Crypto Hiring: Ex-Fidelity exec joins Solana-based staking protocol

Hadley Stern, the former founding president of Fidelity Digital Assets, has joined Marinade, a staking marketplace protocol built on Solana, as its chief commercial officer.

Stern’s career spans key roles, including leading Amazon Web Services’ innovation lab and serving as global head of digital asset custody at BNY Mellon. The hire comes as Marinade — serving roughly 100,000 users with more than 10 million SOL — is partnering with custodians Copper and Zodia Custody to bring security and regulatory compliance.

“Marinade’s unique staking marketplace model is the best solution for validators, the Solana blockchain, and now, with Marinade Native, for institutions,” Stern said in a statement. “It is the model for how DeFi will become the standard system for financial services and I’m thrilled to further contribute to this case with my expertise.”

Also this week, crypto exchange Bybit brought aboard Chris Aruliah to lead its institutional team, the company said Thursday. The move comes in a bid to “meet the evolving demands of sophisticated clients.”

Aruliah will oversee efforts to attract and service institutional clients such as hedge funds, asset managers, brokers, market makers and family offices, ByBit added.

The executive was most recently a managing director at Wincent, a crypto investment fund that also offers OTC services.

Aruliah also previously held leadership stints — as chief product officer and chief commercial officer — at payment account and trading services provider BCB Group. Prior to that, he was head of business development at crypto exchange Bitstamp.

Speaking of hiring, Congress’s Committees on the judiciary, financial services and oversight and accountability are investigating whether or not the Securities and Exchange Commission is hiring civil service employees “based on their political affiliations,” according to a Tuesday letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler.

In the letter, US House Reps. Jim Jordan, James Comer and Patrick McHenry cite the agency’s decision to hire Dr. Haoxiang Zhu as the its director of trading markets. They point to an email from Zhu saying he was “in the right place on the political spectrum” six months before he was hired.

“If these allegations are true, the SEC is violating the Civil Service Reform Act to fill the agency with employees who possess a particular ideology, which undermines the SEC’s purported impartiality,” the House Republicans wrote.

An SEC spokesperson told Blockworks: “Chair Gensler will respond to members of Congress directly.”

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