Jean Herrell's engagement with the cryptocurrency space began in 2014 while he was pursuing computer science studies in Taiwan. The profound experience of witnessing governmental restrictions on financial freedom served as a catalyst, leading him to Bitcoin (BTC) and subsequently to the development of a decentralized system. After obtaining degrees in statistics and mathematics, Herrell transitioned into quantitative modeling for insurance firms and hedge funds.
“It’s a very competitive space. So we came up with the concept of creating a DAO of quants — a group of thousands of quants, machine learning engineers and statisticians all over the world, paid in crypto to solve problems for big institutions”.
For the past three years, this concept has materialized into Crunch DAO, a decentralized "marketplace" specifically designed for quantitative research.
Redefining Collaboration Through Governance
Herrell explained that a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is fundamentally structured to distribute power among its members.
“It’s about giving governance to the members,” he said.
He underscored that Crunch DAO's architecture is engineered to prevent any form of centralized interference. Within Crunch DAO, all decisions are executed through smart contracts, which are essentially rules that can only be altered through collective member approval. Members actively participate by voting on proposed updates and new initiatives, thereby ensuring a transparent and equitable operational framework for the DAO.
“It’s like an autonomous machine set with rules. The only way to change those rules is to vote and implement what’s been decided by governance”.
This robust structure enables the DAO to effectively coordinate a global network of thousands of data scientists while maintaining a consistent methodology for the creation, sharing, and monetization of models.
A Decentralized Marketplace for Financial Models
At its core, Crunch DAO functions as a marketplace that connects data scientists with financial institutions. Hedge funds and trading firms are able to submit their datasets to the platform, where hundreds of DAO members then compete to develop predictive models that can extract "alpha," or valuable market insights.
“If you’re a hedge fund or sit on a big pile of data and want to extract alpha from it, you come to Crunch. You share part of your dataset, and soon hundreds of machine learning engineers will be working to solve your problem.”
These firms subsequently pay a subscription fee to gain access to the collective insights generated through this collaborative process, employing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that is designed for efficient scalability.