Experts

Chris Hermida is Partner at Manna Trading & Ventures. Formerly, OTC Trader and Lead Data Analyst at Circle.

Chris Hermida

Recur

Squads

STARK Researcher, Co-founder & President of StarkWare. Also a Founding Scientist of Zcash and Professor at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Eli has been passionate about the theory (“moon math”) and realization of transparent computational integrity since 2001, when he was a post-doctoral researcher at MIT and Harvard University, after completing his PhD in CS at the Hebrew University.

He is a Professor of Computer Science at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, which he joined in 2005, a co-inventor of the Zerocash decentralized anonymous payment system and a founding scientist of the Zcash company.

Eli Ben-Sasson

Travis Scher leads the DCG’s venture capital and new cryptoasset investing. His responsibilities include sourcing, analyzing, and executing investments, and helping DCG portfolio companies raise additional capital.

Prior to joining DCG in 2015, Travis was an M&A attorney at Skadden Arps. He graduated with a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School, and a B.B.A in Finance from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

Travis Scher

Zachary Cole is a blockchain protocol engineer and DeFi enthusiast. Currently, he is the Co-Founder and CTO of SlingShot, a DeFi trading platform. Previously, he founded a company called WhiteBlock, which specialized in blockchain protocol testing, research and development.

He also serve as technical advisor to several blockchain related companies, like DeFi Pulse and the Syscoin Foundation.

He has been involved in the blockchain space since 2012 and Ethereum development since 2016. He received his training as a communications engineer in the United States Marine Corps where he and his unit were responsible for building and maintaining the communications and Internet infrastructure for Iraq's Al Anbar Province during Operation Iraqi Freedom 07-08. These efforts included the engineering of field data centers, satellite communications, and the implementation and management of mission-critical cryptographic assets. After retiring from the Marine Corps, Zak worked in the field of cyber security, network engineering, and applied cryptography. He also ran an Internet agency and worked with Google prior to founding Whiteblock, a blockchain testing company whose clientele includes the Department of Defense, ConsenSys, Beam, RChain, Syscoin, and the Ethereum Foundation.

Zachary Cole

Dr Garrick Hileman, head of research at Blockchain, co-founder of Mosaic, research associate at the London School of Economics.

Garrick is best known for his research on monetary and distributed systems innovation, particularly cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. 

Garrick was ranked as one of the 100 most influential economists in the UK & Ireland. He is regularly invited to share his research and perspective with public sector institutions, including the CIA, US Army and Naval War Colleges, Federal Reserve, Bank of England, and the Financial Stability Board, as well as media, including the BBC, CNBC, FT, WSJ, and NPR. Garrick is frequently sought as a speaker.

Notable cryptocurrency and blockchain research publications include the "2017 Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study" (University of Cambridge) and the "2017 Global Blockchain Benchmarking Study" (University of Cambridge). He also created and published the CoinDesk "State of Bitcoin" and "State of Blockchain" reports from 2013-2016. Garrick's other research interests include sovereign debt, financial crises, financial repression and prudential regulation, black markets, and systemic risk. He completed his PhD in economic history at the London School of Economics under the supervision of professors Albrecht Ritschl and Niall Ferguson.

Garrick's teaching includes developing the UK's first university taught class on blockchain technology at the University of Cambridge, and teaching on numerous executive education programs and other classes for Cambridge, Oxford, Columbia, Northwestern, and the London School of Economics.

Garrick has worked for 15+ years in the private sector with both start-ups like Blockchain and Mosaic and established companies such as Bank of America, The Home Depot, IDG, and Allianz. Garrick’s technology experience includes co-founding a San Francisco-based new venture incubator and IT strategy consulting for multinationals. Garrick has served on the boards of directors of both publicly traded and private companies, and he has worked or consulted in a wide range of industries, including banking, technology, online media, specialty finance, insurance, business services, retail, non-profit, education, and government.

Garrick’s volunteer work includes serving as a Big City Mountaineers guide for at-risk urban teens on backcountry excursions in the Sierra Nevada. He also was a founding member of the record-setting PolarVision expedition, which raised funds and awareness for sight-related charities.

Garrick Hileman

Kathryn (Katie) Haun was a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley based tech venture capital firm. Katie serves as an independent director at Coinbase, where she chairs its Audit and Risk Committee, and HackerOne. She has testified before both houses of Congress on the intersection of technology and regulation, and teaches at Stanford's GSB. 

Before becoming a venture capitalist, Katie spent a decade as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, where she focused on fraud, cyber, and corporate crime alongside agencies including the SEC, FBI, and Treasury and created the government’s first cryptocurrency task force. While at the Justice Department, she prosecuted RICO murders, organized crime, public corruption, gangs, and money laundering. She also held senior positions at Justice Department headquarters in both the National Security Division and Attorney General’s office. Katie clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and is an honors graduate of Stanford Law School.

Kathryn Haun

Bart Stephens is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Blockchain Capital, a VC investmend fund focused on the crypto and blockchain space. In addition, he also heads up his own family fund, Stephens Investment Management, which takes a diversified investment strategy beyond crypto.

Bart Stephens

Brandon Ramirez co-founded The Graph with Yaniv Tal and Jannis Pohlmann. As Research Lead, he designed the system-level architecture and economics of the protocol. He also defined the product and developer experiences that are being used by The Graph’s first users to learn about and use the network productively.

His prior experience as a product owner and software engineer on data intensive applications (Excel, Mulesoft), his longtime interest in economics and behavioral science, as well as his academic experience in robotics and control systems have all influenced his approach to designing The Graph. Brandon believes the decentralized application stack is about to hit an inflection point that will unlock a Cambrian explosion of new applications built on public infrastructure. These applications will be unstoppable, interoperable by default, and redistribute power from large tech platforms back to end users. The Graph not only enables this transition but is a case study in how a platform offering mission critical functionality can be built and governed in a decentralized manner.

Brandon Ramirez

Open-source developer and distributed systems advocate. Co-creator of Interledger Protocol. Currently working to improve interoperability and competitiveness in the financial system.

Stefan Thomas

Jill Carlson Gunter is Principal at Slow Ventures; Co-Founder of Open Money Initiative; Advisor at O(1) Labs, Algorand, UMA.

I work in technology. I focus on innovation around markets and governance.

I am a co-founder of the Open Money Initiative, a non-profit research organization working to guarantee the right to a free and open financial system.

I co-host a podcast about cryptocurrency called What Grinds My Gears.

I advise startups including Algorand, O(1) Labs, and Risk Labs. I have consulted for projects including 0x, dYdX, CoinList, Tezos, and the Electric Coin (Zcash) Company. I have also worked with big institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

In my former lives, I was a bond trader on Wall Street and a classics enthusiast.

Chris Hermida

Partner at Manna.

Chris Hermida Introduction

Chris Hermida Portfolio