strategy, Risk & Operations
Georgi Ivanov, CFA, is the VP of Strategy, Risk and Operations of the leading digital assets
institution Nexo. In this role, Georgi leads growth initiatives focused on blockchain solutions and
capabilities that capitalize on the synergistic touch points with traditional Consumer Finance and
Capital Markets products and services.
Georgi boasts 20+ years of experience in Corporate Finance, Investment Management and
Capital Markets, and has held leadership roles at various financial institutions and hedge funds,
including Wells Fargo and Bank of America. He received his MBA from Duke University and
holds two B.S.E. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering from the University of
Pennsylvania.
Melanie McClain
P00LS; Blurred Lines
Head of Community; Founder
Head of Community; Founder
Melanie McClain is the New York based Head of Community at P00LS and founder of Blurred Lines. In her 12 years as an early adopter in the music industry, Melanie has helped break emerging and global household names like G-Eazy, Burna Boy, Megan Thee Stallion, Haviah Mighty, and Lizzo. In 2020, Melanie founded Blurred Lines to unite international tastemakers to share left-of-center Black music and discuss topics like distribution, marketing and Web3. Currently at the Web3 company P00LS, Melanie helps musicians, athletes, brands and creators build worlds and communities around custom cryptocurrencies.
Her past experience includes roles as the Hip-hop and African Music Playlist Curator at YouTube Music, Publishing A&R at Secretly Group, Head of Digital Culture at Sean Parker’s Airtime, Experimental Music Manager at Budweiser and staff writer at Solange's Saint Heron. While at Secretly Group, Melanie was honored as a 2021 Billboard Magazine Change Agent in publishing.
Illia Polosukhin
NEAR
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Illia Polosukhin is Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol, a decentralized developer platform powered by a sharded smart contract blockchain. NEAR’s vision of a scalable, robust, and highly usable blockchain began in 2018 when they couldn't find a protocol that met the needs of builders. NEAR Protocol launched its mainnet in 2020 and is focused on scaling to global mainstream adoption. Illia has more than 10 years of industry experience, including 3 years at Google where he was a major TensorFlow contributor and managed the team building question-answering capabilities for the core Google search, as well as an author of several notable research papers. Illia has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg, TIME, Wired, New York Magazine, Forbes, and TechCrunch.
DeFi Dad
4RC
Partner
Partner
DeFi super-user, educator, and Partner at 4RC
Sam Kazemian
Frax Finance
Founder
Founder
Lia Zhang
Makers Fund
Investor
Investor
Lia is an investor at Makers Fund, where she supports gaming investments in the Americas. She focuses on supporting founders in the interactive entertainment and crypto world. She previously helped lead fintech investing at Primary Venture Partners, and is an active member of We3.
Luca Prosperi
MakerDAO
Lending Oversight
Lending Oversight
Luca leads MakerDAO’s Lending Oversight, focusing on making of MakerDAO the true lender of last resort of the DeFi ecosystem. This means building the bridge between real-world and DeFi, as well as developing any protocol-to-protocol use case. Luca publishes his own research on dirtroads.substack.com and is an advisor for Cherry Venture’s crypto investments. Prior to joining the DeFi revolution, he has been for 15 years a banker and investor in financial services companies. Luca holds an MBA (with hons) from London Business School, and a MSc and BA in mathematics and economics from Bocconi University.
Thomas Chen
BitGo
Managing Director
Managing Director
William Reilly
Chainlink Labs
Head of CeFi, Sales, and Strategy
Head of CeFi, Sales, and Strategy
William Reilly is currently the Head of CeFi, Sales, and Strategy for Chainlink Labs. In this role, William enables Centralized Finance players to strategically enhance their product offers by harnessing powers of decentralization. Working with some of the largest players in the space such as Celsius and Gemini, William aims to enable the cross-section of web2 interfaces with web3 enhancements in a variety of novel ways from CeDeFi, NFTs, real-asset tokenization, and even the Metaverse.
Maggie Love
SheFi
Founder
Founder
Maggie Love is the Founder of SheFi, which empowers women and non-binary folks to take ownership of their financial freedom through crypto education, experimentation, investing and community. To date, she has onboarded over a 700+ people to web 3 either through the SheFi bootcamp or other educational engagements with organizations such as Opera Browser, United Talent Agency and Google.
