Mark MacDonald

Mark’s presentation will focus on the application of trust-enabled technology to improve the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of public financial management.  Using case examples from the international development sector, the presentation will discuss current leading practice and present a vision for how the future will move towards a new model of public investment where impact drives public value.

Biography:

Mark MacDonald is leader of EY’s public money sector globally and is sponsor of EY’s dedicated blockchain applications in the public budgeting and international development space.  He has a 25+ year career advising governments in multiple jurisdictions developing and executing strategies to improve the fiscal, economic, and service competitiveness of the public sector.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Wee Kee Toh of J.P. Morgan

Wee Kee will share insights from a recent report by MIT DCI and Kinexys by J.P. Morgan on Payment Tokens. He will discuss their approach to designing a payment token, capability gaps that need to be addressed, their approach towards token standards, and how they see the ecosystem coming together.

Biography:

Wee Kee is Executive Director and Global Head of Business Architecture for Kinexys Digital Payments at J.P. Morgan, where he is responsible for architecting business capabilities for digital payments, and developing strategies to address current needs and capture future opportunities. He works closely with the product team to develop product vision and strategies, and with the technology team on aligning technical solutions with business needs.

Prior to joining J.P. Morgan in 2022, Wee Kee was the Specialist Leader for Distributed Ledger Technology at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and led Project Ubin, a collaborative industry project exploring the use of blockchain and DLT for clearing and settlement of payments and securities. He was also Advisor at the BIS Innovation Hub, where he led Project Dunbar with a vision of enabling interoperable CBDCs and connected multi-CBDC platforms.

Address:New York, New York, United States

Andreas Veneris of University of Toronto

Biography:

Andreas Veneris is a Connaught Scholar and Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, cross-appointed with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In the past, he held joint faculty positions with the Athens University of Economics and Business (Dept. of Informatics, 2006-
16) and with the University of Tokyo  (Dept. of ECE, 2010-11). For more than 20 years he worked in the field of CAD for VLSI synthesis, verification and debugging using formal methods where he published more than 120 conference/journal papers.

Today, he focuses on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), mechanism/economic design of distributed systems, formal methods for smart contract verification, and techno-legal blockchain policy/regulatory questions. Prof. Veneris has received a 10-year Best Paper Retrospective Award, five other best paper awards and holds three patents. He was a member of the team in the first webcast ever (37th Grammy Awards, 1995), an event acknowledged by the American Congress.

In February 2021 his work with the Bank of Canada became public, proposing Canada's Central Bank Digital Loonie -- the first work of its kind that presents a comprehensive technological, regulatory/legal and economic model for a central bank digital currency. In 2021 he was honored to be acknowledged for his contributions on a classified report by the Hoover Institution, prefaced by former United States Secretary of the State Condoleezza Rice and co-authored by an extensive list of prominent world-thinkers. This report was released on March 1, 2022 titled as "Digital Currencies: The US, China, And The World At A Crossroads". A week later US President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order following most of the recommendations of this report. Today he engages with many G20 Central Banks on the topic of CBDCs, and his work has been featured in publications by the IMF and BIS, among other.

Email:

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Paul Samson of Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)

Biography:

Paul Samson is President of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), an independent Canadian think tank working on international governance with a focus on policy solutions for the digital era. For more than 20 years with the Government of Canada, including at the deputy minister level, Paul worked at Finance Canada, Global Affairs Canada, the Privy Council Office and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Among other positions, Paul served as Canada’s deputy for finance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and as co-chair of the G20 Framework Working Group on the global economy. Earlier in his career, he worked at several think tanks and universities in Geneva, Washington DC, Oslo, and Boston. Paul completed a doctorate in international relations at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and his undergrad at the University of British Columbia. He completed post-doctoral studies at Harvard University and was a research associate at the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs.

