Exploring the Composable Foundation

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Composable Finance

7 min readOct 26, 2023

At Composable, we are always considering the future: not only the future of blockchain and DeFi, but also the future of the Composable protocol and our organization. Just recently, the Composable Foundation was introduced, highlighting the underlying organizational structure to drive forward the Composable Protocol and Picasso Protocol. As the Composable Foundation, our vision and brand can further evolve to unlock the power of blockchain technology for a global user base. Ultimately, we aim to enable an era of access and freedom of assets in global financial markets for anyone, anywhere.

In this article, I introduce the core contributors of the Composable Foundation and some key contributors who are leading our protocols’ development. For more information on the Composable Foundation and its scope as well as an introduction to the Foundation’s Board, check out the initial announcement here.

I also am pleased that, coinciding with the shift to the Composable Foundation, I will be able to focus more of my time and efforts on my true passion of research, knowing that the core contributors of Composable will be able to seamlessly pick up managerial duties.

My Shifting Role

Research, ideation, and product have always been my passions in blockchain. Moving forward, I will be focusing the majority of my time and efforts as one of the core contributors, leading the research initiatives at Composable. Other Composable core contributors will lead the various efforts initiated by the broader Composable community of contributors through the governance of the Foundation.

This transition in my role has already been slowly taking place for some time now. To demarcate this change, I will be officially transitioning out of the role of CEO and shifting to the role of Core Contributor, Research Director and Founder. I am eager to be able to focus on these topics as the primary objective of my role, not just a smaller component.

More on Composable Research

Since its inception, Composable has fostered innovative research-based solutions. We are able to develop value-added DeFi primitives and products because of our building approach which includes in-depth research to uncover hidden opportunities and inefficiencies. Composable Research is a research arm dedicated to working towards advancing innovative ideas, identifying market trends, and discovering untapped potential within not only DeFi but also the broader scope of blockchain.

Composable Research aims to accelerate and improve our process of building, educating, and promoting Web3. In addition to building, we are committed to maximizing our value as an organization and ecosystem partner by contributing and collaborating in research on Web3 adoption and improvement. As the research arm of Composable, Composable Research aims to focus on medium- and long-term critical issues that will have a profound impact on the sustainability of DeFi and utility of blockchain technology. Some challenges the blockchain space faces cannot be cracked immediately but warrant investigation through intellectual rigor.

Composable Research demonstrates our resolve as a sustainable solution pathfinder with cross-domain expertise in Mathematics, Cryptography, and Blockchains. Composable Research’s work will inform Composable’s future roadmap and help ensure it remains at the forefront of innovations addressing consumer needs.

Some of our present areas of focus at Composable Research include:

Cross-domain MEV extraction and optimization
Transaction intent settlement cross-chain in an optimized manner
Retail adoption of crypto
Mass adoption by users
TradFi & FinTech onboarding
Providing viable financial solutions through crypto in emerging markets

Meet the Core Contributors:

The Composable leadership team will continue to expand, involving more shapers and decision makers each driving their respective mandates. With these incredible people at its helm, I know the Foundation will be in good hands and continue to make significant contributions in the cross-chain DeFi space.

These are some of the core contributors to the Composable Foundation, in addition to myself, that are spearheading the growth and operations:

Henry Love, Executive Director & Board Member:
Henry Love is a seasoned founder, VC, and executive. Prior to joining the Composable Foundation, Henry held the position of Managing Partner and the Head of US operation for Fundamental Labs, a leading crypto-focused venture fund based in Singapore. Before joining Fundamental Labs, Henry co-founded a crypto corporate venture studio, YGC, and its spin out company Executive Council Network (ECN). He joined the crypto industry by stepping in as the Chief Investment Officer at a crypto-focused family office who pioneered the industry after leaving Facebook as a top performer in the marketing, e-commerce, & strategy division.

