Ryan Shea is Co-Founder of Stacks, a Bitcoin Layer 2 blockchain enabling smart contracts and decentralized applications on Bitcoin. He also founded Opus, a cryptocurrency wallet platform.

Ryan graduated from Princeton University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and minor in Computer Science, and participated in Y Combinator Summer 2014 batch.

Ryan is an active angel investor with early-stage investments in multiple unicorns including OpenSea, Lattice, Anchorage, Mercury, Lightning, and CoinTracker. He also co-founded Voterbase in 2020, a civic tech platform that helps voters make informed decisions.

Stacks (formerly Blockstack) raised over 75M in funding from Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator, Lux Capital, Digital Currency Group, and Winklevoss Capital. The company completed the first SEC-qualified token offering in 2019.

Stacks brings DeFi, NFTs, and smart contracts to Bitcoin, leveraging its security as a base layer. The platform has pioneered the Proof of Transfer consensus mechanism connecting Bitcoin and Stacks blockchains.