The Team
Richard Shorten | Chief Alchemist
Rich is the founding partner of venture firm Silvermine Capital and co-founder of GlobalStake. He has been a board member of several internet infrastructure companies, including those listed on each of the NYSE and NASDAQ. Rich is a former attorney at the law firm of Cravath, Swaine and Moore. Rich has taught the National Ski Patrol, but nevertheless skis at reckless speeds. He is also a skilled poker player but is generally eaten alive by the quants who are half his age and play GTO.
Thomas Chaffee | Chief Actuator
Tom is a serial technology entrepreneur, Silvermine Partner and co-founder of GlobalStake. He was a public company CEO exiting to two Fortune 500 companies alongside serving on many boards. Most recently, he and his wife co-founded a nonprofit Title 1 charter school in Sarasota, FL serving more than 650 families in need. Tom is an accomplished musician who misspent his youth playing with The Beach Boys, Dan Fogelberg and many other major acts.
Jordan Knecht | Head of Institutional Strategies & Partnerships
Jordan is a PhD candidate on the adoption of cryptocurrency bringing nearly a decade of Banking experience as well as 3 years of consulting and direct on-the-job web3 experience. Most recently he served on Coinbase’s Prime Brokerage Institutional team. An avid movie buff, you can frequently catch him trying to convince his wife to travel the world to visit film locations.
Tom Kiblin | Head of Infrastructure
Tom has built some of the most substantial backbone infrastructure for today’s Internet. He served as a Principal Engineer for Cisco/INS, Nortel and Wellfleet Communications building early the initial infrastructure elements of Web 1.0. In 2001,Tom founded Defender Hosting which he eventually sold to private equity (Defender is now known as Virtacore).
Will Roopchan | Chief Technology Officer
Will is a senior developer with 18+ years of experience in the media and energy sectors. Initially founding his own validator business under the name Paranodes, Will is a Council Member, Senior Ambassador and Community Moderator for Kusama, and is a recognized leader in areas of Polkadot and Kusama governance.
David Chapman | Principal
David is a Principal at GlobalStake, and a crypto investor since 2017. Mr. Chapman is the creator of one of the highest-grossing NFT projects on Kusama – the Kusama Kings. Prior to joining Silvermine/GlobalStake, David worked at Goldman Sachs in London after leaving Deloitte. Despite his agility from years playing rugby, he has never finished higher than 3rd in Norfolk’s annual greasy pole competition.
Mark Chaffee | Chief Chaos Wrangler
Mark has built enterprise applications in Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. He architected Motorola’s first Intranet system, built a content management system from the ground up, and is agile as both a front- and back-end developer. Mark has an MBA and careers as a singer songwriter and pastor, none of which adequately prepared him for the Chaos of Web 3.
Scott Ashman | Head of Deployment
Scott is a full-stack developer architecting some of the most highly-safeguarded, scalable systems and applications used by the US Armed Forces. He recently built the high security aerospace standards and supply chain certification system used by the Department of Defense. He also has done significant work for the FBI, but he can’t talk about it…