Arthur Hayes, co-founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX and currently chief investment officer at his family office Maelstrom, has joined. covalent bond CQT
+10.89%
Appointed blockchain data infrastructure startup as strategic advisor.
Hayes is working to help Covalent become a leading data infrastructure startup, particularly within the Ethereum ecosystem and serve the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, Covalent said on Tuesday.
“Covalent’s Ethereum Wayback Machine (EWM) ensures continuous, long-term access to historical blockchain data to underpin next-generation use cases, especially AI models,” Hayes told The Block.
When asked what motivated him to join Covalent as an advisor, Hayes said Covalent’s CQT token “has been undervalued relative to its component set (e.g. The Graph) for some time. Investors have completely missed that story. Now Covalent As it expands, the dissonance between traction and narrative widens, and as a storyteller, I want to help bridge that gap.”
Hayes will be rewarded in CQT tokens. “Normally, we only get compensated in tokens because we believe in being fully aligned with our team, investors, customers and retailers. We’re in the same car as everyone else.”
Covalent co-founder and CEO Ganesh Swami told The Block that Hayes is currently Covalent’s sole strategic advisor.
According to The Block’s CQT price page, the price of the CQT token is currently at $0.23, up 13.25% in the last 24 hours. The token is currently ranked 347th and has a market capitalization of approximately $145 million.
Covalent’s AI Vision
Founded in 2019, Covalent provides data infrastructure for more than 225 networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and Optimism. However, Swami said the startup found most of its traction in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Covalent recently launched the Ethereum Wayback Machine, which ensures the availability of all Ethereum ecosystem data, giving AI developers and users access to all on-chain records.
Swami said blockchains today tend to become “billboards rather than databases.” This means that on-chain transaction data is often deleted after a short period of time, typically around two weeks. EWM ensures that Ethereum’s transaction data is available in a decentralized manner over the long term, he said.
Swami said the AI part is an expanded vision for Covalent’s decentralized data infrastructure. “Without decentralized data, AI models are prone to manipulation and bias,” he said.
According to Swami, specific use cases for decentralized data within the scope of AI, from copy trading to NFT forensics to security applications, include:
Hayes’ specific role in Covalent
Hayes said he is a “full-spectrum” advisor to Covalent, helping startups with “everything from honing token economics to market positioning, suggesting business model adjustments, acquiring new types of customers, and more.”
As a founder, he said he plans to give some do’s and don’ts to help guide the project.
Covalent first met Akshat Vaidya, head of investments at Maelstrom, at ETHGlobal Tokyo last year. The team discussed potential collaborations more seriously at ETHCC Paris and Token2049 Singapore, and finalized details at ETH Denver last winter, Hayes added.
Maelstrom is also a founding advisor to Ethena, a synthetic dollar protocol, Hayes said. The family office also recently announced consultations with Ritual, a decentralized AI platform, and Drift, a decentralized perpetual exchange, he added.
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