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 of Bank of Canada

Biography:

Scott Hendry works for the Bank of Canada, where he was appointed Senior Research Officer in the Economic and Financial Research Department in January 2025. He previously held several roles at the Bank of Canada, such as 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

Join Syed Bari as he introduces QuantLayer, a groundbreaking cybersecurity platform that
transforms how organizations protect their critical assets. Designed for IT, OT, and IoT
infrastructures, QuantLayer implements a patented multilayer security model that eliminates
the risks of traditional credentials through machine-based immutable identity
authentication.
In this session, Syed will demonstrate how QuantLayer:
● Enforces Zero Trust with certificate-less, passwordless authentication.
● Provides real-time anomaly and malware detection using advanced AI models.
● Secures device communications with Merkle Tree-based integrity validation.
● Delivers seamless network enrollment and device fingerprinting without human
intervention.
● Enhances regulatory compliance through robust policy enforcement and traceability.

Whether you’re safeguarding critical infrastructure or enabling secure digital transformation,
discover how QuantLayer provides unmatched protection against modern cyber threats.

Biography:

Syed Bari is a visionary entrepreneur and cybersecurity innovator, serving as the CEO and Founder of BDATA Solutions Inc. With over a decade of experience in advanced cybersecurity, IoT, and Zero Trust frameworks, Syed leads the development of
next-generation security platforms designed to meet the evolving challenges of modern digital infrastructure. Under his leadership, BDATA has pioneered QuantLayer, a patented multilayer cybersecurity platform that delivers real-time protection across OT, IT, and IoT
environments. Syed is passionate about building resilient, secure, and trusted networks through immutable identity authentication and Zero Trust principles.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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

Mike Silagadze of ether.fi

Biography:

Mike Silagadze is the Founder/CEO of ether.fi. He is a graduate of the University of Waterloo and previously found and exited Top Hat, a Toronto based HigherEd software. 

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Deborah (Deb) Clark-Forster of Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade

Biography:

As a Senior Account Executive with the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, Deborah (Deb) Clark-Forster has a passion for growing the burgeoning cybersecurity sector in Ontario. 

Deb has an incredibly unique role in the Ministry, as she has the privilege of supporting Ontario’s cybersecurity sector to expand their business domestically and internationally.

With over two decades of experience, Deb has developed a stellar reputation in client engagement and stakeholder relations within the investment and trade space. She also has a reputation as one of Ontario’s leading cybersecurity champions. 

Email:

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Jeremy Black of Avara

Biography:

Jeremy is the VP, Product at Avara, where he focuses on fiat on/off ramps and stablecoins.  Avara is the creator of Aave, the largest DeFi protocol by TVL, as well as Family wallet.

Jeremy founded one of the earliest neobanks in the US, which was acquired by Wave Accounting in 2019. Since leaving Wave in 2020, Jeremy has been working to support the fintech ecosystem in Canada, and building stablecoin-infused products globally.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Dr. Zehua Wang of Blockchain@UBC

Biography:

Dr. Zehua Wang was a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver and continued as a Postdoctoral Researcher. He is now a core-faculty member of Blockchain@UBC Research Centre, an Adjunct Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a Mentor of entrepreneurship@UBC. He has designed and been offering the technical blockchain courses for UBC's Graduate Blockchain Training Path Program since 2019. Before that, he was a Chief Scientist of RightMesh Project that applied blockchain technology in reducing they digital divide of northern Canada and received a commendation letter from the Hon. Justin Trudeau in 2018. He is interested in applying the cryptography, zero-knowledge proof, and game theories in the protocol designs and Web3 applications. His research focuses on improving the synergy and security of the decentralized multi-agent systems. The major research projects that he is currently working on include blockchain and smart contract security, zero-knowledge proof, and trustworthy and edge AI. He is a recipient of NSERC Discovery Grant and leading the Next Generation Secure and Collaborative Internet of Things (IoT) System project at UBC. He is now serving as an Area Editor of Elsevier Computer Communications and an Editorial Board Member of Elsevier Blockchain: Research and Applications.

Address:Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Mori Zihayat of Heisenberg Network

As AI agents grow more capable, their biggest bottleneck isn’t model performance; it’s access to relevant, real-time context. This talk introduces the emerging category of decentralized context infrastructure: how modular pipelines and DePIN networks can enable AI agents to reason and react at scale. I’ll share lessons from building the Heisenberg Network, where we transform fragmented data into structured verifiable context for AI agents.

Biography:

Morteza (Mori) Zihayat is a Canada Research Chair in Human-Centered AI and Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is also a core contributor  of Heisenberg Network, a decentralized data infrastructure protocol powering real-time AI agents.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Rami Karam of Tetra Trust

Biography:

Rami leads partnerships and go-to-market for Tetra. He brings two decades of experience as a founder and go-to-market leader for B2B SaaS & Fintech ventures, having scaled three ventures from launch to exit.