Address:Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Scott Hendry

Biography:

Scott Hendry was appointed Senior Research Officer in the Economic and Financial Research Department in January 2025. He previously held the role of Senior Special Director, Financial Technology (FinTech) in the Banking and Payments Department (BAP) from 2016 to 2024. Before that he was the Senior Research Director for the Funds Management and Banking Department (FBD) and the Financial Markets Department (FMD). His personal research has focused on central bank digital currency, electronic payments, price discovery in the Canadian government bond market, and central bank communication. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Western Ontario.

Email:

Address:Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Nassib Kazoun of Mastercard

Biography:

Nassib is an experienced professional in the blockchain and digital asset space with a diverse background spanning banking and fintech. Previously, Nassib worked at Scotiabank as part of the blockchain team, where they spearheaded initiatives to drive education, adoption, and the deployment of blockchain-based applications across the bank. Following this, Nassib joined Mastercard’s Data & Services team, where he leads the blockchain and digital asset consulting teams, collaborating with clients to understand the rapidly evolving space and develop innovative use cases and product strategies within the digital asset ecosystem. A strong advocate for stablecoins, Nassib believes in their potential to reshape the global financial landscape.

Email:

Address:Toronto, Prince Edward Island, Canada

Douglas Heintzman of Blockchain Research Institute

Biography:

Douglas Heintzman is the Chief Catalyst at the Blockchain Research Institute.  He works with businesses and governments around the world to help them with understand and plan for the impact of Web3 technologies, (blockchain, AI, IoT and extended realities) on their organizations. He is also the CEO of Syncura, a cognitive AI process automation startup. He has been an entrepreneur/founder, COO, management consultant, board member, international standards leader, and strategy executive.

He has also been a policy advisor and expert witness for the European Community, US and Canadian governments on technology, standards, and intellectual property.  He holds five patents, sits on the board of directors for several companies and nonprofits, and advises many startups.

Email:

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Henry Kim of BlockchainLab, Schulich School of Business

Biography:

Having founded blockchain.lab in 2016, Prof. Kim is one of the most prominent blockchain academics in Canada. He is the Co-Lead on a $525,000 research project on “Digital Currencies” that is engaging academia, Bank of Canada, financial institutions, and startups to investigate, blockchain, cryptocurrencies and web3, digital payments, and central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Email:

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Steven Karpenko of Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade

Biography:

Steven Karpenko is Team Lead of the Fintech and Business Services Unit of the Advanced Technologies Branch of the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

Besides his work in advanced technologies, Steven has developed training programs to assist Ontario’s exporters, is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Bishop’s University and has authored several books on leadership and business development.

Steven’s consulting and advisory career spans a wide variety of business and industry sectors including Fintech, digital health, advanced manufacturing, logistics, retail, eCommerce and information technology.

Steven is a Certified International Trade Professional and Six Sigma Black Belt, with an MBA from York University in Toronto and Bachelor of Business Administration from Bishop's University in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

Email:

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Peter Liber of Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade

Biography:

I have been with the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation & Trade for the past 14 years.  I'm currently working in the Innovation, Scale-up and Regional Economic Development Division with the Advanced Technologies Branch as a Senior Account Executive responsible for Financial Services and Fintech.

I work to help local companies scale and also help bring foreign direct investment by promoting Ontario’s existing strengths and enhancing its reputation as a destination of choice for foreign and domestic private sector investments. I'm also involved with foreign trade missions; Ontario based accelerators and incubators as well as technology start-ups, industry organizations and the Angel Investor community.

I have over 35 years of experience in Technology Sales and Marketing and have worked for companies from around the globe, with a focus on Silicon Valley, CA and Dallas, TX.  I've also worked as a Manufacturers Representative, Sales Manager, Consultant and Country Manager for technology companies of all sizes.

