Walrus Foundation's board named Rebecca Simmonds Managing Executive on February 5, 2025, the foundation announced in its own post1. Simmonds had served on the founding team of Vega Protocol. Her new role covers daily operations, strategy and growth for Walrus, a network that stores large files such as video and images. The appointment came four months after Walrus launched its public testnet in October 2024, according to the foundation.
59 executive hires on the record in 2025, the most of any year
Executive hires CryptoLately has verified, by year; 2026 through Oct. 2, 2026
- 2025: 59
- 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 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 | 11 |
| 2020 | 12 |
| 2021 | 27 |
| 2022 | 37 |
| 2023 | 20 |
| 2024 | 39 |
| 2025 | 59 |
| 2026 | 45 |
Layer 1s & Infrastructure led executive hires in 2025, with 15
Executive hires CryptoLately has verified in 2025, by the sector of the company
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 |
|---|---|
| Layer 1s & Infrastructure | 15 |
| Trading Venues & Brokerage | 9 |
| Bitcoin & Mining | 8 |
| Capital Markets & Treasury | 4 |
| Institutional Custody & Asset Management | 3 |
| AI and Crypto | 2 |
| Wallets & Consumer Apps | 1 |
| Regulation & Enforcement | 1 |
The move
Simmonds described her own outlook at the time of the appointment. “With Walrus Mainnet on the horizon, I am amazed at the momentum and tremendous progress already achieved during the protocol's Testnet phase,” she said in the foundation's announcement. “I'm eager to bring my experience in blockchain scalability and community development to drive the growth of the Walrus ecosystem”1. Walrus Foundation said Mysten Labs built Walrus. Mysten Labs is a core contributor to the Sui blockchain, which would serve as Walrus's coordination layer, it said.
On March 20, 2025, six weeks after the appointment, The Block reported that Walrus Foundation had raised $140 million in a private token sale2. Standard Crypto led the round. Backers also included a16z crypto, Electric Capital, Creditcoin and Franklin Templeton Digital Assets. Simmonds spoke to the round's purpose in a statement the outlet quoted. "This investment is a significant milestone to redefine decentralized storage," she said. “By leveraging Sui's unique architecture, we're making storing data programmable, interactive and secure”.
Walrus before and after the appointment
Before Simmonds arrived, Walrus had only its testnet live, with its mainnet still ahead, according to the foundation's own account1. The Block reported that the new funding paid for work toward a mainnet launch targeted for March 27, 20252. Walrus used a native token, WAL, to run a delegated proof-of-stake system securing its storage nodes, the outlet wrote. WAL carried a total supply of 5 billion tokens. Sixty percent was set aside for the community, under the protocol's published token plan.
What came next
Walrus marked its mainnet's first anniversary on March 27, 2026. By then it had stored more than 450 terabytes of data, Decrypt reported, passing the 385 terabytes held by rival network Arweave3. Simmonds, still Managing Executive in March 2026, more than a year after her appointment, called the milestone significant beyond its size. “The fact that we've now surpassed 450TB of unencoded data in under a year is meaningful precisely because the data comes from real organizations,” she told Decrypt. She pointed to esports group Team Liquid, which moved 250 terabytes of archives onto Walrus. Data platform Allium added 65 more terabytes of blockchain records, she said. Walrus planned to push further into AI data storage and onchain finance in its second year, she said.
Sources
- Walrus Foundation, "Walrus Foundation Announces Rebecca Simmonds as Managing Executive," February 5, 2025, https://www.walrus.xyz/blog/walrus-foundation-announces-rebecca-simmonds-as-managing-executive
- MK Manoylov, "Walrus Foundation raises $140 million to bolster the decentralized data storage protocol Walrus," The Block, March 20, 2025, https://www.theblock.co/post/347334/walrus-foundation-raises-140-million-to-bolster-the-decentralized-data-storage-protocol-walrus
- "'All to Play For': Walrus Hits 450TB of Data Stored Amid Renewed AI Push," Decrypt, March 27, 2026, https://decrypt.co/362558/all-to-play-for-walrus-hits-450tb-of-data-stored-amid-renewed-ai-push