According to CoinDesk, Marieke Flament has stepped down as CEO of the NEAR Foundation after two years in the role. Chris Donovan, the foundation's general counsel, will replace her, as announced in a Thursday blog post. Flament will continue to serve as a strategic adviser to Donovan until the end of the year and will remain on the foundation's council board.
Flament stated in an interview with CoinDesk that when she joined the NEAR Foundation two years ago, it had around 50,000 users, and now it has over 2.5 million daily active users. She believes Donovan is well-suited for the CEO role given the current regulatory landscape and noted that they are not the only ecosystem making such a move.
The NEAR protocol currently ranks 34th in terms of total value locked (TVL), a measure of the amount of money stashed in a given blockchain ecosystem, according to data from DefiLlama. In September 2022, the NEAR Foundation launched a $100 million venture capital fund and venture lab in partnership with Caerus Ventures.
