Manuel Araoz is a Co-Founder at Fire wallet, a Web3 transaction security tool, and one of the most respected engineers and builders in the blockchain space.

Born in Buenos Aires and based in Uruguay, Manuel has been an engineer since 2012, a founder since 2015, and an active investor since 2019, with deep roots in Latin America's crypto ecosystem.

Manuel co-founded OpenZeppelin in 2015 alongside Demian Brener, building the most widely used Solidity smart contract library and audit framework in DeFi, which underpins protocols like Aave, Compound, Uniswap, and Coinbase.

He also created Proof of Existence in 2013, one of the earliest blockchain notarization tools, and played a key role in building Decentraland, the pioneering decentralized virtual world; he served as CTO at OpenZeppelin (formerly Zeppelin) before departing to pursue new ventures.

OpenZeppelin's audit framework has supported over 900 smart contract audits since 2017, and Manuel's work across OpenZeppelin, Decentraland, and Proof of Existence has shaped the foundational security and infrastructure layer of the global Web3 ecosystem.