She is also Co-founder of W3bCloud (pronounced Web3Cloud), which is focused on deploying compute infrastructure for web 3 protocols. Maggie is the Director of Business Development, architecting strategic partnerships with leading decentralized protocols. W3bCloud is a joint venture between ConsenSys and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD).
She believes “joy is not made to be a crumb” (Mary Oliver) and lives her life accordingly. You'll find her cultivating, creating and curating experiences of joy with her communities on and off the dance floor.
Christina Beltramini
Aave Companies
Head of Growth
Head of Growth
Christina is Head of Growth at Aave Companies, focusing on partnerships across its suite of Web3 products. Christina began her career as an Investment Banker at J.P. Morgan, then worked for various hyper growth consumer tech companies in business development, operations and finance orientated roles. Prior to Aave, she was one of ByteDance/TikTok’s early US based employees working on music innovation partnerships and spearheaded the company’s first foray into NFTs. In 2021, she was recognized by Variety in their New York Women’s Impact Report.
Gustav Arentoft
1inch
Head of Growth
Head of Growth
Nikita Ovchinnik
1inch
CBDO
CBDO
Carson Cook
Membrane
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO
Carson Cook is the founder of Tokemak, a decentralized liquidity provider protocol, and Membrane, a soon to launch clearing platform for otc trading and lending
Zach Bruch
RECUR
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Zach Bruch is co-founder and CEO of RECUR, an NFT technology platform dedicated to making the metaverse open, easy, and fun for fans, creators, and developers. An early participant in the institutional crypto trading and exchange world, Zach has worked at and held leadership positions at Kraken, Cumberland/DRW, and JST Capital.
Jordan Nof
Tusk Venture Partners L.P.
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Jordan Nof is a Co-founder and Managing Partner at Tusk Venture Partners L.P. and is a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. He has led many of the firm’s investments including Lemonade, Bird, Coinbase, Alma, Sunday, and Wheel. He currently serves on the board of directors of Alma, Sunday, and Wheel.
Prior to Tusk Venture Partners, Jordan spent six years as a Director at Blackstone, where he focused on the development of the firm’s corporate venture capital portfolio. During that time, Jordan focused on investing in early-stage technology companies that could accelerate operations across Blackstone and the firm’s underlying portfolio companies.
Before joining Blackstone, Jordan spent four years in the institutional investment management division at AllianceBernstein. During that time, he worked with many of the firm’s largest global institutional sub-advisory relationships.
Jordan received an M.B.A. from Rollins Graduate School of Business and is a graduate of Florida State University where he received a B.S. in Finance. He is based out of the firm’s New York office.
Eric Qiu
CMS Holdings
Trader
Trader
Eric is a trader at CMS, a principal investment firm that operates in the cryptocurrency space. CMS deals in both liquid and illiquid investment strategies.
Matt Cutler
Blocknative Corportation
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Matt Cutler is the co-founder and CEO of Blocknative Corporation. Founded in 2018, Blocknative provides real-time Web3 infrastructure for the Ethereum, Polygon, Gnosis Chain, Fantom, BNB Chain, and Bitcoin ecosystems. Blocknative solutions are deployed by hundreds of Web3 builders and traders to enable dynamic user experiences and power real-time decisions via pre-chain data and insights. Blocknative is the seventh startup that Matt has founded. His first startup, Web analytics pioneer NetGenesis, went public at the height of the Web 1.0 boom. Matt's most recent startup, mobile collaboration platform Collaborate.com, was acquired by Cisco.
Alison Mangiero
Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA)
Acting Executive Director
Acting Executive Director
Alison Mangiero is the Acting Executive Director of the Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA), an industry alliance advocating for innovation-friendly regulation of the growing proof-of-stake industry. Alison previously founded Tocqueville Group (TQ), which worked with various ecosystem partners around the world to incubate new ventures and build products, open source software, and other public goods for the Tezos ecosystem. Prior to founding TQ she spent a decade in public policy, and has broad experience fundraising and growing membership associations.
A recovering political scientist now focused on the ways blockchain technology will drive social, political, and economic innovation, Alison also currently teaches courses on Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Public Policy at College of the Holy Cross and is on the Board of Advisors for the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies.
