Irene Wu

Irene Wu is a technology and investment professional with a background spanning blockchain infrastructure, venture investing, software, design, and consumer businesses. She is currently the founder of a stealth venture and an angel investor and advisor, having previously held strategy and business development roles at LayerZero Labs and served as a venture partner at Bain Capital Crypto. ^[7]

Career

Wu began her career in experience design at IDEO, where she worked on product and service development projects, while also coaching youth competitive rowing and later serving as a guest lecturer with Community Rowing, Inc. She subsequently joined Rowing Blazers in growth and operations, supporting the New York-based menswear company's business development and operations. She later moved into blockchain, joining LayerZero Labs as an Integrations Engineer before progressing to Head of Business Development & Integrations and then Head of Strategy, where she worked across integrations, partnerships, and broader strategic initiatives.

Wu later served as a Venture Partner at Bain Capital Crypto, focusing on early-stage teams building open internet infrastructure. She also conducted independent research into AI agents, persistent memory, and proactive behavioral systems, as well as conceptual and performance art and archival subjects. Alongside these roles, she has been an angel investor and advisor, making early-stage investments across vertical AI, decentralized finance, cybersecurity, construction technology, legal AI, and consumer software, including Cursor, Ostium, Artemis, and DASMAC. Wu joined the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee's NextGen Leadership Council as an inaugural board member. She is currently the founder of a stealth venture while continuing her work as an angel investor and advisor. ^{[1] [2]}

Presentations

LayerZero V2

In an April 2024 presentation at the Blockchain Application Stanford Summit, Wu discussed LayerZero's development and the motivations behind its approach to cross-chain infrastructure, focusing on the security limitations of early blockchain bridges. She emphasized censorship resistance as an important property of cross-chain messaging, particularly for applications involving governance and voting, and discussed how academic research, including work on zero-knowledge proofs, has influenced LayerZero's evolving design. Wu outlined immutability, permissionless usage, and censorship resistance as core architectural principles, while noting the risks associated with upgradeable smart contracts. She then introduced LayerZero V2, which separates execution from verification and uses a modular security architecture that supports different validation methods while simplifying cross-chain messaging for developers. Wu concluded by discussing applications built with V2, including cross-chain gaming, NFTs, and wallets, and emphasized the need to give developers greater control over security while enabling permissionless and censorship-resistant applications. ^[3]

Omnichain Assets

In a June 2023 presentation at the Avalanche Summit, Wu introduced LayerZero and discussed the importance of omnichain interoperability and seamless cross-chain experiences for Web3 users and developers. She explained LayerZero's messaging architecture, focusing on the use of independent oracles and relayers to securely transfer state data between blockchains while maintaining principles of immutability, permissionlessness, and censorship resistance. Wu also discussed the protocol's approach to security and upgrades, arguing for immutable contracts while allowing permissionless deployment of new endpoints as security research and requirements evolve. She described omnichain asset standards such as OFTs and ONFTs, which allow tokens and NFTs to move natively across multiple chains without relying on wrapped assets, and highlighted their use in applications including Trader Joe and BTCP. Wu concluded by discussing LayerZero's instant finality, the importance of security audits, and the protocol's approach to building interoperable applications across blockchain networks. ^[6]