The Algorand Foundation, whose mission is to grow the ecosystem of the “carbon-negative” Layer 1 blockchain invented by Turing Award winner and MIT professor Silvio Micali, Algorand, recently announced the appointment of Eric Wragge as Global Head of Business Development and Capital Markets.
Wragge joins the Algorand Foundation “after spending over 20 years at JP Morgan, where he most recently served as Managing Director in structured finance and head of Asset Backed Securities for Northern Europe.”
Wragge began his journey into blockchain “in search of improvements for inefficiencies in the traditional finance space, particularly in the areas of payments, settlement, risk management and financial inclusion.” He became “fascinated with the possibilities of crypto and blockchain to deliver performance improvements and significant impact in all of these areas.”
Wragge will “report to the Algorand Foundation’s CEO, Staci Warden, and will lead global initiatives and strategic partnerships in traditional capital markets, as well as decentralized finance.”
Teams working in capital markets solutions, DeFi, capital markets access and integrations, investor relations and office of the chief economist will “report to him.” Wragge will also “chair the Foundation’s Investment Committee.”
Warden said:
“Eric Wragge has the vision, deep experience and technical chops to deliver significant opportunities for Algorand across financial markets of all kinds.”
He will be “transformational for our ability to deliver innovative and disruptive solutions for many of the problems that plague traditional finance today, and I could not be more excited to have him on board.”
Wragge continued:
“Coming from a leading global investment bank, I understand the uncompromising performance requirements for a Layer 1 blockchain to compete against and improve upon many aspects of traditional finance. Algorand’s high transaction throughput, immediate final settlement, sub-penny transaction costs, and minimal carbon footprint all so clearly differentiate Algorand from other chains, that it seems obvious the world ought to be utilizing Algorand as the blockchain platform of choice.”
This appointment follows CEO Staci Warden’s pledge “to expand the leadership team at the Foundation – and follows on the appointments of Matthew Keller as Director of Impact and Inclusion and Shamir Ozery as Head of Web3 earlier this year.”
The Algorand blockchain — designed by MIT professor and Turing Award winning cryptographer Silvio Micali — claims that it is “uniquely capable of delivering on the promise of a borderless global economy.”
It achieves transaction throughputs “at the speed of traditional finance, but with immediate finality, near zero transaction costs, and on a 24/7 basis.”
Its carbon-neutral platform and unique pure proof-of-stake consensus mechanism “solves for the “blockchain trilemma” by achieving both security and scalability on a decentralized protocol, and without a second of downtime since it went live in 2019.”
The Algorand Foundation is “dedicated to helping fulfill the global promise of the Algorand blockchain by taking responsibility for its sound monetary supply economics, decentralized governance, and healthy and prosperous open-source ecosystem.”