Michael Spain is an Australian software engineer and entrepreneur based in Sydney, known as a co-founder of Derive Protocol, a decentralized options protocol that launched on Ethereum Layer 2. ^{[1] [2]}​

Education

Spain studied at the University of Sydney from 2013 to 2018, earning a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and a Bachelor of Information Technology with first class honours in computer science. Prior to university, he attended Knox Grammar School, graduating in 2012. ^{[5] [6]}

Career

Spain’s early technical experience includes an engineering internship at Simpla.io in 2016, followed by a software engineering role at Property Predictions Pty Ltd from 2016 to 2017. He served as an academic tutor at the University of Sydney in 2017, an early indication of engagement with computer science education and mentorship. ^[1]​

He subsequently entered the blockchain sector, holding engineering roles at Synthetix and Block8 during 2017–2019. Public profiles indicate that he worked as an engineer at Synthetix during 2017–2018 and again in 2020–2021, overlapping with his time as a co‑founder of Lightbit (2019–2021). The overlapping dates suggest concurrent responsibilities across startup building and protocol engineering, a common pattern in early-stage crypto ecosystems. These stints at Synthetix and Block8 provided practical experience with decentralized finance (DeFi) systems and network constraints that would later inform Lyra’s approach to options market design. ^{[1] [3]}​

In 2021, Spain co‑founded Lyra, now Derive Protocol, with Nick Forster. Derive Protocol set out to create a decentralized, on‑chain options protocol capable of offering markets for major cryptoassets while addressing the gas-cost and computational challenges of options pricing and risk management on Ethereum Layer 1. The protocol launched on Optimism, a Layer 2 scaling solution, in August 2021. Spain’s public remarks at the time emphasized why options risk calculations—especially those that require iterating over multiple listings—are costly on Layer 1 and better suited to a Layer 2 environment. ^[2]​