DeFi & The Future of Programmable Money
March 30, 2022
Speakers
Zaki Manian
Co-Founder Sommelier Finance
Taariq Lewis
Founder Paloma
Hester M. Peirce
Commissioner SEC
Sunny Aggarwal
Co-Founder Osmosis
Michael Egorov
CEO Curve Finance
Ben Sparango
Head of BD Solana Labs
Jack Zampolin
Co-Founder Strangelove Ventures
Zubin Koticha
CEO, Cofounder Opyn
Julian Koh
Co-founder Ribbon Finance
Unique Divine
Co-founder NibiruChain
Zhibai Zhang
Senior DeFi Strategist Volume
Adam Goldberg
Managing Director Standard Crypto
Kristin Smith
Executive Director The Blockchain Association
ivangbi
Building narratives Gearbox | LobsterDAO
Billy Rennekamp
Interchain Foundation Cosmus Hub Lead
Miller Whitehouse Levine
Policy Director DeFi Education Fund
Patrick Baron
Core contributor Moola Market
Rene Reinsberg
President Celo Foundation
Jackie Bona
CEO Valora
Erik Mayo
CEO Patache Digital
Vasiliy Shapovalov
Tech lead Lido
Eric Cuellar
Co-Founder, CEO Node Wallet
John Quinn
Founding Partner, CIO Decentral Park Capital
Vanessa Grellet
Head of Portfolio Growth CoinFund
About Zaki Manian Zaki Manian is a Co-Founder of Sommelier, the most powerful coprocessor yet for DeFi traders and Liquidity Providers. He’s also a Co-Founder of iqlusion, which provides infrastructure like a data center and a Cosmos validator for next-gen crypto technologies. Previously, Zaki helped build the Cosmos ecosystem, including launching the first public Cosmos testnet, and served as a director of Tendermint. Zaki has been a leading developer in the blockchain space since 2014, when he taught himself cryptography and began contributing to projects including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, and Tendermint. Having studied history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, Zaki’s skill sets in software engineering, programming, and computer science are largely self-taught.
Taariq Lewis is the CEO and founder of VolumeFi, a cross chain product lab that is debuting their cross chain messaging layer, Paloma (palomachain.com). He also was the co-founder of Sommelier Protocol with Zaki Manian and Jack Zampolin and lead product management and product marketing for Sommelier delivered over $10MM in Sommelier liquidity and launched Sommelier Uniswap v3 Cellars in 2022. He is a serial entrprenuer who has also founded several successful fintech and blockchain products – Promise, Aquila, SericaPay. Taariq also helped bring Bitcoin and blockchain engineering to a global audience with numerous education events. Taariq is a leader in the Bitcoin engineering community as the founder of SF Bitcoin Devs and SF Cryptocurrency Devs, a network of blockchain software engineers and developers.
Hester M. Peirce was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was sworn in on January 11, 2018. Prior to joining the SEC, Commissioner Peirce conducted research on the regulation of financial markets at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was a Senior Counsel on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where she advised Ranking Member Richard Shelby and other members of the Committee on securities issues. Commissioner Peirce served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Paul S. Atkins. She also worked as a Staff Attorney in the SEC’s Division of Investment Management. Commissioner Peirce was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) and clerked for Judge Roger Andewelt on the Court of Federal Claims. Commissioner Peirce earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Case Western Reserve University and her JD from Yale Law School.
Sunny Aggarwal is a Co-Founder of Osmosis Labs, a developer team building the Osmosis Zone AMM laboratory on the Cosmos SDK. He’s been developing blockchain technologies since he was an engineering student at UC Berkeley, where he co-founded the world-renowned Blockchain at Berkeley student org, designed and taught a Blockchain Fundamentals course. In the summer of 2017, Sunny came across Cosmos and was so hooked he dropped out of college (after two years) to work on the BFT consensus engine Tendermint as a Research Scientist. He’s also a Co-Founder of Sikka, a validator company running one of the largest validators on the Cosmos Hub as well as a Co-Host of the Epicenter podcast, the best tech podcast in crypto since 2013.
