Ezaan Mangalji

Ezaan Mangalji is a software engineer and technology entrepreneur with a background in software development, product engineering, and autonomous systems. He is a Co-Founder of Initia Labs and has previously held software engineering positions at Flexport, Blend, Uber, and Fiix. ^[5]

학력

Mangalji graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BSE in Networked and Social Systems Engineering (2020) and an MSE in Computer Science (2021). He also earned his BS in Operations Management and Management Science from The Wharton School in 2020. ^[4]

경력

Mangalji began his career as an Engineering Team Lead at AUVSI Foundation from September 2013 to August 2016, where he led the engineering, electrical, programming, and construction work for an autonomous underwater vehicle designed for international university-level competitions. The team competed in the 2013 and 2014 RoboSub Challenges and the Singapore AUV Challenge, placing third in Singapore and receiving the Young Achievers Award. From June to September 2014, he worked as a Research Intern at Vancouver General Hospital, studying the effects of the Sonic Hedgehog protein on castration-resistant prostate cancer and gaining experience with laboratory research techniques. From June to September 2015, he was a Software Engineering Intern at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), where he worked in a critical care nursing simulation lab and developed interactive learning environments using augmented reality, iBeacons, and simulation robots. He also served as School Captain at St. George's School from June 2015 to June 2016, where he helped restructure the student government system and develop a student government constitution.

From November 2016 to February 2017, Mangalji worked as a Software Engineer at Fiix, a Y Combinator-backed automotive maintenance startup, developing front-end components. His work contributed to a reported 23% increase in conversions from the homepage to quote requests. From January 2017 to May 2018, he served as a Computer Science Teaching Assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, supporting instruction in Programming Languages and Techniques, with coursework covering Java and OCaml. From June to August 2017, he was an iOS Engineer Intern at Uber, working on the Rider Request Team. He proposed and implemented Force Touch App Shortcuts for iOS and Android and developed user feedback features for situations involving limited driver availability. From June to August 2018, he worked as a Software Engineer at Blend, where he was one of three engineers who developed and launched the company's home insurance product. He deployed and maintained a Kubernetes-based adapter microservice that supported integrations with insurance providers, including MetLife and Stillwater. From June to August 2019, he worked as a Software Engineer at Flexport in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Since January 2023, Mangalji has served as Co-Founder of Initia Labs, a blockchain infrastructure company developing the Initia modular blockchain ecosystem. ^[1]

인터뷰

Multi-Chain Strategy

In a March 2025 interview on The Rollup podcast, Mangalji discussed Initia's approach to building a sustainable blockchain ecosystem and establishing long-term user trust. He described the ecosystem's growth to approximately 15 announced Interwoven Rollups and around $50 million in combined funding across Initia and its associated projects. He explained how the Vested Interest Program (VIP) and Enshrined Liquidity were designed to encourage application usage, liquidity provision, and activity between rollups. Mangalji emphasized the importance of developing application-specific products with integrated infrastructure and shared standards rather than competing primarily on transaction speed or offering developers excessive infrastructure choices. He also discussed chain abstraction as a way to simplify interactions across multiple networks, with AI agents potentially supporting this development over time. Regarding Initia's economic model, he explained that incentives were intended to prioritize sustained application usage rather than high staking yields, while modest rewards on unvested tokens could still contribute to network security. The interview concluded with a discussion of Initia's anticipated March 2025 launch.  ^[3]

발표

Initia Keynote

In a May 2024 presentation at Hack Summit, Mangalji discussed blockchain infrastructure development and the challenges associated with Cosmos app chains, Ethereum rollups, and modular blockchains. He explained that Cosmos chains often faced high validator security costs, governance difficulties, and fragmented IBC transfers, while Ethereum rollups offered simpler deployment but limited customization and shared access to services such as oracles, bridges, and native USDC. He introduced Initia as an ecosystem combining a Cosmos SDK-based Layer 1 with customizable, virtual machine-agnostic Layer 2 rollups supporting Move, EVM, and Wasm. He outlined how the platform provided shared infrastructure for rollups, including oracle services, fiat on-ramps, instant bridging, interoperable tokens, and native USDC and CCTP access. Mangalji also discussed Enshrined Liquidity, which uses staked liquidity provider tokens and Initia L1 as a shared routing hub to support cross-rollup swaps and reduce liquidity fragmentation. He further described the ecosystem's wallet, application, username, and economic systems, and announced that Initia's public testnet was expected to launch later in May 2024. ^[2]