Essi Lagevardi

Esfandiar “Essi” Lagevardi is a finance and decentralized-finance professional who has been founder and chief executive officer of Turtle.xyz since March 2024. His work has included financial research, blockchain infrastructure, and decentralized-application security; at Turtle, he has focused on liquidity infrastructure for decentralized-finance (DeFi) protocols and users.^[1]​^[2]​

Education

Lagevardi studied Business & Management at Aston Business School in Birmingham from 2008 to 2013. He recieved a BSc in Economics & Accounting.^[2]​

Career

Lagevardi began his career with an internship in the Commercial Banking Division of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Hammersmith, London, in June and July 2008. He also worked in marketing and research at PIP Financial during January–October 2008 and October 2012–July 2013, helping organize client-specific events across Europe and develop networking opportunities in wealth management.^[2]​

From June 2013 to February 2014, he was business development manager at DDQ Invest, a London financial-media company. He helped financial firms build relationships with professional investors and advisers, and facilitated connections between fund managers and investors. From April 2014 to June 2017, he worked as an accountant at Edelman, preparing financial services and month

• and year-end reports for European business units in Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Brussels.^[2]​

Lagevardi was head of research at Fincross International in London from March 2017 to March 2019. Fincross was developing Finex, a permissioned, interoperable, peer-to-peer blockchain intended to serve a whitelisted network of investors, issuers, financial institutions, corporations, and service providers across enterprise and retail financial applications.^[2]​

From March 2021 to April 2024, Lagevardi was chief financial officer at Omniscia, a Web3 security and research firm whose work includes auditing and securing decentralized networks and applications. CryptoSlate describes the role as contributing to his focus on security, trustless operations, and risk mitigation in DeFi.^[2]​^[1]​

He was director of DeFi at W3BCLOUD from June 2021 to August 2023. The venture, involving ConsenSys, Halo Holdings, and AMD, focused on cloud-computing infrastructure combining transaction throughput with security.^[2]​

Turtle Club and DeFi

Lagevardi became founder and CEO of Turtle.xyz in March 2024. The project is also called Turtle Club and is described as a DeFi and Web3 liquidity-infrastructure protocol. CryptoSlate says Lagevardi led its development of a distribution layer intended to let retail users, institutions, and large holders monetize liquidity.^[2]​^[1]​^[3]​

Indodax Academy describes Turtle Club as connecting holders of funds with protocols seeking liquidity, then pooling and distributing liquidity toward protocols that need it. Its account says the protocol considers user activity and engagement, as well as deposited capital, when assessing contributions and incentives. It uses on-chain mechanisms to make liquidity management transparent and measurable.^[3]​