Team

DCF TEAM

Board of Directors

Julian Morris

Julian Morris is a successful economist and think-tank entrepreneur. A Senior Fellow at Reason Foundation, a Senior Scholar at the International Center for Law and Economics, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, he also sits on several non-profit boards and advisory boards and is involved with several startups. Julian is the author of over 100 scholarly articles on topics ranging from the morality of free trade to the law and economics of NFTs.

Zaki Manian

Zaki Manian is a Co-Founder of Sommelier, the most powerful coprocessor yet for DeFi traders and Liquidity Providers. He’s also a Co-Founder of iqlusion, which provides infrastructure like a data center and a Cosmos validator for next-gen crypto technologies. Previously, Zaki helped build the Cosmos ecosystem, including launching the first public Cosmos testnet, and served as a director of Tendermint. Zaki has been a leading developer in the blockchain space since 2014, when he taught himself cryptography and began contributing to projects including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, and Tendermint. Having studied history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, Zaki’s skill sets in software engineering, programming, and computer science are largely self-taught.

Jason Potts

Jason Potts is an academic economist specializing in the economics of new technology and institutional evolution, and inventor of the field of institutional cryptoeconomics. He is one of the world’s leading innovation economists, winner of the Schumpeter Prize, a member of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia, and an editor of the Journal of Institutional Economics. He is founder and co-director of the Blockchain Innovation Hub at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Automated Decision-Making and Society. His extensive academic work is widely cited and influential in policy.

Dean Tribble

Dean Tribble co-designed the negotiation process and contract for the first smart contracting system, AMiX. As a Principal Architect at Microsoft, he co-designed the Midori distributed object-capability operating system. As founder and CTO for Agorics (acquired by Microsoft), he architected the brokerage information system for Schwab’s active traders and the WebMart electronic contract system for SunLabs. As CTO of VerifyValid and VP of Deluxe, his echeck systems have carried billions of dollars.

Silke Noa Elrifai

Silke is a crypto legal engineer and governance researcher with a passion for privacy tech. Silke has advised crypto projects since 2014 focusing on legal product design that is both pragmatic and dispute-resistant. From 2018-2022, she was the CLO of Gnosis, where she spearheaded, among other things, the legal design of Gnosis’ transformation into one of the largest DAOs to date, and the spin-off of CoW DAO and SAFE DAO. Silke’s current focus is supporting privacy activists and researching DAO’s emergent extra-national justice systems. Silke is admitted to practice law in England & Wales, New York and Berlin and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Executive Team

Ric Shreves

President

Ric brings 30 years of business management experience along with a strong background in technology and positive social impact. He’s been engaged with crypto and distributed ledger tech since 2012 and has published and spoken as an open source advocate since 2000. Ric has published over a dozen books on various tech topics and brings to the position a strong view of responsible technology as an enabler of positive impact in the world.

Bob Calabritto

VP, Marketing

Bob is the VP of Marketing at the Decentralized Cooperation Foundation (DCF), with over 20 years of experience in marketing and creative communications. He’s been involved in the crypto and blockchain space since 2016, where he’s held various executive leadership positions as CMO and Creative Director. He is the founder of IdentiBlock, a blockchain verifications service and full-service marketing agency.

Albena Kostova-Nikolova

Marketing Manager

Albena entered the crypto world back in 2016, when she discovered music copyright and ticketing startups leveraging blockchain technology. Before becoming the Marketing Manager at DCF, Albena worked for a Layer-1 blockchain, a decentralized commodity derivatives exchange, and a decentralized AI agents company. In 2023, Albena launched her blog and newsletter, Web3 + AI, exploring the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence. She also co-founded ETHSofia, Bulgaria’s first blockchain-focused conference and hackathon, which recently concluded its inaugural edition successfully.

Joyce Kim

Operations

Joyce Kim is an accomplished Business Development Operations Manager with expertise in scaling systems, automating workflows, and cross-functional collaboration. At Agoric, Joyce has successfully led the implementation of lead tracking systems, automated data tracking, and supported key partnerships through research and community engagement. With previous experience at BlockFi, Joyce played a critical role in streamlining operations and improving client experiences. A graduate of Smith College, Joyce holds a degree in Government and East Asian Studies

Hannah Hamilton

Capital Markets

Hannah is a Decentralized Financial Specialist helping guide DCF in various decisions including capital markets strategy, DeFi partnerships, and tokenomics advising. She has previously worked at DeFi protocols in Ethereum and at an institutional lender in NYC.