What is the background of Nexus, which raised $25 million led by Pantera, with a graduate as CEO?

Author: Walker, Deep Tide TechFlow

The secondary market appears somewhat dull, while the primary market continues to see significant investments.

On June 11, the modular zkVM project Nexus announced the completion of a $25 million Series A funding round, led by top VCs Pantera and LightSpeed, with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Faction Ventures, and Blockchain Builders Fund.

It is well-known that crypto VCs have a preference for infrastructure projects, so substantial investments in zero-knowledge proof-related infrastructure are not surprising.

However, investing in a project led by a CEO who is a recent graduate does raise some eyebrows.

In a public letter titled “Why We Invested in Nexus” released on the same day, Pantera stated that Nexus's greatest advantage lies in its team, composed of professionals from the fields of cryptography and computer science.

The CEO of the project team is Daniel Marin, a recent graduate from Stanford University.

Do top Western VCs also favor the halo effect of prestigious schools?

In contrast to the domestic discourse of "master's and doctoral degrees are not as good as dogs" and the employment pressure, a graduate from an overseas prestigious university securing $25 million in startup funding seems exceptionally outstanding.

So, what exactly makes the Nexus project favored by numerous VCs? What exceptional qualities does a team led by a graduate as CEO possess?

What is Nexus?

Before discussing the project team, it is essential to clarify what the project is actually doing.

According to information from Nexus's official Twitter, Nexus is currently in the 1.0 phase, functioning as a modular, scalable, open-source zkVM, written in Rust, focusing on high performance and security.

So, what exactly is zkVM?

In the world of blockchain and Web3, a virtual machine (VM) is a key component. It is responsible for executing smart contracts on the blockchain, managing transactions and protocols without third-party intervention, with the most common example being the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine).

With zk added, everything revolves around optimizing privacy:

• Privacy Protection: When conducting transactions on a public blockchain, all data is publicly visible. zk can help protect user privacy, ensuring that transaction details are not disclosed.

• Increased Efficiency: zk can reduce the computational resources needed to verify transactions and execute smart contracts, as verifiers only need to check the proof without re-executing the entire computation process.

• Enhanced Security: Through zk, blockchain systems can ensure the authenticity and integrity of data without exposing specific data content.

Thus, Nexus's zkVM can achieve the above three optimizations, meaning you can prove that a transaction or operation is legitimate without revealing the specific details of the transaction.

Additionally, Nexus zkVM is somewhat like a versatile translator; it can understand and run programs written in various programming languages (such as Rust, C++, etc.). Developers can write smart contracts in their preferred languages and run them on the zkVM.

Finally, you can think of Nexus zkVM as a Lego set, where you can modularly add special functional modules to accelerate specific computational operations or expand new computational solutions.

Privacy protection, security, efficiency, and modularity—zkVM's narrative and selling points are vividly presented.

Currently, part of the Nexus 1.0 code has been open-sourced on GitHub, which somewhat demonstrates the project's strength and confidence.

Clearly, this is another project focused on the lower layers.

With countless VMs available, being able to reasonably apply zk within them requires genuine technical prowess.

Thus, a technically strong and professionally aligned team becomes very necessary.

Outstanding Graduate in the Spotlight, Expert Team Supporting

The CEO of the Nexus project is indeed a fresh-faced young man.

Pantera described him as a "recent Stanford graduate" when introducing Daniel Marin.

However, this "newbie" clearly appears to be a smart academic achiever.

On Daniel's LinkedIn profile, he lists two "awards" that are typically found on the resumes of recent graduates, but this award does carry some weight:

He won a bronze medal twice at the International Physics Olympiad.

Subsequently, Daniel studied at Stanford University's Software Engineering School and became an intern at the AI lab of the school as well as at Google; he then directly became the CEO of Nexus.

Beyond his impressive awards and positions, if you check Daniel's GitHub, you'll find that he has been continuously contributing code from 2020 to 2024, proving that a CEO who doesn't understand code is not a good programmer.

From the available information, we can at least conclude that this CEO has some skills, and his technical strength and foundation are beyond doubt.

He is a typical science and engineering student with a professional background, but being the CEO of a Web3 project does seem a bit overwhelming.

Thus, the Nexus project also has an expert team providing support.

After introducing Daniel, Pantera specifically mentioned that the student is advised and guided by the renowned cryptographer Dan Boneh.

Dan is indeed a big name in the industry, currently a professor of computer science at Stanford University. His research areas include cryptography, computer security, and distributed systems. In 2016, Boneh was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to the theory and practice of cryptography and computer security.

He has also made significant contributions to well-known technologies in blockchain, such as elliptic curve cryptography, and is one of the main contributors to the development of pairing-based cryptography.

Additionally, other core members of Nexus are composed of a highly specialized cryptography team with extensive experience in the Web3 industry, having worked with organizations such as Difinity, Jump Crypto, Matter Labs, and a16z's training camp:

With a professional team as the foundation and a cryptography expert assisting an outstanding graduate in a zk-related Web3 project, this truly combines academia, industry, and research effectively.

Invest in Professionals or Build Resource Networks?

Investing in a project is essentially investing in people.

From Nexus's perspective, VCs like Pantera clearly favor teams with professional backgrounds.

Students in cryptography, top professional professors, and an execution team with rich industry experience… with such a configuration, having a graduate as CEO seems less out of place; after all, having young people lead with a team of professionals supporting them can create a wonderful chemical reaction.

Regardless of the structure, at least the resumes and work experiences reflect the professionalism of this team.

For infrastructure projects with a very clear niche, venture capitalists seem to trust the potential and experience of this group of cryptography professionals, aligning with the logic of "professionals handling professional technology."

In contrast, there is another approach of building resource networks.

A narrative can be recreated, and the original team can be reassembled, leveraging industry resources and information asymmetry to form a network, commonly seen in some fast-acting, high-narrative, loud but less impactful crypto projects.

These types of projects focus more on asset creation and resource exchange, with less emphasis on the hardcore technology itself.

Should we invest in professionals or build resource networks? Crypto VCs are also voting with real money.

However, in an industry that emphasizes wealth effects, speed and excitement are the focal points of attention; yet for the long-term sustainability of the industry, a slow and solid approach is a better tonic.