The GenLayer Foundation today announced it has appointed Edgars Nemše, GenLayer co-founder and Chief Product Officer, as its Chief Executive Officer. Nemše will step down from his role at GenLayer Labs to join the Foundation full-time as the network prepares for its token launch and mainnet.
The appointment signals the Foundation’s transition from preparing for the network’s launch to overseeing its operation alongside the developers, companies and validators who will build on and secure it.
The timing of the appointment is deliberate. To date, the Foundation’s mandate has been to put the necessary infrastructure in place, including the legal infrastructure, token framework, initial institutional relationships and capital required for a successful launch.
As the token launch and mainnet approach, that mandate evolves. The Foundation will assume the responsibilities of an operating organization: stewarding the treasury, onboarding projects to the network, providing engineering support to those projects, expanding the validator set, and establishing the network’s governance structure. As each of these functions is fundamentally technical, the Foundation has restructured its leadership to place a technical operator at its helm.
Nemše co-authored the GenLayer whitepaper and has led the development of the product from its initial prototype through the current testnets. Prior to GenLayer, he served as Chief Technology Officer at StakeHound, and developed trading strategies at Millburn Ridgefield, a quantitative investment fund with $8 billion in assets.
David Riudor, who founded the Foundation and has served as its leader since inception in 2025, will assume the role of Chief Institutional Officer, overseeing capital, institutional relationships, and key partnerships. Iván Raskovsky serves as Chief Ecosystem Officer, responsible for bringing companies and their products onto GenLayer and for developing its community. Xavi Cabezas serves as Chief Marketing Officer, leading the go-to-market strategy for GenLayer and the projects building on it. Albert Castellana will continue to lead GenLayer Labs, the protocol and product company tasked with delivering mainnet.
Under Nemše’s leadership, the Foundation will pursue three strategic priorities:
- Ensuring successful execution of the token launch and the network’s early operations and managing the treasury responsibly and transparently.
- Driving adoption by identifying, funding and working closely with the teams and companies integrating intelligent contracts into real-world products.
- Gradually transferring the Foundation’s own responsibilities to the network itself, including grants, treasury decisions, and governance.
“It’s been an honor and a pleasure to bring GenLayer from the whitepaper to the current testnet, and with mainnet around the corner, the next major challenge is adoption. The modern economy could not exist without contracts, yet the traditional methods of resolving them remain slow and expensive. Digital systems settle in seconds, while a contract dispute can take years,” Nemše said.
The ultimate objective of the transition is DeepThought, an on-chain organization that will assume the Foundation’s role in full. The Foundation is working towards a four-year timeline for the handover, with works beginning immediately.
“To put our money where our mouth is, the Foundation has set itself a clear mission: to move all of its work onto GenLayer, run it autonomously on the network and, eventually, disappear entirely,” Nemše added.
