Jayson Hobby announced on X on July 10, 2024, that he was stepping down as chief executive of Compound Labs1. “Starting a new chapter means closing the last. I joined Compound Labs in 2019 as a design team of one, and today, am stepping down as CEO,” Hobby wrote. Bitget News reported two days later, on July 12, that Hobby had resigned alongside Compound's chief technology officer and a vice president of products to found a new DeFi protocol called Legend2.
The second CEO exit at Compound Labs on the record since 2023
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 |
|---|---|
| June 28, 2023 | Leshner left as CEO. Robert Leshner left as CEO of Compound Labs |
| June 28, 2023 | Hobby became CEO. Jayson Hobby was named CEO of Compound Labs |
| July 10, 2024 | Hobby left as CEO. Jayson Hobby left as Chief Executive Officer of Compound Labs |
20 CEO exits on the record in 2024
CEO exits CryptoLately has verified, by year; 2026 through Oct. 2, 2026
- 2024: 20
- 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025, 2026
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 |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 7 |
| 2020 | 9 |
| 2021 | 5 |
| 2022 | 18 |
| 2023 | 11 |
| 2024 | 20 |
| 2025 | 20 |
| 2026 | 18 |
The move
Hobby's own post set the terms of his departure, written in his own voice rather than a company announcement. "I'm incredibly proud of the journey," he wrote, crediting Compound with an early role in decentralization. “The Compound protocol was one of the first to truly embrace and achieve decentralization, in a transparent, intermediary-free system,” Hobby said1.
Bitget's report named the other two executives who left with him. Geoffery Hayes, a Compound co-founder and chief technology officer, resigned in the same window. So did Mykel Pereira, a vice president of products, the outlet reported, citing RootData, a Web3 asset data platform2. Bitget described Legend as "a mobile-first decentralized finance protocol" that would let users “instantly and seamlessly trade, earn, and borrow digital assets without the need for centralization”.
Compound Labs before and after
Hobby had spent five years at Compound Labs by his own account. He rose from a one-person design team in 2019 to the chief executive seat he held on the day of the post1. His exit, alongside Hayes and Pereira, pulled three of the protocol's senior leaders out at once, Bitget's report said2. The stated goal behind Legend, by Bitget's description, was to bring "the next 100 million users onto the chain" through a single DeFi interface.
What came next
Fortune reported on February 11, 2025, seven months after Hobby's post, that Legend had raised $15 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures in its first funding round3. Hobby told Fortune the new venture grew out of what he and his co-founders wanted to build next. “We just got really excited about trying to make awesome things, like Compound, more accessible,” Hobby said. Fortune reported that Legend would give users a self-custody wallet built into the app. That wallet would reach decentralized exchanges Uniswap and 0x, and lending services from Compound and another protocol called Morpho. Hobby called the design a "walled garden" in his conversation with Fortune, meant to spare users from vetting each application themselves.
Sources
- Jayson Hobby, post announcing his departure as CEO of Compound Labs, X, July 10, 2024, https://x.com/jaysonhobby/status/1811079333974528498
- Cointime, "Compound CEO, CTO and three other executives resigned and founded a new DeFi protocol Legend," Bitget News, July 12, 2024, https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560604093143
- Catherine McGrath, "Decentralized finance platform Legend raises $15 million from a16z and Coinbase," Fortune Crypto, February 11, 2025, https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/02/11/decentralized-finance-platform-legends-raises-15-million-from-a16z-and-coinbase/