Diego Ferrer, Solutions Engineer at Celestia

Theme: “Building Applications as Rollups”

Celestia has been a leading force in modular blockchain. It is characterized by high scalability and security, serving as a crucial foundation for businesses and dapp projects developing their own rollups. Diego has experience in blockchain development and smart contract development for projects such as NFT marketplaces. Since last year, he has been working as a Solutions Engineer at Celestia.

Gajesh Naik, Senior Software Engineer at Eigen Labs

Theme: “Hello, EigenWorld”

EigenLayer has been consistently at the center of market discussions for nearly a year. Not only the expected yields through restaking, but also the security provided to middleware through restaking, are becoming fundamental innovations in blockchain technology.

Gajesh has built a remarkable career in crypto, from contributing to Solana and LayerZero to being a Senior Software Engineer at Eigen Labs.

Alex Watts, CEO of FastLane Labs

Theme: “App-internalized MEV”

FastLane provides an MEV protocol used by 70% of Polygon's validators, making it a true leader in the MEV space. They are also planning to release a protocol called Atlas as an MEV solution for EVM blockchains such as Ethereum.

Alex, the founder and CEO of FastLane, is tackling this field with a background in traditional finance, including a previous role as Vice President at Merrill Lynch.

Guy Itzhaki, CEO of Fhenix

Theme: “FHE Rollups and Coprocessors in Action”

Fhenix is a pioneer in the development and application of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), aiming to bring privacy to Ethereum. Since its founding last year, it has quickly raised $22M.

Fhenix was founded by two 'Guy' who are considered the go-to experts for blockchain x privacy. Guy Itzhaki, who will be speaking at this event, served as the director of blockchain confidentiality at Intel for many years. The other founder, also named Guy, is the founder of Enigma and Secret.

Leona Hioki, Co-founder of INTMAX

Theme: “5 bytes to Statelessness”

INTMAX is a stateless zkRollup aiming to achieve ultimate scalability for Ethereum. Mentioned in Vitalik's blog as "Crazy" and a "Totally weird idea," it stands out among numerous Rollups for its unique technology.

Founder Leona Hioki is a leading cryptography expert from Japan. After years of researching Plasma, a scalability solution for Ethereum, he is now dedicated to realizing his mission as the founder of INTMAX.

Samuel Chong,  Lido Community Lifeguard

Theme: “2 ETH home staking and Lido CSM”

Lido is Ethereum's largest liquid staking protocol, with a Total Value Locked (TVL) exceeding 30 billion USD (as of July 10). Validator decentralization is a crucial challenge for Ethereum. To increase this decentralization, Lido is advancing initiatives like the Community Staking Module to increase the number of individual and small-scale validators. The Lido Community Lifeguard supports these efforts as a contributor group of Lido.

Samuel launched Stakesaurus in 2023 and, as a Lido Community Lifeguard, has been working to support individuals and small-scale node operators in setting up and operating their own nodes.

Ventali Tan, Co-founder of Lita

Lita is currently the most dynamic project in the field of zkVM, which is attracting significant attention. While utilizing zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) typically requires specialized knowledge and complex programming, Lita provides Valida, a zkVM that makes ZKP generation quick and easy.

Ventali has accumulated extensive experience as one of the world's top experts in the field of cryptography. Previously, she co-founded Dalendum, a cryptography research institute. Dalendum houses many talented and experienced researchers, covering areas such as zk-SNARKs.

Julija Bainiaksina, Founder of MiniMe ai

Theme: “User owned AI: why AI needs Web3”

Minime ai is an AI service to create digital twins of individuals, enabling these digital counterparts to handle various interactions on behalf of the user. For experts and notable figures, having their digital twin respond can help scale their expertise and influence more effectively.

Julija holds a PhD in Machine Learning from University College London (UCL), the same institution associated with DeepMind (which was later acquired by Google). She also has entrepreneurial experience in fashion e-commerce and has served as a venture partner at a venture capital firm.

Martin Tang, Co-founder of Privasea

Theme: “Leveraging DePIN to Drive Mass Adoption of AI and Web3”

Privasea is a project that leverages Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to enhance privacy protection and security in AI applications. The founder, David, previously served as CPO of a self-driving car startup, indicative of the team's strength in both AI and blockchain domains.

Martin, who will be speaking at the event, has experienced various aspects of blockchain business, including exchanges, venture capital, and startups. He currently serves as the Cofounder and CMO of Privasea.

Harry Gao, Founder of Luban

Theme: “Preconf from the lens of blockspace futures”

Luban is a blockspace derivative project, focusing on preconfirmation. Preconfirmation has been an important topic within Ethereum ecosystem as it can provide fast finality to users, and Harry will be giving a presentation on how blockspace derivatives can support preconfirmation.

Alon Muroch, Co-founder & CEO of SSV Labs

SSV is a project that implements Distributed Validator Technology (DVT). By distributing KeyShares across multiple operators, it enables Ethereum validation that is resilient to failures. This eliminates single points of failure and enhances the overall security of validator keys. It's already been adopted by platforms like Lido, supporting a more decentralized and robust Ethereum staking ecosystem.

Alon has been contributing to open-source projects around Bitcoin and Ethereum since 2012. In particular, while addressing the challenges related to staking that Ethereum faced, he received a grant from the Ethereum Foundation and developed decentralized validator technology.

Andrew Macpherson, Shtuka Research

Theme: “Blockspace Markets and Preconf Premia”

Shtuka Research conducts research and consultation in areas such as blockchain mechanism design, having received grants from entities like Flashbots and CoW Swap.

Andrew holds a PhD in mathematics and has conducted research at multiple research institutions. Since 2023, he has been active as part of Shtuka Research.

Daiki Ishikawa, Founder of Toki

Theme: “The multi-prover security using TEEs and ZKPs for the IBC bridge”

Toki is a project that provides interoperability solutions, including practical ZK-IBC. They have also formed a technical partnership with Progmat, a digital securities issuance and management platform which originated from Mitsubishi Trust Bank in Japan.

The founder, Daiki Ishikawa, has served as the business development lead at Datachain since 2018. He possesses high expertise in interoperability solutions for CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), stablecoins, and security tokens.

Lido : Sponsor

Lido is the world's largest liquid staking protocol, with a Total Value Locked of approximately USD 29.8B (as of July 8th, according to DeFi Llama).

Lido users can stake their ETH with Lido to earn rewards for supporting the security of the Ethereum network while also having the flexibility to engage in other investments.

Coincheck, Inc. : Sponsor

Coincheck, Inc. operates the crypto asset trading service "Coincheck," which has been "Japan's No.1*" downloaded trading app for five consecutive years.

The company's mission is "Making Exchange of New Value Easier" by providing better services based on the latest technology and advanced security measures.

Supported by App Tweak from January 2019 to December 2023.

bitbank, Inc. : Sponsor

Bitbank is one of the largest crypto asset exchanges in Japan* with 38 trading pairs, accounting for approximately 45.6% of all domestic altcoin trading volume.

ISMS certified, Bitbank abides by the financial regulation standard prescribed by the Japanese FSA.

Kanto Local Finance Bureau (Crypto asset exchange) license registration No. 00004

DeNA Co., Ltd. : Event Partner

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