Top programmers from Facebook's wallet switch to A16z's cryptocurrency fund
The engineers will provide technical guidance to portfolio firms of Andreessen Horowitz.
Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), a renowned venture capital firm focused on the cryptocurrency
space, has acquired two of the most senior engineers working on Facebook's digital currency
project for its digital asset fund.
According to a CNBC story published Oct. 11, Nassim Eddequiouaq and Riyaz Faizullabhoy
have left Facebook for A16z after working on the social media giant's Novi digital wallet
for two years (formerly Calibra).
Faizullabhoy will serve as CTO of A16z's crypto section, while Eddequiouaq will serve as CIO.
According to Faizullabhoy:
"Andreessen Horowitz has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the advancement of the entire
crypto ecosystem over the last decade, and we jumped at the opportunity to join their
elite team and give technical support to their fast increasing portfolio."
Marc Andreessen, founder of A16z, has served on the board of directors of Facebook since
2008 – one year prior to the founding of Andreessen Horowitz.
Anthony Albanese, A16z's chief operating officer, stated that the firm's new hires will have
a larger "potential to impact the crypto ecosystem on a very broad scale" in their new jobs.
"They're going to advise our portfolio companies and procedures on how to build the most secure
and sophisticated systems possible," Albanese explained, noting that their former jobs at
Facebook were considerably more "particular.
Eddequiouaq and Faizullabhoy also worked at cryptocurrency custody business Anchorage
prior to joining the Novi project at Facebook.
The pair are not the first developers to depart Facebook's digital currency project, with
Novi head of strategy Morgan Beller joining venture capital firm NFX in September 2020
and co-founder Kevin Weil joining satellite imagery business Planet Labs in March.
While Andreessen Horowitz is widely regarded as a leading crypto venture capital firm due
to its early and successful investments in Coinbase, Compound, and OpenSea, the firm
has recently come under fire for the manner in which its governance voting rights for
top decentralised exchange Uniswap were distributed.
While A16z has divested its votes to university law schools, including the Harvard Law Blockchain
and Fintech Initiative (BFI), the Harvard BFI issued a governance proposal in May asking
for the establishment of a decentralised financial lobbying entity termed the DeFi Education
Fund (DEF).
The proposal advocated transferring $20 million in UNI to the group to fund its operations,
with the group guaranteeing that the tokens would be gradually sold over a four- to five-year
period.
However, less than two weeks after the proposal passed and the tokens were handed to the DEF
in early June, the DEF shocked the DeFi community by abruptly announcing it had liquidated $10
million worth of UNI, drawing condemnation from both the DEF and A16z.
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