Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_635c17a91b884" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Ex-director of mobile product development at Kraken joins blockchain-based entertainment platform</li>
 <li>A former CIO of a BlackRock multi-strategy hedge fund seeks to help Strix Leviathan build out its strategy lineup</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-hoeptner-0a00962/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Alexander Hoeptner</a>, the CEO of crypto futures exchange BitMEX, suddenly stepped down from the role, which he had held since January 2021 — as the company tapped Chief Financial Officer <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephan-lutz-7957a6a/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stephan Lutz</a> as its interim chief executive. 



Lutz is set to continue serving as the company’s CFO, his title since May 2021, a spokesperson told Blockworks.&nbsp;



“Together with the rest of the management team and our talented staff members, I will make sure that BitMEX continues to deliver great, innovative crypto trading products and a secure and stable trading environment for our clients,” Lutz said in a statement. “We want to thank Alexander for his support to the business during his tenure and wish him well in his future endeavors.”



A BitMex representative declined to comment on the nature of Hoeptner’s departure, and his plans are unclear. Hoeptner declined to comment.&nbsp;



Digital asset liquidity aggregator FLUID has hired a former Wall Street executive to lead its product strategy.&nbsp;



<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiran-pingali-telk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kiran Pingali</a> co-founded financial technology company TELK Group in 2019 and has been its CEO for the past two-plus years, according to his LinkedIn. He also previously was global head of electronic trading products at investment bank Exotix Capital, and has worked at Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg.



Pingali said in a statement that the company is looking to bring its expertise in traditional finance and electronic trading to the crypto space.



“Our smart order router solution aggregates deep liquidity across CEXs [centralized exchanges] and DEXs [decentralized exchanges], and employs predicted order book prices using AI [artificial intelligence]-based models,” Pingali said. “This, coupled with our low-latency co-located infrastructure, ensures we are always offering best execution to our clients.”



Sovren — a company aiming to build a blockchain-based, decentralized news and entertainment platform — has nabbed former Kraken executive <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/davestann/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dave Stann</a>. 



Stann worked as director of mobile product development for Kraken’s digital asset exchange from 2018 to 2020. During that time, he helped the company launch its Kraken Pro and Kraken Futures mobile apps. Before Kraken, Stann was a director of product management at GSN Games.&nbsp;



&#8220;There are many &#8216;free-speech platforms&#8217; promising to save us from state censorship, but those promises mean nothing if the underlying tech is not purpose-built to survive the escalating attacks,” Stann said in a statement. “The team at Sovren understands this implicitly, and is leading the charge to solve this problem for good.”



Nik Bougalis, a director of engineering at Ripple, is set to leave the company.



“My decade-long journey at Ripple has been a fantastic (if exhausting and all-consuming) one,” <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/nbougalis/status/1583548835028090880" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bougalis tweeted on Oct. 21</a>. “I got to work on a project that I love, towards a goal I believe in. But that journey will be coming to an end in a few weeks.”



A Ripple spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.&nbsp;



Crypto mining hardware retailer Phoenix Technology appointed <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-agren-6921068/details/experience/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Carl Agren</a> as its CEO as the company looks to expand globally.



Agren formerly was the company’s chief operating officer. Before joining Phoenix Technology earlier this year, he was the COO at G42, an artificial intelligence and cloud computing company.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Founded in 2015, Phoenix Technology operates in the US, Canada, Europe and the Middle East. It is developing a site in the US expected to be ready in the second quarter of 2023 and is also building a mining facility in the United Arab Emirates.



Law firm Winston &amp; Strawn LLP has hired <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-azel-4271311b/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Juan Azel</a> to help support clients as crypto continues to transform financial services.



Azel was brought aboard as a partner in the firm’s transactions department and a member of its financial services practice. He is set to advise financial institutions and fintech companies on risk management, financial crime regulatory compliance and corrective remediation responses to enforcement actions.&nbsp;



&#8220;Fintech&#8217;s and crypto&#8217;s rapid evolution continues to transform financial services and to create legal complexities in risk management and regulatory compliance,&#8221; Azel said in a statement. &#8220;Miami is a major center for the further development of fintech and digital assets nationally, and I believe my combination of in-house and external counsel fintech experience will allow me to provide value-focused legal and business solutions to clients across these sectors.”



Azel was most recently deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer of Cross River Bank.



