San Francisco, CA; April 1, 2022
Mina Foundation welcomes as its Chief Operating Officer Kurt Hemecker, former Chief of Staff and Head of Internal Business Operations and HR at Diem Networks (formerly Libra). Prior to his role at Facebook-backed Diem, Kurt was a Senior Director at PayPal responsible for several significant global initiatives with mobile network carriers. Kurt joins the Mina community on the heels of the Mina Ecosystem’s $92M raise, led by FTX Ventures and Three Arrows Capital, marking the next push for partnership development to further the growth of the Mina ecosystem.
Kurt Hemecker, now COO of the Mina Foundation, expressed, “With their holistic zero knowledge product suite including zkApps, zkBridges, and zkOracles, Mina is positioned to become the powerhouse for privacy and security in Web3. Mina has continuously shown signs of massive potential with one of the most efficient ZK proving technologies out there, world-class teams, and unparalleled success at building a global community. I’m incredibly excited to join the Mina Foundation team and build on the tremendous momentum behind the project.”
Prior to joining the Mina Foundation, Kurt Hemecker was part of the initial team at Diem Association where he had several leadership roles within the organization during his tenure. There he played a key role in building the organization’s charter before orchestrating the efforts to start the first business development team, incorporating and working with members that spanned enterprise, blockchain native, social impact, payments and venture capital organizations. In his previous roles, Kurt has also developed partnership deals that enabled mobile payments in over 40 countries and with 180 carriers in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. As part of his role as Chief Operating Officer at Mina Foundation, Kurt will be focused on building out the business development and operations arm of the organization.
“We are incredibly pleased to welcome Kurt Hemecker to the Mina Foundation and the broader Mina ecosystem,” said Evan Shapiro, CEO of Mina Foundation. “His expertise in global business operations and relationships will be invaluable to us as we continue to grow the Mina ecosystem, bringing programmable privacy to Web3.”
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About Mina Protocol
Mina is the world’s lightest blockchain, powered by participants. Rather than apply brute computing force, Mina uses advanced cryptography and recursive zk-SNARKs to design an entire blockchain that is about 22kb, the size of a couple of tweets. It is the first layer-1 to enable efficient implementation and easy programmability of zero knowledge smart contracts (zkApps). With its unique privacy features and ability to connect to any website, Mina is building a private gateway between the real world and crypto—and the secure, democratic future we all deserve.
