Former executive at Ethereum Foundation joins UAE ADI Foundation
After nearly five years at the Ethereum Foundation, a new journey is here with ADI and focused on digital assets and stablecoins in Africa and the Middle East.
Jame Smith, the Founder and Former Head of Ecosystem Development at Ethereum Foundation, has joined UAE based and regulated ADI Foundation as chief Strategy Officer.
It seems ADI Foundation is getting serious when it comes to building their ecosystem. James will be shaping the ADI Foundation strategy across digital assets, stablecoins, institutional blockchain adoption and ecosystem development.
As per the announcement on LinkedIn, he will focus on turning open blockchain infrastructure into practical applications for institutions, developers and digital businesses.
During his five year tenure at Ethereum Foundation, James helped to build adoption and developer ecosystems. His work explored how open, neutral networks can support pracitcal settlement, coordination and financial use cases at scale. He also created and grew 12 teams including, Enterprise relations, founder success and developer growth.
In his overall career he has built businesses and has two successful exits which his focus is to drive adoption and innovation in digital assets.
James Smith states, ” At ADI Foundation, I am committed to leveraging this expertise to explore the intersection of institutional finance and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).”
In March of this year, ADI Foundation also hired a previous VISA executive. It appointed Dr. Svyatoslav Senyuta as Chief Business Officer at ADI Foundation, who recently held the position of Vice President and Head of Visa Government Solutions for Central Europe and Middle East for VISA.
This comes as ADI Foundation builds its blockchain proposition with partnerships and clients. Recently the tokenization of securities within the UAE became a reality as ADI Foundation and SettleMint partnered to develop digital securities infrastructure under ADGM’s regulatory framework. In a single integrated digital securities’ infrastructure, both parties will work together with ADI Foundation providing the compliance ready layer 2 blockchain that serves as an immutable settlement ledger, while
Among other partnerships signed, BlackRock signed MoUs with Finstreet and ADI Foundation to explore initiatives on the development of tokenized markets and next-generation financial architecture, aligned with Abu Dhabi’s digital economy ambitions.
