BLOCKDOWN IS BACK WITH A BANG!

Edward Snowden shocked the world in 2013 when he broke with the intelligence establishment and revealed that the U.S. government was pursuing an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the potential to collect every single phone call, text message and email of every person on earth. He currently serves as president of the board of directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Since gaining asylum in Russia, Snowden has remained in the headlines as an impassioned and authoritative champion of privacy, civil liberties and cybersecurity during what he calls “the greatest redistribution of power since the Industrial Revolution".

Dr. Gavin Wood is the Co-Founder of Parity Technologies and President of Web3 Foundation. Gavin is developing the next generation of blockchain technology with Polkadot, the interoperability platform he designed to connect all public and private blockchains. Polkadot will serve as a key building block in the decentralised web 3.0, meant to disrupt centralised internet powers and provide a platform for developers to create more equitable, peer-to-peer societal institutions that are not possible today.
Gavin began originating blockchain technology as Co-Founder and CTO of Ethereum. He conceived the Solidity language (a programming language oriented to write smart contracts), invented Proof-of-Authority consensus, and designed and implemented the Whisper protocol.

The inventor of digital cash, Chaum is also known for innovations in cryptography, privacy, and voting. With a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, Chaum was the CEO of DigiCash and now heads up the xx network which is in BetaNet.

Wes Levitt is Head of Strategy for Theta Labs, where he works on corporate strategy, marketing and press relations, and analytics. He has been a speaker on blockchain topics at conferences like the New York Media Festival, Blockchain Connect, and NAB Streaming Summit among others. Prior to joining Theta Labs, Wes spent 8 years in investment roles in real estate equity and securitized debt. He holds a BS in Economics from University of Oregon and an MBA from UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Dylan Dewdney is a longtime crypto and blockchain enthusiast (2011), currently CSO of Kylin Network and CEO of NFT3. He believes in the fundamental transformative power of blockchain technology to change our lives for the better. Specifically, he is interested in decentralized data systems and platforms of all kinds. He also popularized the notion of 'dedata' or decentralized data.

After a life of web 2, Bruno started out in Ethereum in 2015 and did education for a bit, teaching web2 developers how to work with web3. In 2018 he got hired by Status to work on Ethereum 2.0, and in 2019 got hired by Web3 Foundation to work on Polkadot and Kusama. Since the end of 2020 Bruno has been working on the RMRK project with a team of now 12 people – find them all on RMRK.app - Protocol for the next generation NFTs at the bottom.

Dr Raullen Chai is an expert cryptographer, privacy and data security expert who before co-founded IoTeX worked at Google, Uber, and Oracle. His vision for IoTeX is to ensure the IoT MachineFi economy that McKinsey says will be worth up to $12 trillion by 2030 is in the hands of the people and not Big Tech as it currently is. He is also an academic with a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo, where his research focused on designing, analyzing lightweight ciphers and IoT authentication protocols. At Google, he led many important security initiatives for its technical infrastructure, including mitigation of SSL attacks, privacy-preserving SSL offloading, enabling Certificate Transparency for all Google services. He was also the founding engineer of Google Cloud Load Balancer (GCLB), which now serves thousands of cloud services with 1+ million queries per second.

Erhan Korhaliller is the Founder and CEO of EAK Digital, a specialist blockchain PR agency. Prior to launching EAK Digital, Erhan previously managed large scale project teams for blue-chip brands such as Nike, Rolls Royce, and Vodafone, successfully guiding his teams to multiple advertising awards, including a platinum award from Campaign Magazine. Erhan continues to lead from the front, giving PR a voice in the blockchain industry as a speaker at global events.

Bruce Pon is the Founder of Ocean Protocol, a blockchain startup focused on bringing data and AI together since 2013.
Previously, Bruce co-founded Avantalion, a consulting firm that helped to build 20 banks around the globe for companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi & Jaguar LandRover. He has an Advanced Executive Certificate from MIT Sloan, a B.Sc in Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, and has given guest lectures at Oxford, MIT Media Lab, Columbia University, and the European School of Management & Technology. In addition to being in the 2020 full-length documentary Cryptopia, Bruce was featured in Oxford University and Saïd Business School’s online Blockchain course as a guest expert and in ARTE’s The Digital Future. He’s given invited talks at World Economic Forum, MOBI Connect, CNBC, KuppingerCole, and more.

Bette is the co-founder of Acala, Karura & Laminar, building decentralized financial hub, stablecoin and a suite of DeFi products on Polkadot and Kusama. Acala & Karura is backed Polychain, Pantera, Coinbase Venture, Digital Currency Group and many other supporters, with 200k+ community members worldwide. She also help founded the Substrate Developer Academy endorsed by Dr Gavin Wood and Parity to bring more professional developer into the ecosystem. 

Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr is managing editor and head of features at Cointelegraph. M.A. in political science and classical philology she is a passionate communicator promoting innovations, translating them into simple languages and helping visionaries to be heard.

