The MENA region is home to some of the most innovative work and forward thinkers in the entire blockchain industry. It’s an area where we’ve already seen especially noteworthy excitement for Casper, and where CasperLabs is establishing a growing presence. To that end, we are pleased to announce that Saeed Hareb Al Darmaki has joined as Managing Director of MENA for CasperLabs.
Saeed has an unparalleled track record working across the technology and financial services sectors in his native UAE and beyond. In addition to his role with CasperLabs, he is co-founder at the Alphabit Digital Currency Fund and Binary Financial, and having served as the former Chairman of eGovern blockchain consultancy, Saeed has an extensive operations background in our industry and will play a vital role in expanding Casper’s footprint in MENA and beyond.
Saeed’s appointment is the latest milestone in what has already been a wildly productive 2021 for CasperLabs. With Q1 in the books, we wanted to briefly look back at all that has already happened, while recognizing that we have even more exciting days ahead!
- In January, the final Highway Consensus Protocol Paper was published. It’s the most detailed technical overview of Casper’s advanced proof-of-stake model that directly addresses the scalability and performance issues that have hindered broader blockchain adoption to date.
- In tandem with Highway, we publicly shared results of the Trail of Bits security audit of Highway, which did not produce high severity results and showed proper use of security hygiene.
- In January, we also announced our partnership with DAO-builder Metis to bring performance, scale, and security to dapps, economies, and communities; and our enterprise solution with patent technology provider IPwe to transform the way global patent registries are managed and stored.
- In February, we announced our partnership with HeraSoft to enhance asset tracing and ownership on the Casper Network, starting with gold-backed asset token Anthem Gold.
- That same month, CasperLabs partnered with China’s Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) to accelerate the adoption of the Casper Network among developers around the world.
- CasperLabs also shared its work with PlasmaPay and PlasmaFinance to enable retail access to the CSPR token and provide wallet infrastructure to users.
- In March, we announced how CasperLabs will support ACDX in allowing users to predict and guard against gas prices in derivatives trading on the platform. In March, we also announced:
- Our partnership with Covalent which makes on-chain data within the Casper Network more accessible to businesses and consumers. The partnership with Covalent will begin with intellectual property and patent assets on Casper, a use case pioneered by IPwe.
- Our partnership with BitGo which provides secure asset custody for the CSPR token. The partnership continues Casper’s commitment to provide enterprises, developers, and users with the most secure custody solutions.
- And in the spirit of CasperLabs’ expanding global footprint, we also recently welcomed Cathy Zhu, CasperLabs’ new Managing Director of China.
This was all just a precursor to Q1’s main event: Casper’s long-awaited mainnet launch. Here’s to an even more exciting quarter (and year) to come!
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