Jerry Li
Jerry Li Wei Chieh is the co-founder of Term Structure Labs and serves as its chief executive officer. Term Structure Labs built TermMax, a separate fixed-rate lending protocol that applies fixed-income market structures to on-chain borrowing, lending, and trading. Li spent about 25 years in financial markets, including senior roles at Deutsche Bank in Greater China, before turning to DeFi in 2022.[1][2][5]
Early Life and Education
Li earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from National Taiwan University, where he studied from 1987 to 1991. He completed two master’s degrees at Cornell University: a master’s in financial engineering, with a focus on operations research and industrial engineering, in 1994–1995, and a master’s in mechanical engineering in 1995–1996.[3][4]
Career
Early Banking Career
Li entered the financial sector in July 1996, joining Citi in Singapore as an associate and foreign-exchange trader in the Group Treasury division of Global Consumer Banking. He held this position until May 1997. In July of that year, he moved to Bankers Trust in Taipei, where he worked as an associate in Global Markets until December 1999. His trading activities covered bonds, money-market instruments, foreign exchange, and interest-rate derivatives. Bankers Trust subsequently became part of Deutsche Bank, which served as a foundation for his later work with cryptocurrencies.
Deutsche Bank
In January 2000, Li joined Deutsche Bank, beginning a career at the institution that continued until March 2022. His first position was director and Head of Global Rates Trading in Taiwan, a role he held from January 2000 to February 2010. His work covered business development, regulatory approvals, and risk management across several financial products, including flow products, local-currency fund derivatives, equity derivatives, hybrid structured products, and convertible-bond asset swaps. According to his professional profile, he was involved in Taiwan's first local-currency transactions involving bond-linked investments, structured bonds, strip bonds, and Formosa bonds.
From March 2010 to December 2012, Li served as managing director and Head of Global Rates Trading for Greater China, based in Shanghai. He was also a member of Deutsche Bank China's Executive Committee. During this period, he received the CFETS Top CNY Trading Head award and held several market-related licenses, including China Interbank Bond Market Maker, Bond Connect North Bound Market Maker, and PBOC Primary Dealer.
Between January 2013 and December 2020, Li was a managing director in Hong Kong, overseeing Global Emerging Markets and Fixed Income and Currencies for Greater China. His responsibilities included membership in the Global Emerging Markets Executive Committee and the User Committee of OTC Clearing Hong Kong Limited/HKEX. He was also registered as an executive officer of Deutsche Bank Hong Kong. During this period, he managed the bank's global renminbi business. According to his profile, the business received Risk.net's RMB House of the Year award twice and was recognized as a RMB Bond Connect Top Dealer by BCCL/HKEX on four occasions.
From January 2021 to March 2022, Li was based in Taipei as managing director and Head of Global Emerging Markets for Greater China. He remained a member of the Global Emerging Markets Executive Committee and joined Deutsche Bank Taipei's Senior Management Committee.
His responsibilities at Deutsche Bank covered foreign exchange, money markets, fixed income, derivatives, and structured products. Li has also described his involvement in establishing the bank's global renminbi trading book and developing several dozen financial products. His work included risk management across asset classes, oversight of trading activities, and regulatory matters involving authorities in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. A biography published by the Asia Blockchain Summit describes his experience as spanning 25 years in financial-market risk management and business development, including his leadership of Deutsche Bank's Fixed Income and Currencies desk for Greater China.
Transition to DeFi and Entrepreneurship
During the second quarter of 2022, Li began working on a decentralized finance (DeFi) startup. He left Deutsche Bank voluntarily that year to establish a business focused on fixed-rate lending.
From April 2022 to January 2023, Li served as co-founder and CEO of TKSpring, a company based in Taipei, Taiwan. In 2022, he also co-founded Term Structure Labs with Vincent Li and assumed the position of chief executive officer. His LinkedIn profile records his role as co-founder and CEO of Term Structure beginning in October 2022. He is also identified as a founding member of the Unitas Foundation.
In 2026, Li discussed the relationship between the growth of assets held on decentralized networks and the limited availability of directly observable interest-rate curves for those assets. He identified this issue as one of the considerations behind his work on interest-rate infrastructure for decentralized finance.