Ridhima Ahuja Kahn
Dapper Labs
VP of BD/Partnerships
VP of BD/Partnerships
Ridhima Ahuja Kahn is the VP of BD/Partnerships at Dapper Labs. Her focus is building meaningful partnerships with the world's top IPs, social media platforms and creators as they look to build blockchain-based experiences. Prior to Dapper Labs, she was a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) where she focused on sports, social, media & entertainment, collectibles (digital & physical), hospitality/travel and food. She has also spent time on the investment teams at the Hewlett Foundation ($12b) & Grosvenor Capital Management ($46b).
Kahn holds a Bachelors of Business Administration from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
Saurabh Sharma
Jump Crypto
Partner, Head of Investments
Partner, Head of Investments
Saurabh Sharma is a Partner and Head of Investments at Jump Crypto and invest across Blockchain Infrastructure, Open Finance and Web3 primitives. Prior to this, Saurabh was a General Partner at Jump Capital where he led Infrastructure and Application Software investments. Saurabh started his career as a High-Performance Computing Researcher at French National Research Institute, worked as a quant trader with Lehman Brothers and led product, operations, and marketing teams at Groupon.
Brett Shear
PTC Crypto
Managing Partner
Managing Partner
Brett Shear (aka BlockchainBrett) is the Managing Partner of PTC Crypto, a Crypto Creator Economy venture fund, partnered with Palm Tree Crew. He is a long-time crypto native Founder out of ConsenSys and Fleek, a NFT Collector of Art & Music, and DAO Contributor to SeedClub, Songcamp, ForeFront, Gremlins, NoiseDAO, DavinciDAO, LeDAO and more.
Scott Byron
AscendEX
Head of Venture
Head of Venture
Scott Byron is the Head of Venture at AscendEX focused primarily on early-stage token projects. AscendEX Ventures invests in different layer-1 and layer-2 ecosystems, as well as across different narratives emerging in the space.
Kevin Miao
BlockTower
Partner, Head of Credit
Partner, Head of Credit
Kevin leads initiatives and investments at the intersection of real-world asset lending and DeFi. Prior to joining BlockTower, Kevin was at Harvard Business School (before dropping out to pursue crypto full time), directing operations at Capchase, and leading a structured credit trading desk at Citigroup. Most importantly, he avidly believes that distributed ledger technology can make finance fairer and more just for all.
Jessica Raybeck
BlockFi
Head of Institutional Relationship Management
Head of Institutional Relationship Management
Jessica Raybeck is the Head of Institutional Relationship Management at BlockFi, catering to the needs of traditional financial institutions. Prior to joining BlockFi, Jessica worked in client facilitation and relationship management, focused on hedge funds and asset managers at Nomura. She began her career at Citi in Treasury, before moving over to relationship management with a focus on regulatory adherence. Jessica graduated from the University of Buffalo with a BS in Business Administration & Management.
Carlos Arena
Google Cloud
Director for Digital Assets Sales
Director for Digital Assets Sales
Carlos Arena is the Director for Digital Assets Sales at Google Cloud. Carlos leads the business development and strategy for the recently created Digital Assets team and the blockchain ecosystem. Formerly, Carlos was the Global Head of Banking Sales at R3, where he was responsible for the deployment of enterprise blockchain applications on Corda for regulated financial institutions. His responsibilities included widening the ecosystem of users, developers and partners of the Corda platform. Before R3, Carlos worked at Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank in their FX and Interest Rate derivatives desks. Carlos holds a Bachelors in Business Administration and a Master in Professional Accounting from the University of Texas at Austin and represented Mexico in swimming at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.
Julia Rosenberg
Orca Protocol
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Will Robinson
Alliance.xyz
Core Contributor
Core Contributor
Will Robinson completed his PhD in 2018 in Game Studies at Concordia University. He currently serves as a Core Contributor at Alliance.xyz, a leading web3 accelerator. Before joining Alliance, Will worked in forensic cryptocurrency auditing in Grant Thornton's international practice.
Inesha Premaratne
Chromaway AB
Business Development Manager
Business Development Manager
Inesha Premaratne is a Business Development Manager at Chromaway AB, a gaming & blockchain company. She supports business development & key partnerships.
Inesha holds a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard College and a juris doctorate (JD) from Stanford Law School. Prior to law school, she worked as a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where she supported an array of clients across the public and private sectors. More recently, Inesha worked as a Strategy Manager with Valora, a crypto wallet built on Celo.
Inesha has significant experience in international law, U.S. politics, and journalism having worked for the U.S. State Department in the Legal Advisor's Office ("L"); Democratic Counsel for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC); First Lady Michelle Obama's Office; CNN's Fareed Zakaria and Juliette Kayyem; and international law firm Debevoise & Plimpton.