Michael Egorov is CEO at Curve Finance, a decentralized exchanged running on Ethereum. Previously he was co-founder and CTO at Nucypher,an encryption company, from Y Combinator. Before that, he worked as a software engineer at Linkedin. He also has a PhD in Physics.
Ben is the Head of Business Development at Solana Labs where he focuses on everything from strategic partnerships, internal project incubation, and Solana Ventures. Previously he was an investment analyst at Multicoin Capital.
About Jack Zampolin Jack Zampolin the the VP of Product at PeggyJV, a Joint Venture of Cosmos companies building core infrastructure and products for the ecosystem. His current project is Sommelier, the most powerful coprocessor for Ethereum and a leading blockchain platform for decentralized algorithmic trading. Jack has worked in the Cosmos ecosystem since 2018, first rising to be Director of Product at Tendermint, which built the consensus protocol that underpins inter-blockchain communications in Cosmos and next as VP of Product at Akash Network. Jack has been developing blockchain projects since 2017 when he joined the engineering team of Blockstack, and he holds a BA from Washington and Lee University.
zk is CEO, and founder of Opyn. He’s been interested in financial markets from a young age, and his passion is mathematical finance, computer science, and of course DeFi. He met his cofounders at UC Berkeley. Together, they founded Opyn with the goal of building an inclusive, fair, and open financial system. They’re starting by decentralizing financial derivatives markets. He’s excited about squeeth because it has the potential to change derivatives markets and volatility trading forever.
Julian is the CEO and co-founder of Ribbon Finance, the leading crypto structured products protocol. He was previously a software engineer at Coinbase where he worked on staking and crypto infrastructure.
Unique is co-founder and Lead Software Engineer at Nibiru Chain, a layer 1 blockchain built on Cosmos. Prior to Nibiru, he was part of the Sommelier Protocol team. There he was able to leverage his Golang, Cosmos SDK, Python, Solidity, TypeScript, Google Cloud Platform skills. Before that he was a data scientist at IBM. Unique studied in Columbia University and has a Masters Degree in Applied Mathematics.
Zhibai is a senior DeFi Strategist at VolumeFi, where he leads the portfolio management team and is focused on creating quantitative and systematic DeFi strategies. Prior to the current role, he worked as a quantitative researcher at both buy-side and sell-side firms on Wall Street with a focus on machine learning based quant trading strategies on futures and options. He has taught and published on financial machine learning applications, volatility prediction, option pricing and market microstructure.
Adam Goldberg is a Managing Director and Co-Founder of Standard Crypto, a venture capital firm that has been fortunate to partner with Aave, Sommelier, Telegram, Bitmain, Matrixport, OpenSea, Foundation, Instadapp, and many other companies and crypto-networks. He previously led the blockchain and crypto investing at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Kristin runs the Blockchain Association, where she leads the crypto industry’s development of a strategic roadmap for public policy. She is an experienced policy professional, with senior-level experience in both House and Senate offices as well as private sector experience advocating for companies in the telecommunications, Internet, and other tech-focused industries. Kristin holds an MBA in Finance from NYU’s Stern School of Business and a graduate degree from Georgetown University.
Building narratives and shitposting across DeFi and hating PFPs
Billy Rennekamp is the Cosmos Hub Product Lead at the Interchain Foundation. He’s the co-founder of Folia—a space for exhibiting and collecting NFTs— and Clovers Network—a game that rewards the creation of scarce art. Projects that he has contributed to include Ethereum, Gnosis, Aragon & Relevant. He is a member of Are.na, Guild.is, NewModels.io and Trust.support.
Miller is policy director of the DeFi Education Fund, a nonpartisan policy research and advocacy group working to promote the benefits of decentralized finance. He has overall strategic and operational responsibility for the execution of the organization’s mission and goals. Prior to joining the fund, Miller led the Blockchain Association’s policy operation.
Patrick is founder of Moola Market, the largest borrowing and lending protocol built on the Celo network. Moola’s mission is to democratize access to yield and credit by making lending and borrowing easily accessible for anyone with a smartphone. He is General Partner of Validator Capital which invests in Celo ecosystem projects and has been running validator nodes since the genesis block. He is a Steward of the Celo Community Fund where underwrites grants for ecosystem builders. He enjoys practicing yoga, snowboarding, and live music.
Rene Reinsberg is a co-founder of Celo, a carbon-negative, Layer-1 protocol with a rich ecosystem of global partners building Web3 applications, including in DeFi, NFTs, and payments, in support of Celo’s mission to create a more accessible and inclusive global financial system. He’s been working at the intersection of finance, technology, and development for the past 15+ years, including at Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, General Catalyst Partners, the World Bank, and TechnoServe. His previous company, Locu, was acquired by GoDaddy where he served as VP of Emerging Products post-acquisition.
Jackie Bona is the CEO of Valora, a mobile-first crypto wallet whose mission is to unlock access to financial opportunity for people around the world. Jackie spent the last 15 years of her career in product marketing and GTM leadership roles at various global technology companies such as Spotify, Twitter, and Google. She is passionate about financial inclusion, and believes that blockchain technology has the potential to provide new economic opportunities to those who would not typically have access. You can connect with her on Twitter @jackie_bona.
Erik Mayo – Mr. Mayo is the CEO of Patache Digital. He is an active investor and advisor to early-stage companies in the US and Latin America in fintech and digital asset strategies. While working on one consulting assignment with Sommelier he proposed the strategy that became the initial SOMM/Seven Seas AAVE Cellar (https://app.sommelier.finance/strategies/AAVE/manage). He has two decades of experience in direct and fund special situations, systematic trading and credit investing including financing of renewables through ABS and off-taker agreements as a Partner at Terra Incognita Capital and Fintan Partners. During his time at Fintan & Terra Incognita he developed deep portfolio management expertise in the emerging markets, structured credit, special situations investments and risk management. Before founding Fintan Partners, Erik worked as an Investment Associate of Absolute Return at Stanford Management Company. Prior to joining Stanford, Erik worked as an analyst with Lazard Asset Management and at Bankers Trust in risk management and trading systems. Erik earned a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Co-founder of Lido, CTO of P2P.org, former security engineer.
Eric is a designer and business developer focused on the Celo ecosystem. He is the co-founder and CEO of Node Wallet, a non-custodial DeFi wallet made for smartphone users in emerging markets. He previously contributed to Mobius Money, Celo’s cross-chain stableswap exchange, and CeloHub. His first coding project was a USSD-based peer-to-peer lending platform that leverages mobile money on/off-ramps and decentralized money markets to bank the unbanked. During his sophomore year he helped start Blockchain at Cal Poly, the blockchain club at his former university. He also co-authored a paper on stablecoins that outlined how connecting M-Pesa users to stablecoins and DeFi can offer better banking services for both the banked and unbanked.
Focused on intersection of finance and technology. Managing $130m of digital assets as CIO of Decentral Park Capital. Founder of Storj Labs. Recovering investment banker / global markets at Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Flemings.
Vanessa Grellet is a Global Executive with over 20 years of expertise in the Financial Services and Tech industry. At CoinFund she is the Head of Portfolio growth where she oversees and supports the portfolio companies . Prior to joining CoinFund she was an Executive Director at ConsenSys where she focused on driving adoption for Ethereum, Strategic initiatives, Alliances and Channels. She was involved in setting up the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), sits on the Board of the Accounting Blockchain Coalition (ABC) and is the President of the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition (BSIC). Prior to joining ConsenSys she was a Strategy Executive at NYSE and a key member of PwC’s global wealth management team. Vanessa is a Founding Board member of AABC focused on Blockchain and Art, she sits on the Advisory Council of ConsenSys and the Resolution Project. She is a Milken Institute Associate and contributed to the World Economic Forum Digital Future Council. Mrs. Grellet graduated Cum Laude from Law School (Paris II Assas) and Business School (HEC).