In case you missed it



<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-mcbrady-387471/details/experience/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Matthew McBrady</a>, a former chief investment officer of a BlackRock multi-strategy hedge fund, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-hedge-fund-taps-former-blackrock-cio-as-strategy-head/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">joined quant crypto hedge fund Strix Leviathan</a>.



Before BlackRock, McBrady was head of investment strategy and risk management at alternative investment adviser Silver Creek Capital Management and a vice president for Bain Capital’s North American private equity group.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The Graph Co-founder <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanivtal9/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Yaniv Tal</a> — who <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/latest-in-crypto-hiring-kraken-dydx-foundation-and-blockfi-add-execs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">stepped down as Edge &amp; Node’s CEO</a> earlier this month — <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/the-graph-co-founder-building-info-gathering-app-web3-browser/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">revealed the creation</a> of a knowledge organization app and corresponding Web3 browser.



Called Geo, the company is set to collate blockchain data and develop a browsable user interface accessible to anyone.&nbsp;



Tal told Blockworks the company has five staffers and is looking to hire front-end engineers.



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Latest in Crypto Hiring: BitMEX Appoints CFO as Interim CEO

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_620e70fe597d8" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The Graph supports indexing data from 31 different networks, including Ethereum layer-2 network and compatible layer-1 blockchains</li>
 <li>Key projects for the fund include those building creator economies with NFTs and token design, as well as cross-metaverse identities and DAO tools</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



A group of six investors joined forces to launch a $205 million ecosystem fund for The Graph, an indexing layer for Web3 and blockchain data.



This Ecosystem Fund isn’t an investment in <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/semiotic-ai-receives-60m-grant-to-develop-the-graphs-ecosystem/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Graph</a> — it is a fund that will invest in projects building on its protocol, Tegan Kline, co-founder and business lead at Edge &amp; Node, shared with Blockworks.



<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/digital-currency-group-completes-600m-debt-capital-raise/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Digital Currency Group</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=multicoin#:~:text=Multicoin%20and%20Kraken%20Invest%20Millions%20in%20Crypto%20Startups" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Multicoin Capital</a>, Reciprocal Ventures, gumi Cryptos Capital, NGC Ventures and HashKey provided the capital to accelerate the growth and development of projects on The Graph. Additionally, the funds will provide support from a “host of areas” and provide guidance for projects, Craig Burel, partner at Reciprocal Ventures, noted to Blockworks. 



“We believe we can identify promising new technologies and critical components in the decentralized stack and leverage our collective networks to accelerate their proliferation across Web3,” Samantha Bohbot, director of platform at Digital Currency Group, said to Blockworks.



Some key projects they’ll invest in include ones that are building creator economies with NFTs and token design as well as cross-metaverse identities and DAO tools, Andrea Zhang, partner at NGC Ventures told Blockworks.&nbsp;



The Graph uses subgraphs, which are open application programming interfaces (APIs) that use the programming language GraphQL. It supports indexing data from 31 different networks including Ethereum and its layer-2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism, plus Ethereum-compatible Polygon, Avalanche, NEAR protocol, Celo and Fantom.



These subgraphs retrieve blockchain data secured through a decentralized network on DeFi, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), among other things. This means decentralized applications, or dApps, can be permissionless with open APIs instead of relying on single servers.



In 2021, there was tremendous growth for the Web3 developer stack, but there is still work to be done with tooling or “middleware solutions,” Bohbot said.



“We expect [the] <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/morgan-stanley-sees-8-trillion-metaverse-market-eventually/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">metaverse</a> will continue to be the main narrative across the Web3 ecosystem, including <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=gamefi#:~:text=The%20Sandbox%20Parent%20Animoca%20Brands%20Raises%20%24359M%20to%20Build%20Out%20Open%20Metaverse" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GameFi</a>, NFT projects and decentralized metaverse,” Zhang said. “One of the drivers of this trend can be attributed to the rising Web2 metaverse, both in terms of capital attracted and user adoption, which can make more people realize the benefits of decentralized metaverse infrastructure in empowering the creator economy.”



Going forward, The Graph will continue to add support for additional layer-1 and layer-2 blockchains, as well as storage networks to help grow the Web3 ecosystem, Kline said.



The speed and growth of capital and ideas in the crypto industry is unprecedented, causing a constantly shifting narrative, Burel said. Web3 data will be decentralized and The Graph’s network of over 150 validators is helping to drive this seismic shift, he added.



“We continue to be excited about DeFi, Web3 infrastructure, gaming and applications with unique features enabled by Web3 rails,” Burel commented.



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