Term Structure
Term Structure is a non-custodial protocol for peer-to-peer borrowing and lending that provides fixed-rate and fixed-term financial products. Its functions include borrowing, lending, and the management of exposure to interest-rate changes. The protocol's technical architecture incorporates Zk-Trueup, a customized zero-knowledge rollup solution.
The protocol's Ethereum mainnet became operational on June 3, 2024. Before its launch, its testnet recorded more than 8,000 wallets and over two million transactions. A trading competition conducted during the testnet period involved 560 wallets and generated more than 314,000 transactions. Li stated that the platform was intended for institutional clients, traders, and retail participants.
In 2023, Term Structure raised $4.25 million in a seed funding round led by Cumberland DRW. The participating investors included Decima Fund, HashKey Capital, Longling Capital, and MZ Web3 Fund. A report published in November 2023 stated that the company's total funding exceeded $8 million.
TermMax
TermMax is a protocol developed by Term Structure Labs that provides fixed-rate borrowing and lending markets. In April 2025, Li discussed its use of fixed interest rates and yield curves in financial strategies. A post he shared later that month indicated that the protocol had launched during the preceding week.
The protocol combines automated market making with an order-book system. Its automated market-maker pricing can be configured by curators and market makers. Borrowing positions are represented by three tradable tokens: FT, which represents the principal amount; XT, associated with interest and option value; and GT, an ERC-721 token representing leveraged positions.
Professional curators establish target annual percentage rate ranges for individual markets and manage strategy vaults. An August 2026 announcement identified Keyrock, Hardcore Labs, Edge Capital, and Origami as curators participating in the protocol.
TermMax's liquidation mechanism transfers collateral directly to the lender rather than requiring its sale on the market. This settlement method applies to positions in which the collateral is delivered to satisfy the outstanding obligation. The protocol's TermMax Alpha product also includes options settled through physical delivery. Under this arrangement, the conversion price is established when a position is opened, and settlement takes place at expiry without liquidation before that date.
In September 2025, a post shared by Li reported that TermMax V1 had reached $35 million in total value locked, more than 10,000 users, and over 30 markets distributed across three chains. An August 2026 announcement provided further operating figures, stating that the protocol had been active on mainnet since April 2025 and was available on 10 Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chains. At that time, the reported figures included 60 fixed-rate markets, 40 strategy vaults, tens of millions of dollars in total value locked, and more than 1.5 million registered wallets.
Institutional Services and Integrations
In 2025, Term Structure introduced Term Structure Institutional (TSI), a fixed-income service intended for institutional participants. A company profile described its services as targeting hedge funds and asset managers, with fixed-rate financing secured through multi-party computation (MPC) wallets.
Term Structure Labs also developed TermPrime, an institutional financing venue operating on Canton Network. It supports fixed-rate, fixed-term transactions between permissioned institutions. Participating organizations transact with counterparties that have completed know-your-business (KYB) verification, established agreements, and approved credit lines.
TermPrime includes a shared order book for order matching and price discovery. Transaction details remain private between counterparties, and the platform supports atomic settlement on Canton.
The first TermPrime transaction on Canton was completed at the end of June 2026. The transaction had a seven-day fixed term and interest rate. The two participating counterparties completed the required KYB checks before pricing, executing, and settling the agreement. A subsequent announcement stated that the counterparty network had reached nine institutions and that TermMax operated an early validator node on Canton.
TermMax also established integrations involving tokenized financial assets. In January 2026, the protocol integrated Ondo Global Markets to provide a fixed-rate borrowing market accepting tokenized U.S. equities as collateral. The announcement described the market as the first of its kind. Binance's bStock was subsequently added to the protocol. In August 2026, TermMax became available on Robinhood Chain, where QQQ, SPY, and NVDA could be deposited as collateral against USDG.
Funding and Token Developments
On August 26, 2026, TermMax announced a strategic investment from YZi Labs. The announcement was published the following day. The project had also been selected to participate in YZi Labs' EASY Residency Season 3. The TMX token completed its token-generation event on August 25, 2026.
According to TermMax's March 2026 white paper, TMX functions as the protocol's utility and governance token. Its stated functions include governance participation, staking rewards, and ecosystem incentives. Token holders can participate in decisions concerning protocol features and parameters, while staking provides access to rewards and additional governance rights.
In August 2026, TermMax also reported receiving a score of 93% in the DeFiSafety Process Quality Review. The announcement compared the result with Aave V3. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
