The Algorand Foundation, whose mission is to grow the ecosystem of Algorand, the carbon-negative Layer 1 blockchain invented by Turing Award winner and MIT professor Silvio Micali, announced the appointment of John Woods as Chief Technology Officer.
In his role as CTO at the Algorand Foundation, Woods will oversee infrastructure development, technical partnerships, and developer tooling, education, and engagement. He will focus in particular on removing friction from the developer UX, clarifying and improving the developer education journey, and adding tools and resources for building applications on Algorand.
“Algorand has best-in-class tech when it comes to speed, scale and security,” said Woods. “So improving the user experience is now the most important catalyst for Algorand’s mass adoption, and I am very excited to deliver on that.”
“The fact that it is carbon-negative is just as important to me”, he added. “With two children of my own, I’m increasingly conscious of looking after Mother Earth.”
Prior to joining the Algorand Foundation, Woods served as Director of Cardano Architecture at Input Output Global, the company that runs the Cardano blockchain. Previously, he held senior architect roles at Informatica and ConsenSys.
Woods will report to CEO Staci Warden, who said, “Supporting and growing our developer community is Priority One for us at the Algorand Foundation, and with John in this critical leadership position, we are confident we can deliver for our community. His technical expertise and track record of building great teams are widely recognized in the crypto ecosystem, and we are thrilled to have him on board.”
After joining the Algorand Foundation in January, Warden pledged to expand the Foundation’s leadership team. This latest appointment follows the appointments of Eric Wragge as Global Head of Business Development and Capital Markets, Mathew Keller as Director of Impact and Inclusion, and Shamir Ozery as Head of Web3 earlier this year.
ALGORAND FOUNDATION
The Algorand blockchain — designed by MIT professor and Turing Award winning cryptographer Silvio Micali — 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. For more information, visit https://algorand.foundation