Email:

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Marc Lijour of IEEE, Exaion, Creative Emergy

Biography:

Marc Lijour is an entrepreneur, researcher, and educator on a mission to unlock human potential in a world increasingly governed by data and software. At Exaion, he is actively working with the financial services industry to accelerate, automate, and secure data processing, leveraging the team expertise in the operation of large-scale critical infrastructure. Exaion helps Fortune 500 and tier 1 banks such as Socgen, Goldman Sachs, and BNP Paribas achieve concrete business outcomes by leveraging AI, Quantum, Blockchain, Digital Twins, and other high performance computing workloads while reducing energy consumption and maintaining the lowest carbon footprint in industry.

Marc is committed to sharing his knowledge and passion for innovation. He’s teaching strategy to his MBA students. He’s advising startups in the Web3 and the Quantum streams at the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) between HEC Montréal and the University of Toronto. He serves on the board of non-profit organizations in the tech industry such as TechConnex and NorthstarDAO. 

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Maharshi Patel of Blockscope

Biography:

Maharshi Patel, an ex-Citibank engineer, specialized in real-time data pipelines for infrastructure monitoring. In 2021, he ventured into Web3 with an on-chain game. Frustrated by the lack of quality blockchain data tools, he co-founded Blockscope, a forensic data platform for EVM blockchains, where he leads as CTO.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Shashank of CredShields

Biography:

Shashank brings over a decade of expertise in uncovering vulnerabilities, reporting them to reputable institutions, conducting pentests, and overseeing responsible disclosure and bug bounty initiatives. His contributions have earned him a place in the Security Hall of Fame for Apple (CVE-2017-7063, CVE-2017-7062, CVE-2017-2458), Twitter, Google, Facebook, Dropbox, and more than 40 other organizations, showcasing his ability to identify critical security issues.

Apart from bug bounties, Shashank has worked as a security analyst for HackerOne and conducted over 200 pentests with Cobalt. He was also a security engineer for the Web3 company Avalanche before founding his venture, CredShields, where he is building SolidityScan, an AI-powered smart contract security scanner. 

Peyman Momeni of Fairblock

Biography:

Peyman Momeni is the founder and CEO of Fairblock, a blockchain infrastructure company building confidential‑computing rails for credible DeFi and AI economies. His research career spans secure multi‑party computation, DeFi, and game theory at the University of Waterloo’s Cryptography, Security & Privacy Lab. Prior to Fairblock, Peyman led ZK and intent‑based protocol research at Metis, advanced multimodal machine‑learning methods at the HKUST Centre for Artificial Intelligence, and engineered privacy‑preserving inference pipelines for Snapp.

Soosan Naderi of Exaion

Biography:

Soosan is the Innovation Lead in Blockchain and Cybersecurity at Exaion and a distinguished blockchain architect and researcher with extensive experience in corporate R&D sectors, and higher education, holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, specializing in blockchain technology and security, from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). Highly skilled in blockchain networks, dApps, Web3, Ethereum's network, consensus algorithms, and cryptography. Significant contributions have been made to the field through research and teaching, alongside practical experience as a Security Analyst and Research Assistant at FUM Cert Labs, focusing on penetration testing and malware detection projects for five years.

She is also teaching computer science at Humber Polytechnic and George Brown College.

Email:

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Prateek Saxena of Hygge Energy

Biography:

Prateek Saxena is a visionary leader in the energy sector, renowned for his innovative approaches to cleantech and sustainability. With over three decades of experience, Prateek has spearheaded many groundbreaking projects, from designing Ontario’s first 300 MW demand response system to leading smart grid initiatives across the USA. At Hygge Energy, he leverages P2P energy trading and carbon emission tracking to address global energy issues. Prateek is committed to driving sustainable change and uplifting underserved communities through technology. A sought-after speaker at international forums, he has earned recognition on numerous international platforms including G20 and the International Energy Agency among several others.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Mujtaba Khan

Biography:

Energy researcher bridging AI + Web3 to stabilize grids, empower communities, and build equitable energy infrastructure for a carbon-negative future.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Adit Patel of Blockscope

Biography:

Adit Patel is the CEO of Blockscope, a Web3 research and forensics company dedicated to making on-chain data analysis accessible and intuitive. Previously, Adit built various blockchain games and projects, where he encountered firsthand the complexity of interacting with on-chain data. This challenge led him to create Blockscope, a platform designed to simplify crypto investigations and provide powerful tools for understanding blockchain activity.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Jonathan Chang of Nibiru

Biography:

Unique Divine is the CEO and Co-Founder of Nibiru, a Layer 1 blockchain platform leveraging a dual-VM architecture with both EVM and Wasm for high scalability and performance. He holds both a Master's in Applied Mathematics and a Bachelor's in Physics from Columbia University, where he self-funded his education through algorithmic trading. Prior to founding Nibiru, Unique served as a Senior Software Engineer at Sommelier Protocol, where he led the development of automated trading strategies on-chain. He also worked as a Data Scientist at IBM, focusing on AI and machine learning projects, and as an Artificial Intelligence Engineer at ApTSi, where he developed machine learning applications to automate healthcare workflows.

Ruairi Hanafin of Firinne Capital

A panel brought to you by DeFi Toronto, a community monthly rendez-vous since 2019.

Biography:

Ruairi is an entrepreneur, investor, and early proponent of blockchain technology. He co-founded Canadian agricultural technology startup Grain Discovery. He has held positions in research and portfolio engineering in the quantitative portfolio management teams at CPP Investments, where he also founded the blockchain research group.

He is the CIO of Firinne Capital.

He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Trinity College, University of Dublin.

Chinmay Patel of Basket

A panel brought to you by DeFi Toronto, a community monthly rendez-vous since 2019.

Biography:

Chinmay Patel is a tech leader, public speaker, and a serial entrepreneur with over a
decade of team building and product development experience in crypto under his belt. He is
currently the Co-founder and CEO of Basket.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Victor Li of Firinne Capital

A panel brought to you by DeFi Toronto, a community monthly rendez-vous since 2019.

Biography:

Victor Li is an early crypto adopter, investor and educator. He conducts fundamental research on crypto assets for Firinne Capital. He co-founded DeFi Toronto in 2019 and taught a blockchain course at York University. Previously Victor specialized in investment research at CPP Investments and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.  He is a CFA Charterholder.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

David Barreto of Starknet Foundation

Join David Barreto, Developer Advocate at Starknet Foundation, for a deep dive into Starknet, a cutting-edge Layer 2 scaling solution leveraging Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology for secure, verifiable computation. In this talk, David will explore the fundamentals of Starknet, the power of Cairo (its native language), and the groundbreaking potential of Starknet’s dual settlement with Ethereum and Bitcoin. Whether you're a blockchain enthusiast, developer, or curious learner, this session will provide a clear and engaging introduction to how Starknet is transforming blockchain scalability, security, and efficiency.

Biography:

David Barreto is a Developer Advocate at the Starknet Foundation. With a background in electronics and systems engineering, he brings a multidisciplinary approach to blockchain development. David leads Starknet’s main educational program, contributing to the growth and adoption of the ecosystem. Based in Toronto, he is passionate about software development, blockchain, and education.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Syed Bari of BDATA

Colton Dillion of Postquant Labs

Colton Dillion, one of the developers of Quip Network, outlines various attacks that become possible with the advent of sufficiently mature quantum computers and the ways that current understandings of the likely attack vectors can set up networks for failure with their quantum-resistance planning. He proposes one approach to gradually upgrade only the network participants who require the additional safety guarantees and to avoid some of the challenges of a hard fork proposal.

Biography:

Colton Dillion, Founder & CEO, Postquant Labs - An applied mathematician, crypto native, and experienced startup operator with a proven history being first to market in financial innovation. His past experience includes Cofounder at Gentlemen Labs (DEGEN, $2B ATH), CEO and CTO at Hedgehog (YC S21), Global Director and CMO at Acorns ($2.2B ATH). He is currently developing frictionless upgrade patterns for blockchains to become quantum-resistant at Quip Network.

Address:Casper, Wyoming, United States