Address:Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Dr. Mohamad S. Sangari of Cybersecurity Research Lab of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University

Supply chain finance (SCF) and trade finance (TF) are financing mechanisms extensively used to provide flexibility for buyers and sellers to access working capital. However, SCF and TF transactions still rely on traditional, paper-based processes that offer low efficiency and are vulnerable to fraud. Other challenges include inefficient onboarding and verification of trading partners through the “know-your-customer” process conducted by banking institutions that prevent buyers and sellers from effective access to financing. Blockchain technology offers unique opportunities compared to predecessor technologies to address these challenges due to its decentralized properties that allow different TF/SCF participants to have joint control over how data is stored and accessed, as well as how new protocols are established. It provides greater transparency, automation, and efficiency in the integration of financial and physical supply chain flows. Despite such benefits that have motivated a growing number of blockchain-enabled SCF and TF projects in development, the adoption of the technology in this domain is still far from maturity. 

This session goes over an exploratory study of the driving forces and challenges of blockchain adoption in TF and SCF from the perspective of the state-of-the-practice. We have conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 practitioners representing banks, technology providers, consultants, and trading parties in various stages of blockchain implementation across North America, Asia, and Europe. The analysis has identified 16 drivers and 18 barriers across the technological, intra-organizational, inter-organizational, and external dimensions. The findings provide insights into the main issues that different stakeholders deal with and the technological and non-technological considerations that need to be prioritized for successful blockchain efforts in TF and SCF. The study has been recently published in Industrial Management & Data Systems (available at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/imds-03-2023-0197/full/html). This research has been conducted by Mohamad Sadegh Sangari, Atefeh Mashatan, and Kar Wai So from the Cybersecurity Research Lab at Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Biography:

Dr. Mohamad S. Sangari is a Research Associate at the Cybersecurity Research Lab of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. He has conducted several studies on blockchain adoption across various organizational and individual user levels, including areas such as blockchain-enabled supply chain systems, consumer crypto-payment services, and decentralized personal health records. His expertise lies in the socio-technical analysis of emerging technologies, organizational cybersecurity management, and privacy and cybersecurity in human-computer interactions, using multivariate statistical methods, machine learning, natural language processing, optimization, and decision analysis techniques. His previous works have been published in several prestigious journals such as Computers in Industry, Psychology & Marketing, and Industrial Management & Data Systems. 

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Zhiyang Chen of University of Toronto

Replicating historical exploits on blockchain platforms is essential for
testing emerging real-time defense mechanisms. However, existing tools
primarily fork blockchain states and replay original exploit transactions
rather than replicating these hacks in new blocks. This paper introduces a
methodology for replicating exploit transactions across EVM-compatible
blockchains, enabling testing of new security measures. By addressing key
challenges in address mapping, contract deployment and storage
configuration, our approach successfully replicates 18 security challenge
exploit transactions and 12 real-world exploit transactions. This
evaluation results confirm the methodology’s effectiveness in recreating
both controlled security challenges and real-world exploits, marking a
significant advancement in smart contract security research and testing.

Biography:

Zhiyang Chen is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto, supervised by Prof. Fan Long. He currently also works as a Research Engineer at
Zircuit, specializing in zkRollups and sequencer-level security since May 2024. His research focuses on zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs), program analysis for smart contracts, and blockchain security. His broader interests encompass programming languages, software engineering, cryptography, and decentralized systems.
Previously, Zhiyang served as a Research Engineer at Quantstamp, where he contributed to smart contract auditing and automated vulnerability detection from 2023 to 2024. His work emphasizes enhancing blockchain security and advancing smart contract verification techniques to strengthen decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Bernice Cheung of Environics Research

Biography:

Bernice Cheung is a seasoned marketing research and management consulting professional with over 20 years of experience across financial services, consumer goods, retail, and healthcare. At Environics Research, she leads the firm’s flagship  Canadian Fintech Study—an ongoing exploration of consumer attitudes toward financial technology, open banking, and innovation. Her research delivers strategic insights into how Canadians engage with emerging financial tools, helping fintechs, investors, and policymakers make informed, client-focused decisions.

In addition to her fintech expertise, Bernice oversees a diverse portfolio of syndicated and custom research projects spanning retail banking, payments, insurance, and wealth management. A recognized thought leader, she is a frequent speaker at industry events such as the Fintech Summit, Payments Canada Summit, Open Banking Expo, and Women in Payments, where she is known for translating complex data into meaningful, actionable insights.

Bernice holds an MBA from the Ivey Business School and an Honours Bachelor of Commerce from the DeGroote School of Business.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Godfrey Jonas of George Brown College

Building a decentralized platform that transforms how people access financial resources thereby promoting financial inclusion.

Biography:

Godfrey Jonas graduated from the George Brown College Blockchain Development postgraduate certificate (the first certificate of this kind in Canada, since 2018).

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Elena Sinelnikova of Metis Foundation and MetisL2

In this bold and energizing presentation, Elena Sinelnikova calls time on the endless loop of crypto hype cycles and urges the Web3 community to confront its greatest challenge yet: artificial intelligence. She unveils a transformative dual-chain technology built for the AI era, and a philosophical and technical framework that puts human-aligned AI under decentralized governance. More than just a roadmap, this speech is a call to action for builders and visionaries to help steer the future—before it steers us.

Biography:

Elena Sinelnikova is the Director and Decentralization Coordinator at Metis Foundation and MetisL2.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada