JPMorgan Chase loses two blockchain project directors

Rage Review : JPMorgan Chase's blockchain project recently lost two executives. Like the developers who left Deloitte before, they chose to set up their own startups. Although JPMorgan Chase's project was not affected, the blockchain field seems to be unable to escape the curse of losing technical talents. Maybe it was the enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, the charm of Silicon Valley, or the infinite possibilities of blockchain itself. In short, the two executives left JPMorgan Chase and founded Kadena. Its plan to allow private transactions has become a key feature to attract banks.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Two senior executives from JPMorgan’s Juno blockchain project have struck out on their own to form a new blockchain startup.

Developer Will Martino and Stuart Popejoy, the bank’s former executive director of new product development, founded Kadena.io in June. Popejoy was previously the head of the Juno project, while Martino was the lead developer on that project.

JPMorgan declined to comment.

However, the exit of the two heads did not affect the bank's enthusiasm for blockchain development. In March, the New York Times reported that JPMorgan Chase was testing its own version of Ethereum, a public blockchain similar to Bitcoin that supports smart contracts. The Wall Street Journal also pointed out that the bank used the Juno blockchain project to test payments between 2,200 customers in London and Tokyo. People familiar with the matter said that the bank is considering expanding the scale of the trial to include more business areas and increase the number of test subjects. In addition, JPMorgan Chase is also calling on startups to work together on future Ethereum projects, but it is not yet known what new projects will appear.

The resignation of JPMorgan Chase executives highlights the problem of attracting and losing technical talents that the financial industry has been facing. Whether it is entrepreneurship or the temptation of Silicon Valley, engineers have always had no shortage of opportunities to choose. Last month, a group of developers also left the Deloitte blockchain team and founded their own startups.

Juno is an open source project that JPMorgan is working on and has been included in the Github software repository. Kadena.io has developed its own version based on the Juno project, highlighting the risks of corporate open source strategies. According to the white paper verified with Popejoy, Kadena plans to allow users on its blockchain to trade privately with each other. This is exactly what many financial institutions are concerned about, because they are worried that the transparency of blockchain technology will allow competitors to see their various transaction information.