Check out Henry’s announcement: https://x.com/ComposableFin/status/1717616941538353272?s=20

Blas Rodriguez Irizar, Co-Founder & CTO:

Blas has 8 years of experience as a Software Engineer. He started his blockchain experience at LayerTwo, moving to Consensys where he worked on building zk-rollups. Blas has expertise in building high performance systems and working with different blockchains like Solana, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Science and a Masters Degree in Finance. In his role at Composable, Blas oversees the Research and Engineering departments with the critical responsibility of creating the technology strategy behind Composable’s products. Twitter

Miguel Santafe, Co-Founder & Head of Design:

Formerly identified as 0xslenderman, Miguel started his career in technology consultancy. Given his passion for aesthetics and design, he became an entrepreneur founding a creative consultancy company. Since then, he obtained 7 years of experience in creative direction. He has been in crypto since 2014 and has been designing applications since 2018. Previous to joining Composable, he led the creative strategy at various DeFi projects. Miguel has a background in IT Engineering and Computer Science, which enables him to turn complex and tech-heavy concepts into seamless and user-friendly experiences. Twitter

Ahmad Wehbi, Chief Operating Officer:
Ahmad has 12 years of experience and spent most of his career advising start-ups and institutions on strategy, operations, and organizational topics. Ahmad is focused on the operational side of Composable and holds a B.B.A. Finance and an MBA from INSEAD. At McKinsey & Company, he helped organizations design, launch and orchestrate ecosystems at scale. At Composable, Ahmad is responsible for business strategy building and leading our Marketing,Growth & Partnerships efforts. Twitter

Joe DeTommasso, Head of Markets:
Joe possesses extensive experience in both the crypto and traditional finance (TradFi) sectors, having contributed to the Bitcoin network as an independent node operator in 2011 and working with top hedge funds where he was focused on statistical arbitrage between international ETFs. Joe worked with leading crypto funds like FalconX and CMS Holdings, managing relationships and strategic partnerships with trading partners and liquidity providers. At Composable, Joe focuses on tokenomics, driving strategic direction and goals, and crafting plans to achieve business objectives. Twitter

These core contributors being highlighted here represent just a small subset and should not be considered a holistic or all-encompassing overview of everyone involved.

The Journey Towards the Composable Foundation

One of the most beautiful things about startups and the crypto space in general is that the projects with a relentless yet flexible approach survive and succeed. Positive pivots in history have resulted in some of the most innovative and successful companies. That being said, as Terra Luna / Three Arrows / GUSD & DCG / Celsius / BlockFi / FTX changed the course of the blockchain industry in 2022, it was clear to us at Composable that we had to refocus our efforts and conserve our resources. As a result, our team leadership had to make many tough decisions to drive the success of Composable and actualize its vision of interoperability. In the end, we had to part ways with many members of the original team. We further made a difficult but decisive call to focus all our efforts on launching products that adhere to the fundamental principles of:

Interoperability: eliminate borders to achieve any money, any chain, anywhere.

Security: strictly utilize and expand the use of trustless technology / IBC.

Abstraction: severely improve the user and developer experience.

In line with this decision, we are extremely excited about our current and future work in bringing IBC across all major ecosystems, pushing forth intent-based architectures, and abstracting away the complexities of cross-ecosystem functionalities and execution for users. In the end, we aim to achieve our day-one vision of mass interoperability. We want to let our code and work represent the team and our ecosystem.

Having devoted a significant amount of time and effort to IBC implementations, Composable is the only team today with IBC integrations live between Kusama, Polkadot, and Cosmos. While a number of other teams have been established working to create IBC bridges, the first team to deliver on this ambition and put IBC in production outside of Cosmos. We have delivered upon our promises to the public, executing upon what we said we would do and build. Our team and collaborators deserve recognition for this groundbreaking work.

Acknowledgements and Thanks

Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the world-class team at Composable that brought these products to life, and continue to drive the industry forward, many of which can be found across twitter, discord, and telegram, as well as on our docs. Additionally, the entire team at Composable wants to thank all our supporters across all ecosystems. This includes the backers of our funding round(s):

Our infrastructure providers:

Moreover, we are thankful for the apps and chains that are working with us to expand IBC everywhere to unlock a completely interoperable DeFi space:

We assure our community, we will not stop here, with so much of the industry still left to connect, and so much work left to reach mass adoption. Composable will continue to pioneer the industry and we welcome all fellow IBC implementers to give us feedback and improve upon what we have built. We are confident that these updates to our company organization will help increase our decentralization as well as our ability to execute upon our mission and goals, as we strive to optimally serve our community. Keep an eye out for more updates about our progress along our way as we complete these organizational changes.

Important Note: All disclosures and legal disclaimers apply.