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pseudo is head of strategy at Symbiotic, previously an investment partner at Variant Fund, and also worked at Scroll. He has been involved in the crypto space Since 2013 after stumbling across the bitcointalk forum, moving towards ethereum research in 2016 after becoming frustrated with the premature ossification of bitcoin. He has been following scaling research ever since, with a particular focus on zero-knowledge rollups.
Work Experience
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Peter Yang
Peter Yang is head of business development at Scroll and was previously a managing Director at Fenbushi Capital and a data analyst at MUFG. He graduated from the University of Georgia.
Geoff Hamilton
Geoff is an Investment Research Partner at Variant, where he focuses primarily on DeFi. Prior to joining Variant, Geoff spent 15 years investing in private and public companies. During that time, helped start and grow five investment firms, including Askesis Capital, Dayah Capital, Sachem Head Capital Management, and Conatus Capital. Before that, Geoff worked at Bain Capital and Bain & Company and studied Economics at Harvard.
Alana Levin
Alana is an Investment Partner at Variant Fund. Her initial interest in crypto stemmed from a broader interest in public goods and financial regulatory policy– she spent a summer at the SEC and graduated summa cum laude with degrees in Finance & Public Policy from Wharton. Alana’s interest in crypto has since evolved to focus primarily on token design, governance structures, scaling costs, and privacy mechanics. She often writes about these concepts on her Substack, Back-of-the-Envelope, and on her Mirror profile. Prior to Variant, Alana worked as a consultant at BCG. In her free time, Alana enjoys running, writing, kayaking, and exploring old bookstores and cafés.
Mason Nystrom
Mason is a junior partner at Pantera Capital and was previously an Investment partner at Variant and Senior Research Analyst at Messari. Before Messari, Mason worked at ConsenSys as a Content Marketer focused on marketing strategy for ConsenSys and its portfolio companies. Mason first entered the crypto industry as an Analyst at Gatecoin, the first cryptocurrency exchange to list ether, Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency. Mason obtained his Master’s in Business Management at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Li Jin
Li Jin is the co-founder of Variant Fund and the founder of Atelier Ventures. Prior to that, Li Jin was a partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Haichen Shen
Haichen Shen is the co-founder of Scroll and leads the engineering team. He is also an open-source enthusiast and has contributed to several open-source projects, including zkEVM, Apache TVM, and RAF. He studied at Tsinghua Yaoban for his undergraduate degree and received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. His research focuses on the field of low-level systems. After graduating, he worked on building machine learning systems at Amazon.
Felix Lutsch
Felix Lutsch is co-host of the Epicenter podcast and the Head of Ecosystem at Symbiotic, working to help create trusted neutral institutions and infrastructure powered by crypto economy protocols. He was previously the chief commercial Officer of Chorus One, a verification node operator service.
Derek Walkush
Derek is an Investment Research Partner at Variant. He got interested in crypto in late 2020 around DeFi summer after conducting high level research on blockchain as an analyst in Georgetown’s student-run hedge fund. Looking to learn more about the space, Derek interned at Accolade Partners, which launched one of the first institutional crypto fund of funds. His interest and conviction only seemed to grow; he soon dove into the on-chain world and became a part-time contributor at Index Coop and AladdinDAO; he was recently elected to Aladdin’s research council where he pitches stable farming strategies. After teaching himself SQL and working as an analyst for a project finance startup, Derek began writing for Spencer’s newsletter, OurNetwork, applying his interest in data querying and fundamentals analysis. Realizing the generational opportunity in front of him, Derek left Georgetown to join the team full-time in June 2022. His primary research interests are on-chain data analytics and token distribution. In his free time, Derek enjoys working out (former D1 rower), 90s movies, cooking, and traveling.
Ye Zhang
Ye Zhang is the co-founder of Scroll. He holds an undergraduate degree from Peking University and has been working on ZK proofs since 2018. Previously, he mainly studied ZK proof hardware acceleration and ZK cryptography algorithm principles, and his Ph.D. is also in the ZK direction.
Jack Gorman
Jack is the data scientist at Variant. In this role, he uses data analytics and modeling to help Variant and its portfolio founders make better data-driven decisions. Prior to Variant, Jack worked at Deloitte Consulting in its AI & Data Engineering practice focusing on big data, cloud computing, and AI applications. Jack has contributed to onchain data analytics and research for various protocols on platforms like Dune Analytics and Flipside Crypto. He is particularly interested in onchain identities and token distribution. Jack holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech. In his free time, Jack enjoys hiking, competing in triathlons, and reading.