George Yang
CULT&RAIN
Founder & Creative Director
Founder & Creative Director
George Yang is an accomplished fashion creative director with over 18 years of experience across New York, Milan, and Paris; leading international design studios within the luxury & premium fashion industry. He has designed for renowned fashion houses around the globe including Theory, Costume National, Guy Laroche, and Cerruti Paris. In 2021, George founded CULT&RAIN as a luxury fashion house born from Web3 and launched with a highly collectable Genesis Drop, comprising of 1408 3D animated NFT’s matched with 1408 trend-setting luxury sneakers.
John Calabrese
Nansen
Head of Product
Head of Product
John Calabrese leads Product at Nansen, delivering easy to use on-chain data insights to various customer groups from retail to institutional. With over 10 years of experience in product management focused on financial technology, John bridges the tradfi and defi chasm. Having roots in traditional finance, earning his CFA and FRM designations, he is most passionate about the future of finance where products are more decentralized, transparent, and efficient through blockchain technology. When not working or trading crypto, John can be found spending time with his Shiba Inu, Nutmeg.
Ron Hammond
Blockchain Association
Director of Government Relations
Director of Government Relations
Ron represents the association on Capitol Hill as the Director of Government Relations. Ron’s background in crafting a bipartisan crypto regulatory framework via legislation dates back to 2016 when he served as the Financial Services Policy Lead for Rep. Warren Davidson (OH-8). During Ron’s five years on Capitol Hill, he authored several pieces of legislation including the Token Taxonomy Act, Federal Reserve Regulatory Oversight Act, and the Derivatives Fairness Act. Before coming to Capitol Hill, he was the campaign manager for three successful Texas State Senate races. Ron received his B.A. from Georgetown University.
Johann Kerbrat
Robinhood Crypto
Chief Technology Officer
Chief Technology Officer
Johann Kerbrat is Chief Technology Officer of Robinhood Crypto. He oversees the crypto engineering team and leads technical strategy for the crypto business. Johann joined Robinhood to support the company in its mission to democratize finance for all and open up access to crypto to everyday investors. Prior to joining Robinhood, Johann held engineering roles at Airbnb, privacy-focused cryptocurrency startup Iron Fish, and founded an e-commerce platform company. Johann grew up in Nice, France and has an MSc in Software Engineering from Oxford Brookes University. He has been involved in crypto for more than a decade, mining his first bitcoin back in 2010 and buying a domain name for “far too many bitcoin” when bitcoin was just a few dollars.
Kate Rooney
CNBC
Technology Reporter
Technology Reporter
Kate Rooney is a technology reporter based out of CNBC’s San Francisco bureau, with a focus on financial technology, payments and venture capital. She also writes and reports for CNBC’s digital platforms.
Rooney joined CNBC in 2015 as a news associate before working as a producer for CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) and was most recently a markets reporter for CNBC.com.
She graduated from Boston College with a bachelor’s degree in communication and earned her master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where she received an Eric Lund Global Reporting and Research Grant to film and produce a documentary in the Philippines. She also worked as a multimedia reporter in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2015 with a focus on housing and politics.
Nuri Chang
BitGo
Director of Product
Director of Product
Nuri is Director of Product at BitGo, responsible for onboarding new blockchains, building new capabilities for DeFi and NFTs, and continuing to grow WBTC. Most recently, he led BitGo's MetaMask Institutional Integration. Prior to joining BitGo, Nuri spent time as a product manager in Silicon Valley startups, such as Affirm.
aleph_v
Element
Smart Contracts Lead
Smart Contracts Lead
I'm the smart contracts lead at Element. Before that I did ZKP and L2 R&D at 0x, security auditing, and math research.
Lincoln Bartlett, CFA
Anchorage Digital
Head of Agency Trading
Head of Agency Trading
Lincoln Bartlett, CFA, leads the Agency Trading Desk at Anchorage Digital. He joined Anchorage after thirteen years on Wall Street on both the sell-side and the buy-side, where he personally executed three trillion dollars worth of equities, fixed income, and FX trades. Lincoln was previously the Portfolio Risk Manager for $193 billion of Vanguard’s Active Fixed Income funds. He is an expert at executing extremely large and high risk trades with minimal market impact. Lincoln has also led numerous technology initiatives to optimize portfolio management and trading strategies.
