Meet Pragma Ventures:

Yarco completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, under the supervision of Prof. Pascal Felber. Yarco’s expertise brings a unique mix of research and industry experience. His research focuses on Actor Models, Software Transactional Memory, workload processing on heterogeneous architectures and parallel order book message processing systems. His industry experience spans blockchain technologies, including decentralized storage, algorithmic trading, and blockchain indexing.

Yarco leverages his deep understanding of blockchain systems to provide hands-on support to portfolio companies, helping them navigate the most complex technical challenges. He enjoys working on DeFi and smart contract solutions in Rust, Golang, Solidity, Python, and other languages.

MJ is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at POSTECH, one of the top research schools in South Korea. He completed his PhD at Rice University, USA, under the supervision of Prof. Alan L. Cox and Prof. Scott Rixner. MJ's background extends across both academia and industry, having worked at Microsoft Research and ARM Research. His research has been integrated into various Microsoft production systems, including Bing and Azure.

He collaborates closely with Kakao (Korean TikTok) and Samsung to build an open platform for large model training based on decentralized resources. He also leads a research lab, focusing on AI systems, real-time big data analytics, and systems for emerging hardware.

Bern finished his BSc in Computer Science at Inha University, South Korea, where he received numerous awards for his innovative projects presented during prestigious Korean competitions. With years of experience in venture capital in South Korea, Bern excels in finding and mentoring promising startups.
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With a strong network in the Korean startup scene, Bern offers strategic insights to Pragma’s portfolio projects seeking to expand into the South Korean market. His expertise encompasses various sectors, including Artificial Intelligence, DePin, and the Bitcoin Ecosystem, enabling him to offer unique insights and guidance to the projects he supports. Bern's wide network in Korea makes him a key player in our team.

John completed his PhD in Computer Science at Seoul National University, South Korea, under the supervision of Prof. Byung-Gon Chun. John’s exceptional track record speaks for itself - he proposed Fluffy, a multi-transaction differential fuzzer for finding consensus bugs in Ethereum. Fluffy allowed him to discover and report previously unknown consensus bugs in Ethereum.
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One of these bugs led to the Ethereum hard fork on November 11, 2020, which was considered Ethereum's most significant challenge since the DAO fork in 2016 (News: Coindesk, Decrypt, Korean News). Thanks to this contribution, John has earned himself a premier place in the Ethereum Bounty Program leaderboard with 20K points.