Balaji Srinivasan

Balaji Srinivasan earned a BS, MS and PhD in electrical engineering and an MS in chemical engineering from Stanford University. The Stanford Daily’s profile lists his graduation years as 2000 for the bachelor’s degree, 2004 and 2005 for the two master’s degrees, and 2006 for the PhD.⁠[1][2]

Srinivasan’s early ventures included the genetic testing company Counsyl, where he was co-founder and chief technology officer. The other co-founders included his younger brother Ramji Srinivasan, Eric Evans and Rishi Kacker. The company applied genomic technology to carrier screening for inherited diseases, serving families preparing to have children.⁠[2][3]

Srinivasan taught courses at Stanford on data mining, statistics, genomics and blockchain. Coinbase’s 2018 appointment announcement recalled that the massive open online course he launched in 2013 reached more than 250,000 students worldwide.⁠[1]

According to a startup retrospective Srinivasan later published on the a16z website, he co-founded 21 with Matt Pauker in 2013. The company became a key venture in his subsequent work in the cryptocurrency industry.⁠[4]

On December 9, 2013, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced that Srinivasan was joining as a general partner. He remained involved in building 21 at the time, and his investment interests also extended to technology areas beyond cryptocurrency.⁠[3]

On March 11, 2015, Srinivasan announced that he would work full-time at 21 and change his role at a16z to a part-time Board Partner. He explained that he had previously discussed with the firm returning to operating the startup when 21 needed him.⁠[4]

21 later became Earn.com. Srinivasan’s personal work history describes his work on the company’s transition in 2015–2016; Earn.com rewarded users with cryptocurrency for replying to emails and completing tasks, and he was its co-founder and chief executive officer.⁠[5][1]

On April 16, 2018, Coinbase announced the acquisition of Earn.com and named Srinivasan the company’s first chief technology officer. The appointment announcement summarized his responsibilities as promoting crypto technology, educating the market and recruiting technical talent.⁠[1]

On July 31, 2018, Myriad Genetics announced that it had completed its acquisition of Counsyl. The deal involved the genetic testing company Srinivasan had co-founded early in his career; by then he was working at Coinbase.⁠[6][1]

On February 13, 2019, Srinivasan gave the talk Building the Cryptocurrency Ecosystem at Stanford. He compared the crypto industry to the early mobile internet and discussed how programmable finance and token incentives could change fields such as social networks, banking, collectibles and real estate.⁠[7][8]

In the same talk he also discussed the limits of blockchain applications, including software bugs, privacy problems, lost keys, and the trade-offs between self-custody and institutional custody. These points were his analysis of the industry at the time.⁠[7]

On May 3, 2019, Srinivasan announced that he was leaving Coinbase, and a company spokesperson subsequently confirmed it. In his departure note he reviewed work including the Earn integration, new asset listings, USDC, and staking and voting features.⁠[9]

On July 4, 2022, Srinivasan confirmed on his personal website the publication of The Network State, available to read online and in PDF and Kindle editions. The book proposes first forming online communities with a shared purpose and capacity for collective action, then crowdfunding physical territory and seeking diplomatic recognition; it is a concept of social organization that he put forward.⁠[10][11]

In March 2023, Srinivasan predicted that bitcoin would reach $1 million within 90 days and entered into a bet on it. On May 2, with the prediction unfulfilled, he negotiated an early settlement, paying $500,000 in USDC each to James Medlock, the bitcoin development organization Chaincode Labs and the charity GiveDirectly, for a total of $1.5 million.⁠[12]

On August 16, 2024, Srinivasan announced the Network School project, planning a 90-day community experiment near Singapore from September 23 to December 23 of that year that combined learning, fitness, remote work and social activities. The project subsequently operated in Forest City in Johor, Malaysia.⁠[13][14]

On February 18, 2025, fomo announced a $2 million pre-seed round, disclosing support from more than 140 angel investors and including Srinivasan in its public list. The announcement did not disclose the amount of his personal investment.⁠[15]

On April 18, 2025, Srinivasan announced the Network School Fellowship for founders, creators and community builders, planning to provide $100,000 to selected projects and requiring participants to live and work on campus for a year. The announcement set out a plan to support an initial cohort of 100 participants.⁠[16]

In April 2026, Objection launched, and the public launch note by its technical lead, Kyle C Grant-Talbot, listed Srinivasan and Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry as investors. The platform combines human investigation, evidence from both sides and AI evaluation to review contested media reports and publishes its evidence and verdicts; its so-called “AI tribunal” is the platform’s own evaluation mechanism.⁠[17][18]

On July 21, 2026, the Johor state government in Malaysia backed the revocation of the business license of NS0 Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., the entity operating Network School in Forest City, and ordered activities to stop from July 22. The project had earlier come under investigation over allegations that it admitted Israeli participants.⁠[19][14]

