The newly formed Tendermint Inc Board of Directors appoints Peng Zhong as CEO

Update from July’s Tendermint Board of Directors meeting: The final two members to join Tendermint Inc’s five-person Board of Directors are Claire Hough, CTO at Lyte and Nick Tomaino, Founder and General Partner at 1confirmation.

Tendermint Inc’s primary focus over the past three years has been about building software and community for the Cosmos Network. Today’s vibrant, talented and committed community of ATOM holders, software developers, and distributed applications is a significant milestone towards fulfilling the vision of Cosmos, the Internet of Blockchains. With the formation of a new Board of Directors and the election of a new CEO, Tendermint Inc is on its way to refocus and hone in on building out the Cosmos ecosystem.

New Board & CEO

The company’s newly aligned mission comes after the distribution of leadership, which includes the creation of a five-person Board of Directors and the appointment of the new CEO, Peng Zhong. Tendermint Inc’s newly formed Board of Directors includes Heng (Harriet) Cao, CEO of Bianjie and Co-Founder of IRISnet, Jae Kwon, Founder of Tendermint Inc and currently its Chief Architect, Co-Founder of Cosmos, and President of the Interchain Foundation (ICF), Peng Zhong, CEO and President of Tendermint Inc, Claire Hough, CTO at Lyte and Nick Tomaino, Founder and General Partner at 1confirmation.

Tendermint Inc’s Board of Directors and CEO have an aligned objective to structure and execute a viable long-term vision and strategy for the organization. The CEO’s role is responsible for the development and execution of the company’s vision and is held accountable by the board and Tendermint Inc’s shareholders. The CEO reports directly to the Board of Directors about the company’s progress and any significant organizational changes. Tendermint Inc’s Board of Directors is actively responsible for financial resource allocation, budgeting, and executive compensation in addition to advising the CEO.

Company Mission

The company’s high-level mission is and will remain about building more utility, usability, and ultimately value into the Cosmos Network. In the short term, Tendermint Inc is actively supporting the greater decentralization of the Cosmos Network with initiatives such as:

• Re-delegating Tendermint Inc’s ATOMs to Cosmos validators who have demonstrated a pedigree of significant contributions to the Cosmos ecosystem.
• Renewing service contracts with the Interchain Foundation to support the Cosmos mission towards a decentralized token economy built for a global network of developers.
• Ongoing coordination with the Interchain Foundation to create a coherent software delivery lifecycle through improved governance by actively distributing the maintainership of the Cosmos code repositories.

Long-Term Strategy

As Tendermint Inc enters a new phase, our long-term strategy and roadmap to support the growth of the Cosmos ecosystem will focus primarily on:

• Enhancing the Cosmos developer experience through better tooling, tutorials, and onboarding.
• Hosting community events, educational resources, and programs to support Cosmos development.
• Lowering the barrier to entry for Cosmos technology adoption by new developers.
• Developing innovative, easy-to-use, and community-centric Web 3.0 products and applications to improve people’s everyday lives.

As the Tendermint Inc team continues to build and execute on these initiatives, we’ll keep the community informed on updates like:

• New Tendermint Inc board members.
• Board meeting summaries on a quarterly basis.
• Announcements on Tendermint Inc’s long-term strategy, company, product roadmaps, and development updates.

Board of Directors

Peng Zhong has a long history in the Tendermint and the Cosmos ecosystem joining co-founders Ethan Buchman and Jae Kwon as Tendermint Inc’s first employee in 2015. Peng’s deep understanding of the ecosystem and its value proposition stems from spearheading the digital presence and brand of Cosmos and Tendermint, building the first Cosmos wallet, Voyager (now known as Lunie) and leading the company’s focus on improving the Cosmos developer experience.

Heng (Harriet) Cao has been a long-time contributor to the Cosmos ecosystem, co-founding the non-profit IRIS Foundation in 2017, to promote the development of IRISnet, an open-source software platform. IRISnet is designed to be the infrastructure for the next-generation of distributed business applications. IRISHub is a self-evolutionary Bonded Proof-of-Stake (BPoS) blockchain, built with Cosmos-SDK, that enables cross-chain interoperability through a unified service model. Harriet previously worked at IBM Research in various capacities including Director of IBM Research Shanghai Lab and Big Data Analytics Leader for IBM Global Labs. Ms. Cao is an award-winning practitioner of advanced technologies and was the recipient of the 2010 INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize.

Jae Kwon is the co-founder of Tendermint and currently the organization’s Chief Architect. He is the creator of the Tendermint Core, a blockchain engine to create provably secure proof-of-stake algorithms, and co-creator of the Cosmos Network, a decentralized network of independent parallel blockchains powered by classical Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithms. He is also President of the Interchain Foundation (ICF), whose mission is to promote the vision of Cosmos to enable public blockchain interoperability and scalability. Mr. Kwon was previously the co-founder of iDoneThis, an email-based productivity service.

Nick Tomaino is Founder and General Partner at 1confirmation, an early stage crypto fund focused on the decentralization of the web and society. 1confirmation is backed by prominent investors including Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Mark Cuban, as well as institutions like Horlsey Bridge and Runa Capital. Founded in 2017, 1confirmation is currently invested in 11 companies and 7 cryptonetworks. Previously, Mr. Tomaino worked as Principal at Runa Capital and led East Coast business development for Coinbase, which now brokers exchanges of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Litecoin with fiat currencies in approximately 32 countries, and bitcoin transactions and storage in 190 countries worldwide. Mr. Tomaino attended the Yale School of Management in 2014.

Claire Hough is CTO at Lyte and previously held the position of VP of Engineering at Apollo GraphQL. Before joining Lyte and Apollo, Claire led all of Udemy’s engineering functions for the company’s geographically distributed team. Prior to joining Udemy, she held senior executive positions at Citrus Lane, NexTag, Napster, and Netscape. Claire has spearheaded the delivery of innovative software platforms, infrastructure middleware, tools and applications, and has a proven track record of building and growing strong, global teams focused on innovation, quality, and customer care. Claire received her BS in industrial engineering and operations research as well as her MS in operations research from the University of California, Berkeley.

About Tendermint Inc

At Tendermint Inc., we empower people to create a transparent and accountable world through open, distributed, and interoperable networks.

Tendermint Inc. is the gateway to the Cosmos ecosystem. We build critical infrastructure for open networks, like the Cosmos SDK, Tendermint Core, and Gaia. We lead the developer experience by providing best-in-class tools to peer into an ever-expanding Cosmos.

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