Zia is an experienced entrepreneur with two exits. Involved in blockchain since 2013, she was co-founder & CSO of crypto & blockchain ecosystem 途赞 in China, exiting late 2018. She has consulted with many of the top Web3 projects and VCs in the space. She has since consulted with many of the top Web3 projects and VCs in the space. Zia started Matterblock, with partner Erhan Korhaliller to invest in and support Web3 projects pushing the culture forward. She regularly appears on Sky News & Sky Business sharing insights on the industry.

Paul is a serial entrepreneur and financial markets expert. Before co- founding DIA, he was Director Europe of the nu3 group, transforming the multi-million e-commerce business into a vertically integrated brand. Paul started his professional career as part of BNP Paribas Corporate Development in New York City and AXA Private Equity in Frankfurt am Main. Paul has advised and invested in multiple start-ups in health tech, IOT and e-commerce. At DIA, he manages the business development and strategy.

Paul is a serial entrepreneur and financial markets expert. Before co- founding DIA, he was Director Europe of the nu3 group, transforming the multi-million e-commerce business into a vertically integrated brand. Paul started his professional career as part of BNP Paribas Corporate Development in New York City and AXA Private Equity in Frankfurt am Main. Paul has advised and invested in multiple start-ups in health tech, IOT and e-commerce. At DIA, he manages the business development and strategy.

Rachida is an ex-journalist with 13 years of experience working in communications, marketing and PR, with a specific background in European Affairs and the NGO sector, and a keen interest in social impact initiatives. With a firm finger on the pulse of all things marketing and PR, she has helped clients get featured in both mainstream and industry publications, whilst also being featured herself in international media, The BBC and speaking at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.

Jessica started her broadcast journalism career specializing in business and finance for a Swiss Bank. During her time in Switzerland, she became aware of the potential of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. She relocated to Malta to launch the first blockchain tv station in 2018 and has proceeded to work with large corporate events focusing on blockchain and emerging tech. Jessica's true passion is to help bridge the knowledge gap for newcomers.

Dan is VP of Growth for Acala where he's leading growth, marketing, and community building efforts for Acala and Karura. Prior to joining Acala, Dan worked on Growth & Community at Web3 Foundation where he helped launch Polkadot and Kusama.

Dave Connor is one of API3’s founding members and has been working in the oracle space since 2018. API3 is a first-party focused, decentrally governed oracle project that aims to provide truly trustless data to dapp developers, as well as creating the largest association of APIs that Web 3.0 developers can use - the API3 Alliance.

Beni Issembert is the Concordium CMO. Previously he served as Beam Privacy CMO and he's an active entrepreneur in Israeli high-tech. A published author, Beni comes with 20 years of proven experience in the innovation world with a strong focus on ethics in tech, decentralized data, privacy enhancement technologies and self-sovereign identity.

Sam has over 15 years of experience as a developer and has worked in some of the world's largest companies such as Sony Playstation, Discovery Communications, and JustEat. He has extensive experience in Big Data and is currently the CEO of Kylin Network.

Peter Chen is an investor and founder in the digital asset industry. He is a co-founder of Big Data Protocol, a Web 3 project focused on sourcing and tokenizing commercially valuable data. As an investor, Peter diligenced and invested in early rounds for leading cryptocurrency projects such as TomoChain and AirSwap. Prior to joining the digital asset industry, Peter was a lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York. He represented banks, insurance companies, funds, and other regulated entities in corporate transactions and in complying with the Dodd-Frank Act and other federal laws and regulations, including those of the SEC and CFTC. Peter has a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and a B.A. from Dartmouth College.

Robby Yung, CEO of Animoca Brands’ North American Operations, is a serial entrepreneur who has founded several successful businesses in China and Hong Kong across mobile gaming, mobile telecoms and software applications, cable television, internet services, outdoor advertising and publishing. As CEO, he transformed Animoca Brands into a multi-billion dollar company, shifting its focus to innovation around blockchain, cryptocurrency and NFTs.

As a mobile gaming pioneer, Robby sees tremendous potential for gaming in blockchain technology and is pushing Animoca Brands to the forefront of this new movement. Robby was previously the co-founder and CFO of Redgate Media, a venture-backed Chinese television and outdoor media holding company sold to Inno-Tech Holdings Limited (HK.8202). He also co-founded and served as chief strategy officer of One Media Group (HK.426), the Hong Kong-based magazine group. Previously, Robby founded and led One Studio, a venture-backed web development company in Hong Kong and OSMedia (a Chinese television advertising sales company). He began his career at Metromedia (AMEX: MMG) building wireless telecom networks in China and Indonesia.

A professional software developer with over 18 years of experience. Worked on different projects from startups to international companies. Founded Subsocial in 2019 and during the next two years, his team DappForce successfully delivered two technical grants from Web3 Foundation and became a participant of the Substrate Builders Program run by Parity Technologies.