Women in crypto and blockchain increased in 2022.
Decentralized finance, GameFi, nonfungible tokens, and Web3 grew in 2022. In 2022, some related projects were led by women, indicating progress in a male-dominated sector.
Women’s growing participation in cryptocurrency indicates the sector’s maturation and encourages diversity and the adoption of ideas that resonate with underrepresented groups.
However, in 2022, a group of ambitious, innovative, and driven women achieved unprecedented success in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industries.
Web3 venture capitalist and M&A adviser Nodira Sadikova spoke to Cointelegraph. She praised this development and noted that a new generation of women under 30 were making an impact in the industry.
“We can see the rising rate of bright and talented women under 30, such as Nastya Moroz (crypto trading and investment courses exclusively for women), Daria Lomova (art adviser and curator of digital art exhibitions), Stella Friaisse (crypto podcaster and event organiser), and many more,” Sadikova said.
These 2022 crypto industry women made waves.
Lightning Labs co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Stark supported blockchain scaling solutions early on. Her company, Lightning Labs, develops Lightning Network (LN) products to improve Bitcoin transactions. Transacting BTC on the Lightning Network is faster and cheaper than on the primary chain.
Her company offers Lightning Network-related services like high-volume micropayments. A bidirectional micropayment channelling process speeds up transactions, reducing transaction fees.
Stark heads a blockchain company and is a fellow at Coin Center, a leading cryptocurrency policy nonprofit. She advises Chia, a blockchain company that uses a proof of time and space crypto-mining protocol. The algorithmic consensus system lets users store random numbers on hard drives or solid-state drives.
Reward chances are higher for large storage users. The revolutionary idea uses numerical queries and is not performance-oriented or compute-intensive. Thus, the network consumes hundreds of times less energy than proof-of-work systems like Bitcoin.
Stark lectured on peer-to-peer networks at Stanford and Yale before becoming a crypto entrepreneur.
In 2022, her company’s Lightning Network infrastructure was adapted for many uses, including transcontinental Bitcoin-to-fiat transactions.
Dynamic Ledger Solutions co-founder and CEO Kathleen Breitman graduated from Cornell University.
Dynamic Ledger Solutions developed the Tezos proof-of-stake blockchain protocol. Tezos was created to fix Bitcoin and other early cryptocurrency networks’ scaling issues and high gas fees. With a market cap over $700 million, its native token is among the top 50 cryptocurrencies.
Breitman was a senior strategy associate at R3, a top financial services firm, before getting into crypto. She led Bridgewater Associates, Accenture, and The Wall Street Journal.
Due to the crypto market implosion in 2022, Tezos struggled. However, Breitman and her team made a series of smart, strategic decisions that will set the company up for long-term success.
In December 2022, Coinbase Japan listed XTZ, which is expected to boost usage in the growing Asian market.
CoinShares’ chief strategy officer is Meltem Demirors. The CoinShares Group lowers digital asset investment barriers.
In New York, Demirors runs the company. She leads CoinShares’ venture strategy as a board director. Demirors was Digital Currency Group’s vice president before joining CoinShares.
As chief strategy officer, she has grown her company. As of 31 March 2022, her firm’s exchange-traded products AUM rose to $4.13 billion from $2.67 billion in June 2021.
Neha Narula directs the Digital Currency Initiative, an MIT Media Lab blockchain research community. She built scalable blockchain solutions and databases during her computer science Ph.D. at MIT.
She has tens of thousands of followers and is a respected speaker on decentralised technologies due to her blockchain-focused work and advocacy for blockchain and crypto payment systems.
Narula can explain complex crypto and blockchain concepts to key audiences, including US policymakers, thanks to her clear communication skills.
She has helped U.S. senators understand digital currencies and why they should consider central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). She is working with many financial institutions to create digital currencies and assess their impact and usability. The Boston Fed is one.
Perianne Boring has a UF business administration degree. The world’s largest blockchain trade association, the Chamber of Digital Commerce, was founded by her. The chamber promotes blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption. It promotes industry growth, investment, and innovation.
Boring frequently discusses cryptocurrency and blockchain on financial media. She was a Prime Interest anchor, a 600-million-viewer international finance programme, before entering the cryptocurrency industry.
She spoke out against discriminatory policies like New York’s crypto mining ban in 2022.
Clovyr’s CEO and co-founder, Amber Baldet, develops flexible tools to improve decentralised application usability.
Baldet serves on the Zcash Foundation, a charity that builds privacy-focused blockchain infrastructure. The foundation serves Zcash users.
Baldet oversaw Quorum, JPMorgan’s blockchain system, before starting her own blockchain company. In 2018, she left JP Morgan to co-found Clovyr with Patrick Nielson, a Quorum lead developer.