Srinivasan had denied on July 18 that the project had closed, explaining that part of the dispute concerned adjacent premises and signage permits. The subsequent license revocation changed that status. TNGlobal also reported that immigration authorities found no entry violations after checking the relevant travel documents; the investigation dispute should therefore not be conflated with a proven immigration violation.⁠[14]

In July 2026, Srinivasan announced on X that Network School had signed a memorandum of understanding with Kazakhstan. On July 27, the office of Kazakhstan’s prime minister confirmed that Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov had met him to discuss an international technology hub, attracting talent and the startup ecosystem. Officials said the project was privately funded; Network City in the Burabay area and other expansion plans were still at the planning stage at the time.⁠[20][21]

On September 5, 2026, Srinivasan announced the official opening of Network School’s Kazakhstan campus. As of September 8, the project website listed its location as the fifth floor of Astana Hub in Astana and described membership services including coworking, accommodation, learning and fitness.⁠[22][23]

On October 9, 2026, Network School held its annual Network State Conference on level 5 of the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre in Singapore, right after Token2049, for people interested in founding, funding and finding startup societies and network states. According to the conference schedule, Srinivasan gave the opening and closing addresses and held an afternoon discussion with Curtis Yarvin titled “Decentralized Democracy or American Monarchy?”; speakers also included Vitalik Buterin, Mike MaplesMike MaplesMike Maples (Mike Maples Jr.) is an American venture capitalist and co-founding partner of Floodgate, an early Silicon Valley seed fund, who has invested in companies including Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, Okta, and Applied Intuition. Earlier he was a member of the startup team at Tivoli Systems and a co-founder of Motive Communications; he coined the “Thunder Lizards” concept and wrote the bestselling book “Pattern Breakers.”Open the full entry, Olaf Carlson-WeeOlaf Carlson-WeeOlaf Carlson-Wee is an American cryptocurrency investor, the first employee of Coinbase, who founded the crypto investment firm Polychain Capital in 2016. Polychain returned more than 20-fold after fees in its first full year and passed $1 billion in assets under management in early 2018 before falling sharply in the bear market; it then expanded its venture investing, backing projects such as Uniswap, Solana, and Bittensor.Open the full entry and Richard Teng, and Zhaslan Madiyev, Kazakhstan’s deputy prime minister and minister of artificial intelligence and digital development, spoke in the opening segment.⁠[24][24][25][25][25][24][24][24][24]

