Arthur Hayes, the co-founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, has recently joined the blockchain data infrastructure startup Covalent as a strategic advisor. He currently serves as the Chief Investment Officer of the family office Maelstrom.
In his new role at Covalent, Hayes aims to help the company become a leading data infrastructure startup in the industry, particularly within the Ethereum ecosystem, and provide services to the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. He highlighted Covalent’s Ethereum Wayback Machine (EWM), which ensures long-term access to blockchain historical data, driving the development of next-generation use cases and AI models.
Hayes explained that he joined Covalent as a strategic advisor because he believes the company’s CQT token has been undervalued compared to its competitors like The Graph. He expressed his goal to bridge this gap as a narrative builder for Covalent.
As compensation, Hayes will receive rewards in the form of CQT tokens, aligning with the industry norm of accepting token-based rewards to maintain consistency with the team, investors, clients, and retail market participants who share the same vision and goals.
Ganesh Swami, the co-founder and CEO of Covalent, confirmed that Hayes is the sole strategic advisor for the company. Currently, the CQT token is priced at $0.23, with a market value of approximately $145 million, ranking 347th in the market.
Covalent was founded in 2019 and offers data infrastructure services for over 225 blockchain networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and Optimism. Swami emphasized the company’s focus on the Ethereum ecosystem and the recent launch of EWM to ensure decentralized access to all Ethereum ecosystem data, supporting AI developers and users in accessing historical on-chain records.
Swami highlighted the importance of decentralized data for AI applications, such as trade replication, NFT forensics, and secure applications, as part of Covalent’s extended vision for decentralized data infrastructure.
Hayes described his role at Covalent as an all-encompassing advisor, assisting with refining the token economics, market positioning, business model adjustments, and engaging new types of clients. Drawing from his experience as a founder, Hayes aims to provide guidance to the project team on best practices and pitfalls to accelerate growth.
Hayes outlined the collaboration process with Covalent, starting with initial meetings at events like ETHCC Paris and Token 2049 Singapore, leading to a formal partnership agreement finalized at ETH Denver. He also mentioned Maelstrom’s involvement as a founding advisor for the synthetic dollar protocol Ethena and their recent consultancy services for decentralized AI platform Ritual and decentralized perpetual exchange Drift, leveraging their industry expertise and resources.