Niles Lawrence
Dune
Product Lead
Product Lead
Niles Lawrence is the Data Platform PM at Dune, the leading blockchain analytics platform powered by and for the community.
Prior to this, he led enterprise business strategy and product oversight for companies in the North American, South East Asian, and European markets at Palantir Technologies.
He also co-founded Vuru, a financial stock analysis platform for millennials backed by Tim Draper.
Mike Taormina
Index Cooperative
Cara Liberati
Fireblocks
Account Management
Account Management
Cara started her career in cybersecurity sales before transitioning to digital assets full time with Fireblocks in 2021. She is passionate about inclusion and diversity through We3 and other various Web3 groups in Austin, TX.
David Abner
Gemini
Global Head of Business Development
Global Head of Business Development
David Abner is the Global Head of Business Development at Gemini. In this role, David oversees the expansion of Gemini’s institutional business and leads the relationships with major institutional partners and high-net-worth individuals on a global scale. Prior to joining Gemini, David spent the last 20 years focusing on driving the growth of the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) industry. He was instrumental in bringing ETFs from a fringe arbitrage trading tool to an investment product utilized by institutional asset managers, reaching more than 7 trillion in AuM. His most recent book, The ETF Handbook (Wiley Finance) describes the inner workings of ETFs and how to achieve efficient portfolio implementation and execution.
Amir Bandeali
0x Labs
Co-CEO
Co-CEO
James Waugh
Fire Eyes DAO
Core Contributor
Core Contributor
Core contributor of Fire Eyes, James Waugh is deeply involved with the DAO and token design ecosystems.
Carl Hua
CelsiusX
Chief Architect
Chief Architect
Carl Hua, Chief Architect of CelsiusX, has more than a decade of high-rigor engineering experience to lead Celsius’s next-generation DeFi research effort.
Prior to joining Celsius, he led research and development efforts, co-managed a C++ (XRP Ledger) team, and was CTO for a first-layer, high-performance blockchain company.
Earlier in his career, he contributed to the next-generation real-time flight software for the Europa mission at Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA.
On his time off, Carl advises early-stage start-ups to help them navigate the blockchain space.
He holds an M.S. in System Engineering from UCLA and a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from University of California, Riverside.
Ehsan Salarikhaniki
Moduluc
Founder
Founder
Leighton Cusack
PoolTogether Inc.
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Leighton is co-founder and CEO of PoolTogether Inc, an open source software company dedicated to building positive sum financial tools. He is also a founder PleasrDAO, an early pioneer in collaborative ownership and collecting of NFTs. He is an intermediate level chess player and very interested in talking to anyone about blockchain enabled financial systems!
Nisa Amoils
A100x Ventures
Managing Partner
Managing Partner
Nisa Amoils is Managing Partner at A100x Ventures and Advisor to Dragonfly Capital where she,invests in early stage Blockchain/Crypto/Web 3 companies. She has been in VC for 11 years and investing in blockchain since 2016, with multiple unicorns and exits. She previously worked for Scout Ventures and used to practice securities and corporate law at Anderson Kill. She serves on Boards such as Wharton Entrepreneurship, Global Digital Assets and Crypto Association, Nightfood (NGTF). She has been named Business Insider’s Women VC’s to watch, 2021 systematic leader in asset management, top 100 Women in Fintech, and top 50 global Blockchain thinkers. She is an occasional host and commentator at Defiance Media and Forbes. She holds a business degree from the University of Michigan and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Saeed Badreg
Jump Crypto
Strategic Partnerships
Strategic Partnerships
Based in Chicago, Saeed Badreg currently serves on Jump Crypto’s Strategic Partnerships team. At Jump Crypto, Saeed is heavily focused on supporting the continued development of Jump's special projects including the Wormhole protocol, a communication bridge between Solana and other top decentralized finance (DeFi) networks, and the Pyth network, a specialized oracle solution for latency-sensitive financial data, among other strategic initiatives.
Prior to Jump, Saeed served as the Chief Executive Officer of Tolemaeus, mobile and web application developer and software integration platform, and co-founded Makanak, a product aggregating one of the largest business datasets for the MENA regions.
Saeed earned a bachelor’s degree in Law and Society from American University and an MBA Primer from DePaul University.
