Good morning. Robert Leshner has built one of the essential cornerstones of decentralized finance (DeFi) with Compound, a lending protocol. That’s important. As are the series of investments he’s made in fledging DeFi projects through a “scout” fund he co-founded, Robot Ventures. But you might say his affect and personality are just as influential. In late September, when the autonomous Compound protocol was kajiggered to mistakenly pay out $80 million worth of COMP, Leshner handled the situation poorly – at first. He briefly threatened users with Federal action, until collecting himself and asking people who erroneously received Compound payments to reimburse the protocol. It was, as Leshner says, a “moral dilemma” and shows how even when robots run the code, humans are still central players.
What do you expect to accomplish in 2021?
“In 2022, Compound Labs plans to grow Compound Treasury into a primary bridge between traditional financial markets and DeFi, and release new research/products for the Compound community to use, modify, and adopt.”
The Complete List: CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2021