The conference said Zcash, as a cornerstone of financial privacy, had consistently been featured, and this year it expanded that coverage into a morning Zcash Zummit. The Zummit speakers and their affiliations were Zooko Wilcox (Shielded LabsShielded LabsShielded Labs is a nonprofit Zcash support organization based in Switzerland, established as a Swiss association in December 2022. It operates mainly on donations and has never received Zcash Development Fund money or block rewards. It leads protocol proposals including the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM) and Crosslink, a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake consensus, and after a researcher it engaged discovered the Orchard counterfeiting vulnerability in 2026, it proposed and advanced the Ironwood upgrade together with other development teams.Open the full entry), Sean BoweSean BoweSean Bowe is a cryptographic engineer and researcher, a cofounder and the first engineer of Zcash, who spent years at the Electric Coin Company designing and implementing Zcash’s zero-knowledge proof cryptography and in 2019 introduced Halo, a recursive proof system that needs no trusted setup. Since 2025 he has led Project Tachyon, a Zcash scaling effort, helped lead the 2026 Ironwood upgrade, and maintains the Zakura Zcash full node.Open the full entry (Tachyon), Eli Ben-SassonEli Ben-SassonEli Ben-Sasson is an Israeli computer scientist and entrepreneur, a co-inventor of the STARK, FRI and Zerocash protocols and one of the founding scientists of Zcash. Formerly a professor of computer science at the Technion, he left academia in 2018 to co-found the blockchain scaling company StarkWare, where he is now chief executive officer and chairman, and he serves on the board of the Starknet Foundation.Open the full entry (StarkWareStarkWareStarkWare is a blockchain technology company headquartered in Netanya, Israel, founded in 2018 by STARK proof co-inventor Eli Ben-Sasson and others. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to provide scaling, privacy and quantum-resistance solutions for Ethereum and other blockchains, has developed the StarkEx scaling engine, the Cairo programming language and the Stone and S-two provers, and leads development of the layer-2 network Starknet; its last funding round, in 2022, valued it at $8 billion.Open the full entry), Josh SwihartJosh SwihartJosh Swihart is a technology executive and the founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL). He joined the Electric Coin Company (ECC), Zcash’s developer, in 2018, succeeded Zooko Wilcox as CEO in December 2023 and led the launch of the Zashi wallet; in January 2026 he and the entire ECC team left after a conflict with the board of its parent organization and formed ZODL, with Zashi renamed Zodl.Open the full entry (ZodlZodlZodl refers both to Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), a company developing the Zcash protocol and wallets, and to its Zcash mobile wallet of the same name (formerly Zashi). ZODL was founded in January 2026 by former Electric Coin Company CEO Josh Swihart, with the entire former ECC engineering and product team joining it; it continues core Zcash protocol development and did much of the work on the 2026 emergency fix of the Orchard vulnerability and the Ironwood upgrade.Open the full entry), Dev OjhaDev OjhaDev Ojha is a cryptographic engineer, an early member of the Cosmos team, and a co-founder of the decentralized exchange Osmosis; since 2026 he has led Valar Group, which focuses on Zcash protocol research and development, and co-maintains the Zcash full-node software Zakura with Sean Bowe.Open the full entry (Zakura), Maxime DesalleMaxime DesalleMaxime Desalle is a crypto investment analyst and science writer who has written a long-form Zcash guide and a beginner’s introduction to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics; he is also a fellow of the Conjecture Institute.Open the full entry (Winklevoss CapitalWinklevoss CapitalWinklevoss Capital is a family office and early-stage venture capital firm founded in New York in 2012 by brothers Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss. It got its start by buying large amounts of bitcoin and has since invested in companies such as Gemini, Flexport, and Crusoe Energy and in crypto networks such as Ethereum, Zcash, and Filecoin; since 2025 it has led and driven the transformation of Nasdaq-listed Leap Therapeutics into Cypherpunk Technologies, which holds Zcash as its treasury asset.Open the full entry), Josh LeeJosh LeeJosh Lee (online handle dogemos) is a crypto wallet developer based in Seoul, South Korea. He is a co-founder of Chainapsis (later operating as KPLR), the company behind the Cosmos ecosystem wallet Keplr, and also helped found the decentralized exchange Osmosis; in 2026 he led his team in launching the Zcash wallet Vizor.Open the full entry (Vizor), Evan ForbesEvan ForbesEvan Forbes is a blockchain consensus and networking engineer who was the consensus team lead and a founding engineer of the modular blockchain Celestia; since 2026 he has worked at Valar Group on Zcash consensus scaling and peer-to-peer networking, and with Dev Ojha completed testing on shortening Zcash’s block time.Open the full entry (Valar GroupValar GroupValar Group is a cryptography research and engineering team focused on developing the Zcash protocol, led by Osmosis co-founder Dev Ojha and staffed largely by engineers from Osmosis and Celestia; in 2026 it took part in the Ironwood network upgrade, released the full-node software Zakura with Project Tachyon, and built Zcash’s private coinholder voting chain.Open the full entry) and Tom HowardTom HowardTom Howard is a crypto entrepreneur and investor who says he founded the DeFi wallet Mosendo and the crypto options exchange PowerTrade, and who was head of strategy at CoinList in 2025; an active Zcash advocate, in 2026 he launched a “fund first, seek reimbursement later” funding model for Zcash projects under the Zcash Labs name.Open the full entry (Zcash LabsZcash LabsZcash Labs is an independent Zcash go-to-market and integration organization that emerged publicly in August 2026. It provides Zcash blockchain integrations, technical support, and co-marketing coordination to businesses and institutions, and funds new projects upfront before seeking reimbursement through the Zcash coinholder retroactive grants program; it is not affiliated with the Zcash Foundation.Open the full entry).⁠[24][25][25][25]

Besides operating startups, Srinivasan is an angel investor. Projects listed on his website include Alchemy, OpenSea, Perplexity, PolymarketPolymarketPolymarket is a prediction market platform founded by Shayne Coplan in 2020, on which users buy and sell shares in the outcomes of political, sports, financial, cultural, and other events, with trading prices regarded as the market’s estimate of the probability that an event will occur. It rose to prominence during the 2024 US election, returned to the US market in 2025 by acquiring a licensed exchange and clearinghouse, and received a major investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, while facing gambling-regulation and insider-trading scrutiny in US states and several countries.Open the full entry, Replit and Varda. He is also a co-founder and board member of Coin Center and takes part in public discussion of cryptocurrency policy.⁠[26][27]

Network School: Founder; Official website: https://ns.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[26][23]

Coinbase: Former chief technology officer; Official website: https://www.coinbase.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1][28]

Andreessen Horowitz: Former general partner, later part-time Board Partner; Official website: https://a16z.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4][29]

Stanford University: Student and instructor; Official website: https://www.stanford.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1][30]

Coin Center: Co-founder and board member; Official website: https://coincenter.org/about/ (opens in a new window)⁠[26][27]

fomo: Publicly disclosed angel investment; Official website: https://fomo.family/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15][15]

Personal website: https://balajis.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[31]

The Network State: Online book; Official website: https://thenetworkstate.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

X: Public account: https://x.com/balajis (opens in a new window)⁠[32]