For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Staci Warden, the CEO of the Algorand Foundation, the organization behind the layer-1 blockchain Algorand. 

Previously, Warden worked at the Milken Institute and oversaw initiatives relating to capital market development, FinTech financial inclusion, cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

Before that she was at JPMorgan, where she was an executive director leading public sector coverage. She also worked at Nasdaq and the U.S. Treasury. Warden sits on the advisory boards for the United Nations Capital Development Fund, the European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment, and the U.S. Financial Technology Association. 

As for Algorand, it's a Singapore-based blockchain that aims to be fast, secure, decentralized and “the greenest” with its carbon-negative network. It had about 615,000 active addresses at the time of recording. 

We discussed Algorand’s ecosystem, decentralization and real use cases being built during the bear market. 

We also talked about: 

• Tokenization of assets 
• Foundations behind blockchains
• Challenges of expanding in the U.S.
• Algorand’s plans for 2024

Chain Reaction comes out every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.