Drake Evans is a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Agora, a project behind AUSD, a digital dollar stablecoin. He previously worked on launching Fraxlend by Frax Finance.^[1]

Education

Drake Evans attended Vanderbilt University from 2009 to 2013, where he earned a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Economics with a minor in Financial Economics. During his studies, he participated in research projects and internships that focused on financial technologies and blockchain applications, providing him with a foundation for his future career in these fields.^[1][4]

Career

Early Career

Before co-founding Agora, Evans built a diverse career in the blockchain and finance industries. He began working as a research assistant at the Andrew Link Microbiology and Immunology Lab in 2010, where he gained early exposure to scientific research methodologies. He then worked as an analyst at Royal Dutch Shell in 2012, focusing on energy markets and financial analysis. From 2013 to 2014, Evans was an analyst at LMN Venture Capital, where he evaluated investment opportunities and conducted financial analyses for venture capital investments. In 2015, he joined Equilibre Capital as an analyst and later became an associate, working on financial modeling and due diligence for investment analysis until 2018. Evans transitioned to Vancery in 2018 as a software engineer, contributing to the company's technological advancements until 2019.^[1]

He founded and led DappHero, a platform aimed at simplifying the creation of decentralized applications, from 2019 to 2020. Later on, Evans worked as a Lifion Developer at Lifion by ADP, where he was involved in advanced software development projects related to human capital management solutions until 2021.^[1][4]

Frax Finance

In 2022, Evans joined Frax Finance, where he served as the Head of Lending & Core Engineering Lead. He was responsible for managing lending operations and developing strategies for liquidity and risk management, involving complex financial modeling and decentralized protocols. Evans was instrumental in launching Fraxlend, a permissionless lending platform. Fraxlend allows users to create isolated lending markets using any ERC-20 tokens included in Chainlink data feeds. The platform was designed to be highly secure, utilizing multiple price oracles and implementing safety measures to prevent oracle attacks. This approach enabled Frax Finance to streamline the lending process, increase transparency, and enhance the overall security of its lending operations.^[1][2][3]

Sam Kazemian, the founder of Frax Finance, commented on his work with Drake Evans on X.com:

"@DrakeEvansV1 was the main architect & engineer of Fraxlend while he was with us, one of the most efficient & now 9-figure TVL lending facilities in DeFi. Can't wait to see what they do in the fiat stablecoin world! @fraxfinance x @AgoraDollar RWA partnership will be glorious"^[10]

Agora

In 2024, Evans co-founded Agora with Nick van Eck and Joe McGrady. Agora raised $12 million in seed funding led by Dragonfly, with participation from Robot Ventures, Breed, General Catalyst, Hack VC, Kraken Ventures, and others. Strategic investors include Mirana Ventures, Mantle EcoFund, Foresight Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, Galaxy, and Consensys. Agora’s approach includes an open partnership model, treating digital dollars as public goods, and initially targets international markets where regulatory environments favor stablecoin adoption.^[5][6][7]

The company aims to launch AUSD, a fully collateralized and freely tradeable digital dollar, backed by cash, U.S. Treasury bills, and overnight repurchase agreements. The reserve fund is managed by VanEck, one of the world’s largest ETF issuers, ensuring that the assets are bankruptcy-remote and regularly audited.^[5][7]

Evans commented in one of his X.com posts:

"When @Nick_van_Eck told me he wanted me to help him build a better digital dollar I thought he was crazy. It would be an impossible task to unseat the duopoly. A few months later we closed a seed round led by @dragonfly_xyz. This is the story of why I’m building @AgoraDollar"^[9]