On August 19th, at the White House Science and Technology Leaders Summit, Chainlink founder Sergey Nazarov stood beside President Trump, delivering a speech on the impact of tokenization on the US economy, with the chairs of the SEC and CFTC also present in the room. The weight of those on stage spoke for itself.
Compared to the more flamboyant and eccentric figures in the crypto space, Nazarov's growth trajectory seems closer to that of ordinary people. He has shown us how a humanities graduate without a powerful background or top-tier technical expertise can, through steadiness, trial and error, and constant adjustment, step by step reach a core position in the industry. For those feeling somewhat lost about the future or interested in oracle technology, his story is worth a look.
A Russian Boy Who Took Things Apart
Nazarov was born in the Soviet Union in 1986 to parents who were both engineers. He first sat in front of a keyboard at the age of five. Although he didn't ultimately pursue a technical career path, influenced more or less by his family environment, he learned how to understand technical problems and how to collaborate efficiently with technical personnel. In his childhood, Nazarov was also obsessed with one thing: taking things apart and then putting them back together again. The family's television and vacuum cleaner became his toys. It was perhaps during this hands-on process that the philosophy of 'deconstructing complex problems and providing solutions' was planted in his mind.
In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union underwent dramatic changes. Many state-owned research institutions and engineering units were dissolved. Jobs that people thought they would have for life were shattered overnight, and prices spun completely out of control. In this historical context, emigration became a common choice for that generation of engineers and intellectuals—Nazarov's family emigrated to New York. Years later, Aave founder Stani Kulechov, who would collaborate extensively with him in the DeFi and RWA sectors, moved with his family from Estonia to Helsinki, Finland. In a sense, their starting points share a similar historical backdrop.
Meeting a Mentor Who Changed His Life
Like most families that value education, Nazarov's parents also emphasized moral character. In 2007, Sergey Nazarov graduated from New York University, majoring in Philosophy and Management. Shortly after graduation, he entered the investment and entrepreneurial circles, working under Lawrence Lenihan, who became a profoundly influential mentor.
Lenihan was not a traditional professor focused on academic research, but rather a practitioner who was hired by the university as a guest lecturer after achieving success in the industry. His career began at IBM. He started his entrepreneurial journey in 1996, co-founding the venture capital firm Pequot Ventures, which later evolved into FirstMark Capital—this firm is considered upper-tier in the New York VC scene, having invested in companies like Pinterest, Shopify, and Riot Games (later acquired by Tencent for $400 million).
After graduating, Nazarov joined FirstMark Capital, led by Lenihan. Starting from an entry-level position, he grew into an analyst, formally entering New York's core venture capital circle. Simultaneously, around 2010, he served as a teaching assistant for a technology entrepreneurship course Lenihan taught at the NYU Stern School of Business. Based on his public resume, it's highly likely that Nazarov gained Lenihan's appreciation and, consequently, a larger platform during this period. However, Lenihan didn't hand him resources blindly. From an intern to an analyst, Nazarov evidently went through tests and built up experience, gaining recognition step by step before earning a larger stage.
Wanting to Start a Business? First, Observe.
While having a mentor's help was undoubtedly important, Nazarov deeply understood the principle of self-reliance. During his tenure at FirstMark, he embarked on his first entrepreneurial venture: founding a small company similar to Airbnb called ExistLocal Inc., which aimed to help users wanting a deep experience of New York find individuals willing to provide services, creating a peer-to-peer platform for local experiences. This venture was relatively unremarkable, more of a trial run, but it helped Nazarov accumulate the courage and experience of starting a business.
After dabbling in entrepreneurship for a while, Nazarov left his job at FirstMark Capital to devote himself fully to building his own company. He turned his gaze back to his homeland, Russia, and founded the venture capital firm QED Capital. He aimed to bring the methodologies he learned in the New York VC scene—how to screen projects, how to help founders refine their direction, how to participate in board decisions—to the relatively nascent Russian tech teams. He wanted to take a gentler, more founder-friendly approach compared to traditional VCs who often prioritize control.
Unfortunately, Nazarov's reformist ideals for the tech venture capital scene didn't leave many publicly traceable investment successes. But the root cause might not have been the failure of his attempt. Rather, while looking at others' projects every day, he had already identified a specific technical problem in his mind. The more he looked, the more he realized no one was solving it, so he decided to get involved himself, diving into the trenches.
From Investing in Others to Solving His Own Problem
It's worth noting that as early as the QED Capital period, this entrepreneur who was always juggling multiple roles also rented GPU mining rigs to mine Bitcoin, and it was quite profitable—the initial investment was recouped within the first week of a three-month rental period. It's safe to say Nazarov's interest in the crypto industry began much earlier than many imagine.
Around 2014, Nazarov shifted his entrepreneurial focus back to New York, trying three directions within a year: first, a brief attempt at the decentralized email project CryptaMail; then a pivot to Secure Asset Exchange (SAE); and subsequently, founding SmartContract—the predecessor to Chainlink.
