From Blockchain Pioneers to DeFi Innovators: Hack Seasons Conference Assembles a Star-Studded Cast of Web3 Visionaries
In Brief
Hack Seasons Conference features industry leaders like Celestia, Scroll, Morph, zkLink, and EigenLayer, and others sharing insights and innovative approaches for attendees.
The upcoming Hack Seasons Conference is set to feature an impressive lineup of speakers, each bringing a wealth of experience and knowledge to the table. Notable names include Mustafa Al-Bassam, Co-founder of Celestia; Daniel Helm, DevRel Lead at Scroll; and Cecilia Hsueh, Founder & CEO of Morph.
Joining them are experts like Vince Yang, Founder & CEO of zkLink, and Nader Dabit, Director of Developer Relations at EigenLayer. These industry leaders, among many others, will share their insights and innovative approaches, making this conference an invaluable experience for all attendees.
Let’s take a look at some of the conference’s top speakers!
Mustafa Al-Bassam, Co-founder, Celestia
Mustafa Al-Bassam is a British-Iraqi computer security researcher and hacker who co-founded the smart contract platform Chainspace and Celestia Labs. In addition to helping to develop and execute Chainspace, a blockchain protocol that employs sharding to boost transaction throughput, he has also released research on scaling blockchains and cryptocurrencies.
As a volunteer for Privacy International in 2014, Al-Bassam published studies on the methods GCHQ used to get journalists at The Guardian’s London headquarters to destroy laptops.
Additionally, he said that during the Arab Spring, GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) had engaged in online sockpuppetry by fabricating Twitter accounts and URL shorteners that were deployed as honeypots for dissidents. Al-Bassam’s 2016 nomination in Forbes 30 Under 30 was based on his efforts to expose government monitoring.
Cecilia Hsueh, Founder & CEO, Morph
With the September 2023 introduction of Morph, Cecilia improved blockchain security and performance by integrating zkEVM technology and a new decentralized sequencer. Morph secured $20 million in March 2024 from investors such as Dragonfly and Pantera Capital, with an emphasis on hiring more personnel, offering developer incentives, and expanding their infrastructure.
Cecilia has been leading Morph in securing important agreements to expand its capabilities. Bitget’s multimillion-dollar December 2023 investment and its April 2024 partnership with Pyth Network—which integrates real-time financial data—emphasize Morph’s expanding impact.
Cecilia wants to make blockchain technology as useful and approachable as common household appliances. To that end, she sees Morph as a consumer-focused blockchain platform. She believes that blockchain will advance beyond banking and become a key technology across many industries, spearheaded by Morph.
Vasily Sumanov, Head of Research, PowerPool
Ph.D., Head of Research for the PowerPool protocol, specializes in studying the relationship between blockchain technology and economics. Vasily has studied, created, and prototyped tokenized economic systems and Defi goods throughout his Web3 adventure. He joined the Token Engineering Community early on.
Value-creation and capture processes in tokenized economic systems are the main topics of Vasily’s token engineering study. The value origins and methods of token manifestation were analyzed in order to create the token categorization framework that resulted from this research. The findings of this study will be published in an academic publication and will serve as the foundation for the TE Value Capturing Fundamentals course offered by TE Academy.
Vince Yang, Founder & CEO, zkLink
Vince Yang briefly worked on powertrain systems for the automobile sector before entering the cryptocurrency space in 2019. The co-founders of Ethereum presented cryptocurrency to him during a gathering in Shanghai in 2016, which is when he first learned about it.
Afterward, he made the decision to enter the blockchain field and quit the car industry. He started off with bitcoin mining and gained knowledge of mining procedures, ASIC chips, rigs, power plants, software, mining pools, trading, and wallets.
He later learned about DeFi apps like Uniswap, AAVE, Compound, Curve, and Sushi during the DeFi Summer of 2020, which demonstrated the potential of blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrency mining and selling.
Jakov Buratovic, Master of DeFi, Lido
Based in Croatia, Jakov Buratović uses his vast expertise from prior positions at Lido Finance and Shard Labs to his advantage as a Master of DeFi at Lido Finance. His Master’s degree from FER (2020–2024) demonstrates his impressive academic background.
Programming languages like C, Java, and Assembly Language are just a few of Jakov’s many hobbies. Jakov’s wide range of experience allows him to contribute meaningfully to the DeFi sector, spurring innovation and expansion within the blockchain ecosystem.