Hart Lambur
Risk Labs
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Hart is the Co-Founder of Risk Labs, the foundation supporting the UMA and Across protocols. UMA is an optimistic oracle (OO) that can provide and verify arbitrary data on-chain. Across is a completely decentralized, low-cost and near-instant cross-chain bridge that is secured by UMA's optimistic oracle.
Hart studied computer science before working as an interest rate trader at Goldman Sachs through the financial crisis. In 2013 he co-founded Openfolio, a personal finance tracking platform that was acquired in 2017 by an asset manager. He now leads a team of financial contract and oracle design researchers at Risk Labs.
Katka Opocenska
Factor.fyi
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Katka Opocenska is a co-founder and CEO of Factor.fyi, an open and free finance data analytics platform. She became an active user of web3 protocols during DeFi summer, fascinated by the permissionless nature of the whole ecosystem, and by its potential to improve on the existing financial infrastructure. As a member of We3 from day 1, Katka led an education session on investment basics, and is passionate to help womxn get exposure to the new emerging asset class of crypto in a mindful and data-driven way.
Katka has an MBA from Stanford University and Master’s degree in Computer Science from Charles University in Prague. Prior to founding her own company, she worked as a Product Manager at Google and as a Business Analyst at McKinsey. She was born in the Czech Republic and now lives and builds in San Francisco.
Lucas Naundorf
T-Systems
NFT & Blockchain Consultant
NFT & Blockchain Consultant
Jeff Carvalho
Burrata
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Jeff Carvalho is one of today’s leading experts in youth culture having spent two decades closely covering the market, and is now helping to bring culture on chain with web3.
In 2007, he joined Highsnobiety and, under his direction, established it as the authority on street culture. As the cofounder of the highly-praised brand, Carvalho grew its North American operations from a publication to expand into a full range of services. Today, Highsnobiety includes an in-house agency, an experiential marketing team, and a commerce division working with brands from Amazon to adidas, Gucci to Mattel.
In 2020, he cofounded Culture Club talk show on Clubhouse and has more than 4million followers on the platform interviewing the likes of Naomi Osaka, Grimes, Jaden Smith, Virgil Abloh, Snoop Dogg and many others. wwww.cultureclub.show
A crypto native since 2016, Carvalho joined the advisory board of Portion.io, one of the first NFT marketplaces on Ethereum in 2018.
Today, Jeff is focused on Burrata, his consultancy/strategy practice helping to bring culture on chain. Pushing IRL with the emerging work of web3 technologies including NFTs, blockchain, metaverse and tokens, their most recent work include launching the first tattoo on-chain wearable on Decentralland. He also advises various companies in the blockchain space.
David Greenstein
sound.xyz
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
David is the co-founder of sound.xyz, a suite of web3-native music and economic tools powering the next generation of artists and their communities, starting with listening parties for new releases. David grew up in the music industry; he started working at Atlantic Records at 13-years-old, and more recently at Pandora working on recommendation systems. His mission is to restore the true value of music and create a more sustainable middle class for artists. And in just under four months, sound.xyz has already onboarded 75 artists and paid out over $2.5 MM in proceeds directly to those artists in just 4 months.
Kenton Prescott
Sense
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Kenton is the co-founder of Sense, a decentralized permissionless infrastructure protocol, where teams can build and develop new yield primitives for DeFi, such as fixed income tokens, yield tokens, and other custom re-divisions of existing tokens' exposures. Kenton comes from MakerDAO where he was apart of its integration team.
Chris DiRubio
Lukka
Director of Blockchain Data Products
Director of Blockchain Data Products
Chris is the Director of Blockchain Data Products at Lukka, where he is responsible for establishing and enabling support for new Blockchain networks, DeFi protocols, and NFTs. With over 10 years of personal exposure to Blockchain, Chris helps bridge the gap between on-chain and off-chain worlds for all of Lukka's customers.
Prior to spending the last 4 years with Lukka, Chris worked on Order and Execution management systems for hedge-funds at SS&C Eze.
FrogMonkee
Orca Protocol
Governance
Governance
frogmonkee (frog) cut his teeth on DAOs after working as a core contributor at BanklessDAO. He now works at Orca Protocol focusing on DAO governance and organizational design.
Jason Du
Legends of Venari
Founder
Founder
Jason is the founder of Legends of Venari, a creature collection RPG focusing on the healthy balance between blockchain and gaming. Jason has been actively developing smart contracts, and consumer facing web3 products since 2019.
