Ori Kwan is a product and design-focused professional with experience in frontend engineering, user experience design, and consulting across technology firms. She later co-founded Orca, where she has worked on product development, user interface design, and organizational growth within the Solana ecosystem. ^[4]

Education

Kwan graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Computer Science. ^[7]

Career

Kwan began her career with early roles in technology and education, including a digital media internship at True Run Media in 2011, followed by a software engineering internship at Google in 2012, where she developed a Chrome extension prototype. During her time at Stanford University, she held teaching and support roles, including serving as a section leader for introductory programming courses and assisting with human-computer interaction instruction. She also completed a frontend engineering internship at Coursera in 2013 before returning as a full-time frontend engineer from 2014 to 2016, where she worked on course navigation, authoring tools, and user-facing learning features. From 2016 to 2018, she worked at Button, Inc. as a senior UX engineer and design lead, contributing to both frontend development and internal design systems. She then joined IDEO in 2019 as an interaction designer, working on consulting projects across Asia in mobility, financial tools, and consumer technology.

In 2020, Kwan co-founded Orca, a decentralized exchange on the Solana blockchain, where she has worked across product development, design, and organizational growth. Her responsibilities have included user experience design, frontend development, product management, and broader operational functions such as fundraising and team development. During her tenure, the protocol expanded from a small founding team to a larger contributor base and processed significant trading volume. ^[7]

Interviews

Crypto for Humans

In a May 2023 interview with Solana, Kwan discussed the importance of intentional design in Web3. Kwan, who has a background in computer science and human-computer interaction, highlighted that good UX and UI are often overlooked in crypto, which historically focused more on technological prowess than user experience. She explained that complex blockchain constraints, such as speed limitations and data persistence, have contributed to clunky designs. Still, she believed that incorporating design from the outset is crucial for broader adoption. Kwan’s approach involved starting with user needs and values, then translating them into intuitive interfaces across different product tiers—consumer, pro, and developer SDKs—while prioritizing transparency, trustworthiness, and reliability. She stressed that successful crypto products require consistent technical robustness, clear communication during transactions, and humility in balancing feedback from both existing users and potential new audiences. Finally, Kwan advocated for elevating designers to leadership roles within crypto teams to ensure user-centricity and warned that trusting in technology alone won't guarantee success; instead, trust must be built through reliable, accessible, and well-designed experiences. ^[1]

Solana DEX

In a June 2022 interview with Ashton Addison, Kwan discussed the development and vision of Orca, a leading decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Solana blockchain, emphasizing user-friendliness and simplicity. She shared that Orca originated from an organic connection between her and her co-founder, with one having experience at the Ethereum Foundation and the other with a background in engineering and design, aiming to create a scalable yet accessible trading platform for everyday users. Launched in February 2021, Orca quickly became a top trading-volume DEX on Solana, focusing on providing a foundational liquidity layer to support ecosystem growth. The team planned to implement community listings to enable broader token support, balancing decentralization with quality control. They prioritized keeping the interface simple yet functional, offering features such as concentrated liquidity pools and liquidity-provisioning tools, while also supporting developer grants to foster ecosystem building. Kwan acknowledged the importance of addressing liquidity risks and expressed intentions to develop options for less risky participation, such as staking. Long-term ambitions included expanding the utility of Orca's governance token, ORCA, through community-led governance initiatives and continuously improving core protocols to become the most effective liquidity layer on Solana. The team actively engaged with their community via Twitter and Discord, promoting their builder grants program for protocol development, while maintaining an optimistic view of Orca's future growth and role in the Solana DeFi ecosystem. ^[2]

Orca and DeFi

On the Cryptonews Podcast in October 2022, Kwan, a programmer, designer, illustrator, and co-founder of Orca, discussed her diverse background and transition into the crypto space. She highlighted her work in creating human-centered interfaces and her design approach, emphasizing user experience, testing, and community support. Kwan shared how she and her co-founder ventured into crypto during the COVID-19 pandemic after discovering Solana’s energy efficiency and scalability, which aligned with their goal of building simple, elegant DeFi tools. Orca, under her leadership, aimed to become a leading Solana-based marketplace by prioritizing developer friendliness and low-complexity interfaces, and integrating environmental consciousness through initiatives such as its climate fund. She explained their focus on building scalable infrastructure, such as routing trades across multiple liquidity pools with the upcoming smart router, and stressed the significance of human relationships within the ecosystem. Kwan also expressed her belief in the transformative potential of NFTs beyond speculation, envisioning real-world applications such as digital guides and asset ownership, all rooted in transparency and blockchain-based ownership. Throughout, she underscored her commitment to creating value through design, sustainability, and innovative applications in Web3, emphasizing that meaningful impact often begins with prioritizing user experience and environmental responsibility. ^[5]

Solana AMM

In an April 2023 interview on the Frictionless Podcast, hosted by Logan Jastremski, Kwan and Yutaro Mori discussed their backgrounds and the reasons they chose to build on Solana rather than Ethereum. Mori described his experience working on Ethereum-related projects and in decentralized finance, noting that Solana’s high throughput and low latency enabled different technical trade-offs compared to Ethereum’s scaling approach. Kwan emphasized a design-focused approach, aiming to make decentralized finance tools more accessible through simplified user interfaces. They explained that early experimentation on Ethereum revealed usability and performance limitations, which influenced the development of Orca as a more user-focused automated market maker. The discussion also covered Solana’s network improvements alongside ongoing concerns such as occasional outages and stability challenges. They outlined plans for enhanced trading interfaces and tools, while also referencing broader initiatives related to user education and ecosystem development. ^[6]

Presentations

OPOS

At Solana Breakpoint 2023 in November, Kwon and Yutaro Mori introduced Orca’s new Liquidity Terminal, a comprehensive dashboard designed to enhance the experience of liquidity providers (LPs) on Solana. They explained that many LPs currently rely on inefficient trial-and-error methods and emphasized the importance of data-driven tools to improve decision-making. The Liquidity Terminal was inspired by computer terminals and offers real-time pool analysis, including a price chart, yield finder, and time-to-profit estimator, enabling LPs to quickly and accurately assess historical yields, profitability, and optimal ranges. They highlighted that the platform calculates precise yields by tracking transaction data and reward emissions, allowing users to make smarter, more informed choices. Features like easier repositioning and real-time P&L tracking were announced as future updates. The founders invited users to join the closed beta by scanning a QR code and providing feedback to refine the tool further. Overall, Orca aimed to elevate LP efficiency and experience, reaffirming its commitment to improving decentralized finance on Solana. ^[3]