Joining Paradigm

I'm thrilled to share that I've joined Paradigm as an Investment and Research Partner to help Matt, Alana, and the rest of the team push the frontier of crypto forward.

I started using crypto in 2017. As a 14-year-old reselling sneakers in Brazil, I couldn’t create a bank account because of my age, so I turned to crypto for payments – the idea of "permissionless" systems immediately resonated with my teenage self who didn’t like asking for permission. Years later, while working in traditional finance and exploring crypto on nights and weekends, I became captivated by the research problems being explored by teams like Paradigm, and this inspired me to move into crypto full-time. Subsequently, I got to know the team more deeply through the Paradigm Fellowship. I was consistently impressed by their intellectual rigor, principled thinking, and unwavering optimism about crypto’s future. It’s an honor to now get to work alongside them.

Data is one of the most powerful tools we have to make sense of the world, and of crypto. It tells us what’s working, what’s new, and who stands to benefit. In my professional career, I’ve focused on answering those questions: designing more accurate industry metrics, creating infrastructure to handle petabytes of blockchain data, and helping protocols distribute over $5 billion in airdrops. At Paradigm, I’ll keep exploring these threads to help inform the investment process, with a focus on separating organic from inorganic activity and researching new ecosystems.

I’m especially excited about partnering with teams to design smarter user acquisition and retention programs. Every year, billions of dollars are spent on token incentives, but we still lack reliable frameworks to answer fundamental questions. Who are the real users versus sybils? How do we ensure incentives lead to sustained engagement instead of fleeting attention? I'm eager to dive deep into these problem spaces, incorporating on-chain data analysis, applied ZK, and novel distribution mechanisms.

If you're working at the frontier, I'd love to jam on the ideas and problems keeping you up at night. You can reach me anytime via X DMs or ricardo@paradigm.xyz.