Michael Ippolito
Blockworks
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Michael Ippolito is a co-founder at Blockworks in charge of content and finance. Previously to co-founding Blockworks, Michael was a consultant where he advised mid-market manufacturing-focused companies on operational and capital efficiency as well as M&A strategy.
Carly Reilly
Bankless
Host - Overpriced JPEGs podcast
Host - Overpriced JPEGs podcast
Carly Reilly is the chief of staff at block::block, an early-stage blockchain startup. She is the host of Overpriced JPEGs, a Bankless HQ podcast about NFTs and the metaverse. She spent two years as national finance director for Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign; has worked at a hedge fund, a VC fund, and a production company, but has found her true passion in Web3.
She is a Washington Post contributor, former co-host of the Yang Speaks podcast, and has been featured by Bloomberg News.
Lucas Campbell
Bankless
Senior Editor
Senior Editor
Jason Yanowitz
Blockworks
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Dan Keeler
Blockworks
Editor-in-Chief
Editor-in-Chief
Dan Keeler is Editor-in-Chief at Blockworks. Prior to joining Blockworks, he was Frontier Markets Editor at the Wall Street Journal where he managed the Journal’s coverage of smaller emerging markets as well as created a number of high-profile events and a highly regarded newsletter. Before joining the WSJ, he was the Editor of Global Finance magazine. He is also the founder of New York’s FM Network, a group that hosts gatherings of finance professionals focused on smaller emerging markets.
Ben Strack
Blockworks
Reporter
Reporter
Ben Strack is a Denver-based reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and decentralized finance (DeFi) into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism.
Macauley Peterson
Blockworks
Senior Editor
Senior Editor
Macauley was an editor and content creator in the professional chess world for 14 years, prior to joining Blockworks. At Bucerius Law School (Master in Law and Business, 2020) he researched stablecoins, decentralized finance and central bank digital currencies. He also holds an MA in Film Studies; film credits include Associate Producer of the 2016 Netflix feature documentary, "Magnus" about World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. He is based in Germany.
Check out the full Permissionless agenda here.
With more than 5,000 people attending, Permissionless will be the largest Metaverse and DeFi event in history, designed to celebrate the new era we’re entering into. Citizens of the Metaverse will gather to shape the future of our culture (and to party).
The Metaverse and DeFi are reshaping the global economy. Today they’re a $100 billion market. Tomorrow they will touch every aspect of our culture. The builders deserve a conference to match.
Everyone who wants to take part in ushering in the Metaverse. Developers, investors, creators, gamers and more. Permissionless is an event to connect the builders of the future.
Some conferences are all talk. Not Permissionless.
Yes, we know that these talks led by industry visionaries are where the magic happens, that groundbreaking, worldshaking, pioneering kind of magic, where new ideas evolve in discussion.
But in the metaverse, you’re a part of that magic, too.
Permissionless was created to celebrate this decentralized cultural ethos, and to celebrate it (and you) with everything we’ve got.
We’re hosting a massive onsite NFT gallery, with art from some of the best digital creators out there.
The show floor will be packed with brand new tech to try, exciting games to play, and all kinds of experiences hosted by the biggest projects in the industry.
If you want to chill, you can take a break in any of the lounges, step out into the sunny Florida weather for a drink and some food, let loose at parties, and more.
The only problem you’ll have is not having enough time to do it all.
There are six levels of sponsorship packages, each including more opportunities to reach attendees than the previous. Once you’ve decided on a package, you can add a number of creative enhancements to your package, like branded merchandise, seat drops, and even services like a food truck, a barista near your booth, or a branded event kickoff party. We’d love to hear your goals and work out the perfect package for you, so get in touch! Submit your sponsorship goals to [email protected] to get started.
There will be a variety of food and beverage options on-site. There will be a of complimentary offerings and for purchase stations. These will align with some dietary requirements however, to ensure that your dietary preference is accommodated, please plan on utilizing restaurants in the surrounding area in addition to the on-site options.
We are now closed for submissions. Hopefully you will still consider attending. You can purchase a general admission ticket here.
We're not taking volunteers at this time, though we hope you'll still join us at Permissionless. You can purchase a general admission ticket here.
Yes, there will be alcohol on site. Any behavior deemed unruly or indecent by event staff will result in your removal from the premises. Please note that event staff will also be checking identification for all guests and anyone under the legal U.S. drinking age will be refused service.