Max Kaplan is the CTO of SOL Strategies (Nasdaq: STKE | CSE: HODL), after joining when the previous company he started, Orangefin Ventures, was acquired. Prior to SOL Strategies and founding Orangefin Ventures, Max was one of the first engineers ever hired at Kraken where he worked for 6 years (2017-2023) as Senior Director of Core Infrastructure and Data Engineering.
Max first bought Bitcoin in 2014, however it was early 2017 where he really fell down the rabbit hole of cryptocurrency and blockchain. In late 2017 / early 2018, in addition to his duties at Kraken, Max spent a number of months working on the lightning network, including being one of the top independent contributors to Lightning Labs’ first ever lightning wallet.
At Kraken, Max was one of the first 10 engineers ever hired and helped scale Kraken’s infrastructure through multiple periods of 10x growth. As Senior Director of Engineering, he led a team of 60 engineers focused on increasing throughput, decreasing latency, and improving reliability. When he started, Kraken was just 10 engineers and 120 people in total. By the time he left, Kraken was over 800 engineers and 3,000 people in total.
During his final years at Kraken, Max became quite intrigued with Solana. What brought him into Kraken and the field of cryptocurrency in general was the appeal of a currency not controlled by any central government. After spending 6 years at Kraken, Max grew unexpectedly fascinated with trading as well. While in 2017, the idea of ever trading on-chain seemed extremely far fetched, it was in 2023 that Max discovered Solana, and saw an opportunity in it to improve trading for all by bringing it on chain onto Solana and building out “internet capital markets.”
After leaving Kraken in 2023, Max founded Orangefin Ventures, a Solana staking provider. Originally started as side project, Orangefin grew into one of Solana’s fastest growing validators picking up over $140M in Assets under Delegation, before being acquired by SOL Strategies.
Since joining the Solana ecosystem, Max has been a vocal figure in the Solana ecosystem featured in numerous podcasts and media as sources, as well as being active on Twitter/X.
Max is a graduate of Syracuse University and in his free time, he enjoys watching sports, hanging out with friends & family, and training for his next triathlon.