Mike Silagadze is Founder and CEO of ether.fi, a decentralized finance platform he founded in October 2022 and has led since January 2023. Under his direction, ether.fi has evolved from a non-custodial ETH staking protocol built on EigenLayer into what the company describes as a crypto neobank, offering staking, yield-bearing vaults, a non-custodial credit card issued in partnership with Visa, and borrowing facilities. As of early 2025, the platform held between $9 and $10 billion in total value locked, with an annualised transaction volume approaching $1 billion and approximately 60,000 active cards. Silagadze has stated that roughly one-third of company revenue is generated by the credit card product. He has also indicated plans to launch euro-denominated yield products.

Prior to ether.fi, Silagadze founded Top Hat in 2009, an education software company he led as CEO for twelve years, growing it into the market leader in student engagement software before stepping down to a board role in March 2021. From October 2021 to February 2024, he served as CEO of Gadze Finance, a crypto DeFi fund. He has concurrently held a Venture Partner position at Ripple Ventures, a Canadian B2B SaaS early-stage fund, since March 2021. Silagadze graduated from the University of Waterloo in 2007 with a BASc in Electrical Engineering and is based in George Town, Cayman Islands.

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