Sam Cassatt stepped down as ConsenSys chief strategy officer on Nov. 15, 2019 to launch Aligned Capital, a venture fund seeking $50 million for its first round12. He announced the move in a post on Medium the same day he spoke at San Francisco's TransTech Conference.
Three leadership moves at Consensys on the record since 2019
Every move CryptoLately has verified there, by the day it became public
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Nov. 15, 2019 | Cassatt left as Chief Strategy Officer. Sam Cassatt left as Chief Strategy Officer of Consensys |
| Oct. 29, 2024 | Layoffs. Layoffs at Consensys became public |
| April 22, 2026 | Finlay left as Co-Founder. Dan Finlay left as Co-Founder, MetaMask of Consensys |
Six executive exits on the record in 2019
Executive exits CryptoLately has verified, by year
- 2019: 6
- 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 2 |
| 2019 | 6 |
| 2020 | 1 |
| 2021 | 9 |
| 2022 | 9 |
| 2023 | 8 |
| 2024 | 11 |
| 2025 | 20 |
The departure
Cassatt tied his exit to the five years he spent building the company. “As Chief Strategy Officer at ConsenSys, I had a hand in shaping that inchoate ecosystem, and I am enormously grateful to have been part of that moment in history,” he wrote. “Today I also announced that I am stepping down from that position.”1 CoinDesk's William Foxley reported on Nov. 15, 2019, the day of the Medium post and the conference talk, that Cassatt would stay on at ConsenSys in an advisory role. Lubin would advise Aligned Capital in return2.
At the conference, Cassatt described the new fund's mandate. “Not only [are we] looking for that societal change, but [we are] noticing that institutions … are no longer serving their purpose,” he said. "I think we are at a crisis point."2 His Medium post named artificial intelligence, healthcare and blockchain as the fund's three target areas1.
ConsenSys before and after
The company had grown from a single meeting Cassatt described in his post. In 2014, Lubin explained Ethereum to him in technical detail1. He wrote that he spent the years since helping "seed the Ethereum ecosystem with the tools, design patterns, and capital" the network needed. His exit kept an advisory tie to the firm he helped run. Lubin's backing of Aligned Capital linked the two companies through their founders instead of a shared office2.
Two other backers followed Cassatt from ConsenSys, Foxley reported. One was Andrew Keys, a former ConsenSys executive who leads DARMA Capital. The other was Nichol Bradford, who organized the TransTech event where Cassatt spoke2. Foxley's report left Lubin's and Keys's dollar commitments undisclosed.
What came next
By Feb. 24, 2022, Aligned Capital had backed only one startup, the Ethereum layer 2 network Nahmii, far short of the fund's $50 million target, The Block reported3. The same report said Cassatt had spent the years since his Nov. 15, 2019 exit building a separate venture, the web3 infrastructure startup Aligned, which raised $34 million in seed funding that day.
Sources
- sam cassatt, "Introducing Aligned Capital," Medium, Nov. 15, 2019, https://medium.com/@samcassatt/introducing-aligned-capital-844c9760c35a
- William Foxley, "ConsenSys Strategy Chief Steps Down to Launch Venture Fund," CoinDesk, Nov. 15, 2019, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/11/15/consensys-strategy-chief-steps-down-to-launch-venture-fund
- The Block, "ConsenSys alum raises $34 million for his web3 infrastructure startup Aligned," The Block, Feb. 24, 2022, https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMinwFBVV95cUxPSjQyMHo2RkdIZldDX3gya0ljTFBuWDl0ekRBY0xlQUV5UkVIVUUySjQzOFZvY2dBLVBxeW11QnVxLUljZ2xwWEh0dlhfTURlM2dYWEhtN3dMTVBoOXlJQnphV2R6SHY5R1JzYllIY0dXWi05QURLengyaTdNaG43cVZLMFV4ZkJLcDZCY2R5QWtCOUhPMHRycU5qQmkwT0U?oc=5