Among these three projects, CryptaMail was just a brief exploration. The focus was on Secure Asset Exchange and SmartContract. These two projects shared a co-founder—Steve Ellis. Ellis also graduated from New York University, earning a degree in Computer Science in 2010, making him Nazarov's junior. After graduation, he worked as a software engineer at Pivotal Labs, focusing on the development of payment automation systems—a lineage that aligns with the later oracle network capable of automatic settlement and payment triggering. In 2014, Ellis and Nazarov hit it off. One took charge of technology as CTO, the other as CEO, a division of labor that continues to this day.
A DeFi Prototype That Arrived Too Early
If we compare the two startup projects to their children, then the firstborn, Secure Asset Exchange, was in some ways a classic case of an idea being too ahead of its time for a market that wasn't ready. But understanding Secure Asset Exchange helps better understand Nazarov's subsequent thinking and provides better context for RWA and DeFi.
In 2014, Ethereum was still in Vitalik Buterin's conception and preparation phase (officially launched in 2015). The market had a chain with relatively similar functionality called Nxt. The goal of Secure Asset Exchange was to allow users to purchase digital assets on the Nxt chain directly with their BTC, without needing to download the Nxt client. Furthermore, these assets could be designed as 'crypto debt,' 'crypto equity,' or other on-chain contracts with automated profit distribution mechanisms, allowing users to automatically receive returns according to pre-agreed rules.
Looking at it today, this idea resembles a hybrid of DeFi, RWA, and on-chain securitization. But in 2014, it faced an awkward problem: there simply weren't enough high-quality assets on-chain for users to invest in—it was easier to just hold onto BTC. Secondly, the Nxt ecosystem itself was too early, lacking sufficient developers and users to create network effects. For multiple reasons, in early 2016, after about a year and a half of operation, Secure Asset Exchange shut down.
The Real Problem: How to Connect Data Properly
Compared to Secure Asset Exchange, SmartContract, founded a few months later, seemed to have found the right direction from the start. It secured seed funding led by Underscore VC with participation from Data Collective, money enough to sustain the team for a considerable period.
At the time, Ellis and Nazarov had already begun writing smart contracts for large financial institutions and insurance companies. But in the delivery process, they repeatedly encountered a problem: how could on-chain contracts connect to external data and APIs? They identified this market gap and gradually shifted their focus to oracles that transmit external information.
But the underlying technology of oracles is largely similar. How could they gain the trust of banks? Their solution: compete in contests to earn the most coveted ticket into the traditional financial world. In 2016, SmartContract participated in the Industry Challenge hosted by Innotribe under SWIFT—an open competition for fintech companies across the industry, focusing on how to use blockchain to transform securities lifecycle management.
SmartContract ultimately won and was invited to present at SWIFT's annual Sibos conference, showcasing an automated bond lifecycle solution based on smart contracts.
The following year, at the 2017 Sibos conference, Nazarov led the team again, delivering a more advanced live demonstration: using an oracle to feed external LIBOR interest rate data into a smart contract, automatically calculating the interest for a bond, and then generating an ISO 20022-compliant message to send a settlement instruction through the SWIFT network. This is also considered the starting point of Chainlink's relationship with SWIFT. Over the following years, Nazarov continued to participate in Sibos, and Chainlink gradually became one of the banking sector's most important partners.
One could even argue that if the crypto industry were ever proven to be a false proposition, the services Chainlink provides would still be needed by large financial institutions—because it solves not just the problem of on-chain/off-chain information exchange but also speeds up settlement. Traditional settlement systems require confirmation through multiple intermediary layers: the initiating bank, custodian bank, clearing house, counterparty custodian bank, counterparty bank. Each step involves separate bookkeeping, reconciliation, and confirmation, with many steps only processed in batches during fixed weekday hours. By introducing an oracle network, multiple nodes can read data synchronously, cross-check it, and simultaneously push settlement instructions once confirmed, no longer constrained by banking hours.
Today, Chainlink has established public collaborations with a series of major financial institutions including SWIFT, DTCC (The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation), Euroclear (one of Europe's largest securities infrastructure providers), Clearstream (a securities infrastructure under Deutsche Börse Group), Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and more.
Afterword
After chronicling the first half of Nazarov's journey, what was most enlightening for me was not how important the concept of the 'oracle' is, but rather that the path he chose is, to a large extent, replicable:
First, enter a sufficiently good environment—it could be a school, a company, or a community. Do the work in front of you well, earn recognition, and from that, gain mentors willing to lend a hand, then leverage that to move to a larger platform.
Throughout this process, continuously accumulate experience and learn from trial and error. Even if, like with ExistLocal, QED Capital, CryptaMail, and Secure Asset Exchange, you pay plenty of 'tuition fees,' you can still find the market's real needs and discover a direction you're willing to commit to deeply.
Once you find the direction, earn your industry entry ticket through tangible competitions. Then, persist with it year after year, solving the real problems practitioners face, instead of expending all your energy on storytelling, creating buzzwords, and marketing.
This is probably why I maintain some trust in the industry. Even with many people singing its dirge and many others muddying the waters, there are always individuals investing their youth and intelligence here, trying to solve one real problem after another.
And Nazarov is just one of them.
