Meet Our People: Interchain Foundation Appoints Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer
As the interchain expands and connects to more interchain-stack-enabled chains and diverse blockchain ecosystems, its foundational structure is evolving too. That’s why the ICF has appointed two new members to the board of management to support the strategy and adoption of the Interchain Stack.
The ICF is excited to announce the expansion of our Board of Management to include two new members, Chief Product Officer (CPO) Alix Keller, and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Nico Poggi.
Alix will be responsible for facilitating the long-term roadmap for the Interchain Stack and its engineering execution together with the steward teams, solidifying the stack’s product impact and development lifecycle. Nico will be guiding the Interchain’s business and go-to-market strategies, driving a cohesive narrative, and facilitating the interchain ecosystem’s growth and awareness.
With this expansion, the Interchain Foundation continues to evolve. With the skills and experience Alix and Nico bring, we are making sure the Interchain Stack development is not only driven by engineering insights but by product and market insights, getting the stack closer to the builders — and strengthening the foundation’s capability to support the interchain.
Maria Gomez, Director of the Board of Management at the ICF, said, “The ICF has been working hard to bring fresh, focused expertise to the BoM by adding a CPO and a CMO. This addition ensures we stay in tune with market needs and builders’ expectations. With these new perspectives, we can deliver a clearer product and market direction for the Interchain Stack, validate our work better, spark more innovation, and enhance our efforts to achieve the interchain vision. We’re excited to have Alix and Nico join our team — their insights and energy will be key as we drive the interchain forward.”
The ICF Welcomes Two New Members to the Board of Management
As CPO and CMO, Alix and Nico draw on extensive experience in the blockchain industry and proven successes in their corresponding roles. Prior to joining the ICF, Alix led the Product and Engineering teams in an executive capacity for Consensys and its other related blockchain properties and served as Managing Director at LimitlessXP. Nico served as CMO at Fleek, working on decentralized infrastructure, with contributions to NEAR, IPFS, and other developer-facing projects.
The Interchain Stack, just like Cosmos, has grown to reflect the realities of a broader, more inclusive network with connections being forged among major blockchain ecosystems, including Polkadot, Solana, NEAR, Avalanche, and Ethereum. The vision for a seamlessly connected internet of blockchains (the interchain) is materializing and continues to move forward with the growth of its stewards and ecosystem.
Building on the Success of the Interchain Stack
Since the launch of the Cosmos Hub in March 2019, the ecosystem of IBC-connected blockchains, the interchain, has grown to over 110+ chains — each allowing for secure, trust-minimized, cross-chain interoperability. In April 2024, IBC turned three years old. Since its inception, the protocol has continuously pushed the boundaries of interoperability for decentralized technologies. The majority of the 110+ IBC-enabled chains are built with the Interchain Stack, a customizable design pattern, an architecture prioritizing interoperability, security, scale, and sovereignty. The backbone of the Interchain Stack consists of IBC, Cosmos SDK, CometBFT, and CosmWasm.
Last year, Composable Finance launched the first IBC implementation connecting Polkadot, and Kusama, and connections are in development with Avalanche via Landslide, NEAR via Omnity Network (formerly Octopus Network), BNB via Toki, Polygon via Union, and now Ethereum and Solana via Picasso Network.
With so much innovation within the interchain, we are broadening and invigorating our team so we can continue to best meet the ecosystem’s needs.
