Crypto investment firm DeFiance Capital, led by Arthur Cheong, has lost its head of portfolio growth, Yeou Jie Goh.
Mr Koh resigned from Defiance last week and plans to join the blockchain project. Chromia CHR
-2.24%
As head of the Asia Pacific region next month, Goh told The Block. He has worked at DeFiance for over two years.
CEO Chung confirmed Koh’s move to The Block “to pursue opportunities in terms of building projects of interest to him based on his experience working with our portfolio companies.”
Chromia co-founder Or Perelman also confirmed Goh’s appointment, saying Goh’s “experience and industry insight” will help Chromia achieve “continued success” as it prepares for its mainnet launch next year.
Goh leaving DeFiance
Goh’s departure comes as DeFiance is currently locked in a legal dispute with Teneo, the liquidator of bankrupt cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, over $140 million worth of assets.
DeFiance was affected by the 3AC collapse as it operates as a “sub-fund and share class” of 3AC. Teneo argues that DeFiance’s assets should be held as part of 3AC’s assets and distributed to creditors. Meanwhile, DeFiance says assets should be treated separately and returned to their own investors.
Coming out of the shadow of the 3AC failure, DeFiance earlier this year raised part of a new $100 million liquid token fund. Immediately after Mr. Ko resigned, Mr. Jeong presentation Job openings for portfolio management and investment staff at DeFiance.
Van Gogh joins Chromia
Chromia is developing a blockchain network using a proprietary programming language called Rell, taken from the popular web2 language SQL, and aims to help developers build web3 applications easily.
“Chromia is developing the first relational fee-free (no transaction fees for end users) modular blockchain,” Perelman said. The Rell smart contract language is “very similar to SQL, only seven times more compact,” he added.
Chromia is a project of ChromaWay, a Swedish blockchain startup founded in 2014 that initially developed an enterprise blockchain platform called Postchain. Chromia is based on the Postchain framework.
Even before Postchain, ChromaWay’s founders (Perelman, Alex Mizrahi, Iddo Bentov, and Henrik Hjelte) built Colored Coins, an open-source protocol that allows token issuance on the Bitcoin blockchain. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also worked on the Colored Coins project before working at Ethereum.
Mizrahi, Perelman and Hjelte founded Chromia in 2018, and the network has been in development since then. According to the website, once launched, Chromia can be used as a layer 1 or Ethereum layer 2 network. Chromia plans to launch its mainnet next year.
Chromia’s token CHR is already listed on top cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance and Kraken. Currently, CHR is an ERC20 token, but once the Chromia mainnet launches, it will transition from an ERC20 token to a native token, according to the Chromia website.
Goh, Chromia’s head of APAC, said the company plans to grow the ecosystem by raising awareness of the project and attracting more developers and users.
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