Pranay Valson, Head of Protocol Engineering, Covalent
Senior distributed systems and decentralized ledger technology engineer Pranay Valson works out of Vancouver, Canada. He possesses a track record of successful product acceptance, solid scientific foundations, and an entrepreneurial spirit. Valson has worked with nuclear fusion reactors, engineering, and physics, among other subjects.
He oversaw the creation of the Refiner, a high-granularity decentralized data transformation system, the Covalent decentralized ETL network, and a utility token staking program. Additionally, Valson oversaw the backend development and product design for a USD $1 million startup that used deep neural networks to anticipate Ethereum transaction fees.
Edi Sinovcic, Founder, Nimbora & SpaceShard
Edi is the creator and CEO of Nimbora and SpaceShard, a venture builder in the StarkNet ecosystem and a cutting-edge full-cycle R&D blockchain ZK enterprise. Edi has been an important Ethereum core developer since 2017, taking up many leadership roles. Driven by a strong belief in decentralization, Edi and his group are determined to investigate uncharted territory for blockchain technology and enhance its influence on the community.
Edi is in charge of creating the first cross-chain yield DEX at Nimbora, which will enable customers to easily interact with Layer 1 DeFi yields from Layer 2 at substantial cost savings. Nimbora provides a smooth user experience while cutting expenses as more users sign up by fusing the scalability of Layer 2 with the deep liquidity and reliable protocols of Layer 1.
Among other notable speakers:
Daniel Helm, Scroll, DevRel Lead
Abril Zucchi, Morph, DevRel Advocate
Gnana Lakshmi, Starknet Foundation, Developer Advocate
Robert Kodra, Starknet Foundation, Developer Advocate
Roshan Raghupathy, Marlin, Researcher
Nader Dabit, EigenLayer, Director of Developer Relations
Wes Floyd, EigenLayer, Solution Architect / DevRel
Dorothy, AltLayer, Head of Growth
Jarrod Watts, Polygon, Developer Relations Engineer
Usman Asim, Avalanche, Senior Developer Relations Engineer
Daniel Lumi, zkSync, Senior Product Manager of ZK Stack
Gokhan Er, IOSG, Managing Director
Altan Tutar, NEAR Protocol, Core Contributor
Jenny Cheng, Animoca Ventures, VP of Investments
Jacob Zhao, Arweave SCP Ventures, Partner
Sunny Lu, Vechain, CEO
Alp Bassa, Veridise, Research Scientist
Anil Murty, Akash, Head of Product and Engineering
Apeguru, Lynex, CTO
James Wo, DFG, Founder & CEO
Gabriele Zennaro, Outlier Ventures, Partnership Lead
Josh Crites, Aztec, DevRel Engineer
Phil Kelly, o1Labs, Head of BD
Zack Xuereb, Aleo, Engineer
Vlad, TON Foundation, DeFi Lead
Sarah Grace, zkLink, Product Manager
Ian Wallis, Consensys, Head of Business Development
Mark Rydon, Aethir, Co-founder
Joey Anthony, Monad, BD Lead
Jan Camenisch, DFINITY Foundation, CTO
Claudio Cossio, Meta Pool DAO & ICP Hub Mexico, Co-founder
Dominic Wörner, DFINITY Foundation, Senior Solution Architect
Mathias Beke, Kairon Labs, Co-founder
Matan Si, lightblocks Labs / eoracle, Founder / CEO, lightblocks Labs
Ramani Ramachandran, Router Protocol, CEO
Viacheslav Shebanov, dRPC, CTO
Matt Wright, GaiaNet, CEO
Roham Gharegozlou, Dapper Labs and Flow Foundation, CEO and Co-founder
Mariela Tanchez, IoTeX, Business Development Lead
Ciara Sun, C^2 Ventures, Founder & Managing Partner
Kevin Ren, CGV, Partner
Joy Song, ABCDE, Investor
Alex Mukhin, Cryptomeria Capital, Co-founder and Managing Partner
Vadim Krekotin, Cryptomeria Capital, Founding Partner
Alexey Stelmakh, Satoshi Universe, BD Lead
Humpty, Ontology, Head of Community
Michelle Kang, Somnia, Head of Engineering
Aditya Arora, Pyth, Head of Developer Relations
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About The Author
Viktoriia is a writer on a variety of technology topics including Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her extensive experience allows her to write insightful articles for the wider audience.
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Viktoriia is a writer on a variety of technology topics including Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her extensive experience allows her to write insightful articles for the wider audience.
