Sam Kessler

Sam is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor for tech and protocols. His reporting is focused on decentralized technology, infrastructure and governance. Sam holds a computer science degree from Harvard University, where he led the Harvard Political Review. He has a background in the technology industry and owns some ETH and BTC. Sam was part of the team that won a 2023 Gerald Loeb Award for CoinDesk's coverage of Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX collapse.

Sam Kessler

Latest from Sam Kessler


Tech

Arbitrum Co-Founder Addresses DAO Vote Fiasco, Waves Off Allegations of ‘Decentralization Theater’

Offchain Labs CEO Steven Goldfeder took pains to differentiate his company, which built Arbitrum, from the newly created Arbitrum DAO that now controls it.

Steven Goldfeder, CEO and co-founder, Offchain Labs and Margaux Nijkerk, CoinDesk reporter (Shutterstock/CoinDesk)

Web3

Art Blocks Co-Founder Erick Calderon Uses Free Market Ideals to Defend NFT Royalties

Art Blocks, a generative art NFT collection, helped spearhead a movement to reward creators with royalties each time NFTs are sold.

Erick Calderon, the co-founder of Art Blocks, speaks at Consensus 2023. (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)

Tech

How the Hunt for Yet-to-Exist Tokens Is Shaping Ethereum’s Layer 2 Landscape

Token airdrops – and the prospect of them – have become the default customer acquisition strategy for Ethereum's layer 2 scaling projects. But is this strategy sustainable?

Layer 2s with native tokens and blockchain bridges might introduce more problems than they fix as blockchain scaling solutions, Trust Machine's Rena Shah argues. (Creative Commons, modified by CoinDesk)

Tech

1inch, Aggregator of Decentralized Crypto Exchanges, to Launch on Ethereum Rollup zkSync Era

The company, which nabbed $175 million in a 2021 series B funding round, is one of the biggest protocols yet to launch on a zero-knowledge EVM.

(Creative Commons, modified by CoinDesk)

Tech

Blockdaemon Sets Sights on Large Institutions With New Wallet App

The wallet aims to help institutions and crypto custodians live up to the “not your keys, not your crypto” adage. The company is backed by Goldman Sachs, Tiger Global and other big investors.

(iStockphoto/Getty Images)

Consensus Magazine

Much Ado About =Nil;

The mysterious company that calls itself nothing is helping zero-knowledge firms to scale blockchain quickly and cheaply. That’s something. And that’s why =nil; Foundation is one of CoinDesk’s Projects to Watch 2023

(Rachel Sun/CoinDesk)

Consensus Magazine

Scroll Aims to Be the Turtle That Wins the Ethereum Scaling Race

This decentralized, global team of developers is ignoring the urge to be the first to scale Ethereum. For its holistic approach to building broadly and transparently, Scroll is one of CoinDesk’s Projects to Watch 2023.

(Rachel Sun/CoinDesk)

Tech

MEV Blocker Wants to Help You Outrun the Front-Runners

Builders behind the new utility say it will help Ethereum users avoid the scourge of MEV and earn a profit, too.

(CoinDesk/Bing Image Creator)