Caedy Lee

36 hours, less than 4 hours of sleep between the 3 of us, and way too much caffeine later… Paula, @z_tasnin, and I won the "Why Not" Track at the XRP Ledger Hackathon!! 🏆🔥

Meet Du(e)ly: a decentralized credit fund helping freelancers get paid in seconds instead of weeks, powered by AI work verification, smart contract escrow, and liquidity pools on XRPL EVM.

🎥 Demo: youtu.be/7eSUK7EgNDw?si…
💻 GitHub: github.com/c-lee13/duely

Huge shoutout to @XRPLCommons, and all the sponsors, for an unforgettable hackathon!

Also got to attend @RippleSwell 2026! In particular, there were some really interesting conversations around:
1) XRPL primitives vs. smart contracts
2) Tokenization as the future of financial assets
3) Keeping autonomous AI agents in check

An insane week of building, learning, and meeting awesome people. Can't wait for what's next 🚀

#XRPL #RippleSwell #DeFi #Swell #Ripple

An exciting milestone for our @CUBlockchain Consulting team! As part of our ongoing collaboration with @AlliumLabs, I've had the privilege of leading this semester's research project, and last week, we presented our findings to the Allium team and leadership!

After exploring DEXs last semester, we shifted our focus to DeFi yield-generating protocols: @aave V3, @Morpho vaults, and @pendle_fi. It's been especially cool to discover their TradFi parallels: Aave V3 ≈ money market, Morpho vaults ≈ asset managers, and Pendle ≈ interest-rate speculation. Furthermore, Allium's granular on-chain data has been invaluable in uncovering insights into yield dynamics, capital flows, and risk across these protocols.

Of course, a huge thank you to my amazing teammates @RachelTurney, @z_tasnin, Saanvi, David, Ava, Asad, for their hard work and dedication! Excited to continue exploring what's next together!

See our current research on market landscape adoption here: app.allium.so/s/jtCtV7zV

Had the opportunity to attend @1inch and @BlockchainAssn's Groundwork for #DCFintechWeek recently, and it turned out to be an incredibly insightful experience that left me with plenty to think about!

One of the most thought-provoking discussions was around policy, trust, and accountability in the blockchain ecosystem. The speakers brought up the case of Tornado Cash, which raised some interesting questions about the responsibility that comes with open-source technology. When code is misused for illicit activities, who should be held accountable: the developer who wrote it, or the user who exploited it? Can code truly be neutral, and where should the law draw the line between building technology and facilitating its misuse? These discussions highlighted the challenges of balancing innovation, decentralization, and accountability in crypto.

I also particularly enjoyed the discussions on institutional adoption, hearing how companies are bridging the gap between traditional finance and blockchain. From @RobinhoodCrypto's efforts to expand access to tokenized assets through Robinhood Stock Tokens, to @digitalasset's work on the Canton Network to enable privacy and interoperability in institutional finance, it was fascinating to see how blockchain infrastructure is evolving to meet real-world financial needs.

A huge thank you to the @1inch and @BlockchainAssn teams for organizing such a wonderful event, and to all the speakers for sharing their insights and perspectives!

2 weeks ago, @rachelt313, @weitaos1, @bbriaaaans, @Ypujdq1, and I spent an incredible weekend at the @unlink_xyz x @monad hackathon building Optimo, a privacy-first crypto payments platform designed to make on-chain transactions feel as seamless and intuitive as Web2.

By leveraging @unlink_xyz, we shield transaction routing to keep sensitive payment data off the public blockchain. We also integrated an OpenClaw bot, allowing users to execute transfers via simple natural language prompts, turning complex transactions into a conversation.

My focus was on the architectural flow between wallets:
- Pre-funded Vaults: Worked on a vault model to eliminate "signature fatigue." Users sign one initial transaction to deposit funds into a smart contract, which then handles subsequent releases w/o requiring constant wallet pop-ups.
- Gas Abstraction: Users only need to hold USDC while Optimo handles the $MON gas fees behind the scenes.
- Secure Routing: An encryption layer on our database, allowing us to securely store transaction records without risk of leakage.

Huge thanks to @unlink_xyz and @monad for the learning opportunity (and the amazing snacks), and to my teammates for the grind and relentless energy! 🚀

As a student, I’ve often found cold emailing recruiters to be time-consuming and discouraging, making it difficult to connect with the right opportunities. @hrishabhayush, @rachelt313, @dhruvprata4970, and I came together to tackle this challenge, aiming to create a solution that makes outreach more effective.

Over five consecutive nights for the MBC hackathon, our team worked tirelessly to turn this vision into reality, and I’m so proud to share that our project SolMail @solmail_xyz won 1st place on the Solana track!

SolMail harnesses escrow smart contracts for transactions and SendAI agents for email scoring. It’s simple: You attach a @solana micropayment to your email, which is released to the recipient only if they send a good response. SolMail thus transforms your message from one of hundreds of unread entries into one with a clear value proposition.

I focused on developing the SendAI Agent, leveraging Solana Agent Kit with an OpenAI-based LLM that evaluates recipient responses and mediates the release of micropayments, while enhancing @mail0dotcom’s email client to manage workflows between scoring and Solana smart contract calls. Our work on SolMail is far from over, and I’m excited to continue integrating x402’s payment middleware to intercept OpenAI API calls and enable a pay-per-use pipeline.

Huge thank you to @Evanzsolomon @reva_jariwala @EzvenG @redempshawne @college_xyz @MBC_Conference @CUBlockchain for this wonderful opportunity, and immensely grateful to @adlonymous @brimigs @SolanaFndn who helped us improve SolMail.

And of course, to my amazing teammates, 2am dinner runs and 7h grind sessions wouldn’t have been as fun if not for you guys. You all are the best!

github.com/hrishabhayush/…