John Wu 🔺

The convergence of TradFi and Web3 is happening, driving a massive shift across both enterprise technology and daily trading activity.

The gap between TradFi and DeFi is officially closing. Proud to see the NYSE choose Avalanche's technology for their tokenization efforts.

Huge congratulations to the teams on both sides of the aisle. The push to bring equities and RWAs on-chain is only accelerating from here. 🔺

Great chat with Mr.Wonderful @kevinolearytv on where real-world assets are heading—from tokenized equity and physical collectibles to smart logistics and digital identity.

Here at the Avalanche Summit.

Today, I appointed @CharleyCooper01 as President of Ava Labs.

Charley is an exceptional operator whose skills have been honed by the US DoD, CFTC, and Tradfi institutions such as Deutsche Bank and State Street. Combined with over a decade in blockchain, he is the obvious choice to lead the company’s day-to-day operations through its next phase of growth. @encycloplydia has also been appointed Chief Financial Officer after proving herself in the role on an interim basis. I will transition to Senior Advisor, where I’ll continue advising on the long- term strategy and deepening Avalanche’s relationships on Wall Street and Silicon Valley. I will also take this chance to spend more time with the family and improve my tennis game.

When I joined Ava Labs, Tradfi was asking whether blockchain could tokenize real-world assets at all, whether the infrastructure was ready, whether the rails were real. We, as an industry, have won that debate. The institutions we work with today aren't running pilots on tokenized funds and on-chain credit — they're shipping. The question now isn't whether to move real-world value on-chain. It's which products and at what scale. I am extremely proud of the progress we have made as a company and an industry.

As I reflect on all that we’ve accomplished so far, I want to thank Gun and express my appreciation for our partnership. It was not so long ago when we were a team of ten Cornellians working out of a modest office in Brooklyn. We spent working dinners whiteboarding what the ideal user flow was for institutions to adopt asset digitization on-chain and talking about more efficient ways to store state of blockchains. We are now a company of over 200 people powering the preferred platform for institutional operations. Gun’s foundational work, from anticipating the risks that led to the DAO hack to authoring the metastability whitepaper to educating the world on coin-operated agents, continues to shape Avalanche and the blockchain industry as a whole. Our collective future remains uncharted but the best chapters are still ahead of us.

To the entire Ava Labs team, the Foundation, our business partners and vibrant community: thank you for standing alongside me during my tenure as President. It has been an absolute honor, and I am excited to continue championing our collective future.

I look forward to helping Gun, Charley, Lydia, and the entire team build on the past 7 years’ momentum.

For the last few years, the tokenization conversation has been stuck on "bringing assets onchain." That was Phase 1.

Phase 2 is about capital efficiency. Traditional finance leaves trillions in assets sitting idle.

By shifting these into open, programmatic credit markets like Aave V4 on Avalanche- we turn static representations into active collateral.

It’s no longer about proving you own the asset; it’s about putting it to work.