Arthur Hayes joins Covalent as advisor, receives compensation in CQT token

Arthur Hayes joins Covalent as advisor, receives compensation in CQT token

QUICK TAKE

• Arthur Hayes has joined Covalent as its strategic advisor.
• Hayes told The Block that Covalent’s CQT token has been relatively undervalued compared to its rivals, such as The Graph, and he wants to help Covalent grow further.

Arthur Hayes, co-founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange BitMEX and currently the chief investment officer at his family office, Maelstrom, has joined Covalent  CQT +10.33%, a blockchain data infrastructure startup, as its strategic advisor.

Hayes seeks to help Covalent become the leading data infrastructure startup, particularly within the Ethereum ecosystem, and to serve the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, Covalent said Tuesday.

“Covalent’s Ethereum Wayback Machine (EWM) ensures persistent, long-term access to historical blockchain data, which will power the next generation of use cases — including for AI models in particular,” Hayes told The Block.

When asked what motivated him to join Covalent as its advisor, Hayes said that Covalent’s CQT token has been “undervalued relative to its comp[etitor] set (e.g. The Graph) for a while — investors outright missed that story. Now, with Covalent expanding its offering further, that dissonance between traction and narrative has widened. As a storyteller, I aim to help narrow that gap.”

Hayes will be compensated in CQT tokens, he said, because “as a general rule, we only take compensation in tokens, because we believe in aligning ourselves fully with the team, investors, customers and retail. We’re alongside everyone else for the same ride.”

Covalent co-founder and CEO Ganesh Swami told The Block that Hayes is Covalent’s only strategic advisor currently.

The CQT token is currently priced at $0.23, up 13.25% in the last 24 hours, according to The Block’s CQT price page. The token is currently ranked 347th and has a market cap of about $145 million.

Covalent’s AI vision

Founded in 2019, Covalent provides data infrastructure for over 225 networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche and Optimism. However, Swami said the startup has found most of its traction around the Ethereum ecosystem.

Covalent recently introduced its Ethereum Wayback Machine, which ensures all Ethereum ecosystem data is available, allowing AI developers and users to access all on-chain history.

Swami said blockchains today are trending towards becoming “billboards rather than databases.” This means that on-chain transaction data is often deleted after short periods of time, usually two weeks. The EWM ensures that Ethereum’s transaction data is available long-term in a decentralized fashion, he said.

Swami said the AI part is an expanded vision for Covalent’s decentralized data infrastructure. “Without decentralized data, AI models are prone to manipulation and biases,” he said.

Specific use cases for decentralized data within AI range from copy trading to NFT forensics to security applications, according to Swami. 

Hayes’ specific role at Covalent

Hayes said as Covalent’s “full-scope” advisor, he’s helping the startup with “everything from honing tokenomics, to market positioning, to suggesting tweaks to the business model, getting in front of new kinds of clients, and so forth.”

As a founder himself, he said he plans to impart several dos and don’ts to help guide the project.

Covalent first met with Maelstrom’s head of investments, Akshat Vaidya, last year at ETHGlobal Tokyo, Hayes said. The teams discussed potential collaboration more seriously at ETHCC Paris and Token2049 Singapore, finalizing the details this past winter at ETH Denver, Hayes added.

Maelstrom is also a founding advisor to the synthetic dollar protocol Ethena, said Hayes. The family office also recently announced advisorships with the decentralized AI platform Ritual and the decentralized perpetual exchange Drift, he added.

For the latest in crypto updates, keep tabs on Crypto Data Space.