Eowyn Chen is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Trust Wallet, a major self-custody cryptocurrency wallet. Before leading Trust Wallet, she held several senior leadership positions at Binance, where she played a significant role in the company's marketing, growth, and corporate development, including its acquisitions and venture investments. Chen is a vocal advocate for the mass adoption of decentralized technologies through simplified user experiences and the empowerment of users via self-custody. ^{[1] [2]}​

Early Life and Education

Eowyn Chen grew up in China and later moved to the United States. This experience provided her with a firsthand perspective on how digital transformation was reshaping global industries, which sparked her interest in technology's potential for individual empowerment. ^[3] Her parents named her after the character Éowyn from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. ^[4]

Chen attended Harvard University, where she graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was a "science-minded history concentrator" and pursued a secondary field in Economics. Her academic work explored the intersection of human behavior, financial markets, and technology, with a focus on understanding the fundamental principles driving societal shifts. ^{[3] [2]}

Career

Chen's career spans management consulting in traditional finance, leadership roles in the consumer technology sector, and executive positions at some of the largest companies in the cryptocurrency industry.

Early Career

After graduating, Chen began her career as a management consultant at Oliver Wyman in New York, working within the firm's financial services practice from approximately 2011 to 2017. ^{[2] [3]} This role provided her with foundational experience in business scaling and strategy for major financial institutions. She later transitioned into the consumer tech industry, holding a role as Senior Country Manager for the U.S. market at Musical.ly, the short-form video app that later became TikTok. She also held positions at other technology firms, including ofo and ViaBTC. ^{[5] [6]}​

Binance

Chen joined Binance in 2018 during a bear market, a period she found compelling because it was a time when "real builders stay." ^[3] Throughout her tenure of over five years, she held several influential leadership positions across different divisions of the company, contributing to both its strategic investments and its global user growth. ^[7]​

Initially, Chen served as Director and later Vice President of Corporate Development. In this capacity, she led strategic mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and was instrumental in over 30 of Binance's key investments and acquisitions. Notable deals she was involved in include the acquisitions of crypto data aggregator CoinMarketCap, DappReview, and Trust Wallet itself in 2018. ^{[7] [8]} In November 2021, she was appointed Head of Binance Labs, the company's venture capital and incubation arm, where she managed a multi-billion dollar portfolio of over 200 projects. ^[7]​

Concurrently, Chen also held senior marketing roles. She built the central marketing team and progressed to become the Vice President of Marketing and Growth. In this role, she led the global marketing functions that helped scale Binance's user base from approximately 10 million to over 100 million. ^{[2] [3]}​

Trust Wallet

In May 2022, Chen was appointed CEO of Trust Wallet, taking over from founder Viktor Radchenko. ^[7] Her appointment was aimed at scaling the platform from a foundational crypto wallet into a comprehensive Web3 gateway. During her time as CEO, she oversaw a period of significant product evolution and user growth, with the wallet's user base expanding from around 25 million to over 70 million. ^{[5] [9]}​

Leadership and Vision at Trust Wallet

During her tenure as CEO, Chen articulated a clear vision for Trust Wallet centered on making Web3 accessible, secure, and user-centric. Her crypto journey was significantly influenced by an early interaction with Trust Wallet's founder, Viktor Radchenko. After he sent her cryptocurrency directly to a self-custody wallet, she described the experience of true ownership as a "lightbulb moment" that ignited her passion for decentralization. ^[3]​

Philosophy on Self-Custody and Mass Adoption

Chen's core philosophy is that self-custody is a "fundamental human right" and a form of "empowering yet responsible freedom." ^[3] She became a more prominent voice for this principle following the collapse of centralized entities like FTX in late 2022, emphasizing that self-custody gives users full control and significantly reduces counterparty risk. ^[10]​

Her strategy for achieving mass Web3 adoption was focused on "mass adoption through simplification." She frequently stated that to onboard the next billion users, the industry needed to make crypto easy and abstract away its underlying complexities, similar to how email functions without users needing to understand SMTP protocols. ^{[3] [6]}​

"To get the one billion users in Web3, we definitely need to face the challenges... The first thing is to make crypto easy. It's too complex at this moment." ^[6] "True ownership is key. When you truly own your assets, you own your identity, and your data." ^[11]

Product Evolution and Strategy

Under Chen's leadership, the strategy for Trust Wallet was to evolve the application from a simple token storage tool into an all-in-one Web3 gateway or "super app." ^[3] Her vision, outlined in a February 2025 blog post, detailed a long-term plan to position the wallet as a "personal companion for the digital life" that integrates AI-powered assistance while ensuring user control over assets and data. ^[12]​

Key initiatives and product developments during her tenure included:

• Browser Extension: The launch of the Trust Wallet Browser Extension expanded the wallet's availability from mobile-only to desktop users, enabling direct competition with desktop-native wallets and facilitating seamless dApp interaction. ^[1]
• Wallet as a Service (WaaS): Trust Wallet began developing a WaaS solution to provide wallet infrastructure for businesses and dApp developers, helping them onboard their users to Web3. ^[5]
• Trust Wallet SWIFT: Chen announced the development of SWIFT (Smart Wallet for Innovative Future Transactions), a smart contract-based wallet utilizing Account Abstraction (EIP-4337). This initiative was designed to simplify the user experience with features like one-click transactions, social recovery, and the ability to pay gas fees in over 200 different tokens, removing the need to hold a network's native token. ^{[13] [6]}
• Security Enhancements: A major focus was placed on proactive security measures. This included launching robust bug bounty programs, a Security Scanner tool to warn users of risky transactions, and increased user education about potential threats like iMessage zero-day exploits. ^{[13] [3]}
• Open Source: Chen's leadership continued Trust Wallet's commitment to open-source technology, including the open-sourcing of Wallet Core, a key library for creating and managing wallets, to foster greater collaboration and security within the ecosystem. ^[13]

Interviews

Interview on ICN Talks Business #01

In an interview released on ICN Talks Business on November 21, 2024, Eowyn Chen, CEO of Trust Wallet, discussed her background, professional trajectory, and views on the crypto industry. The statements presented reflect her own perspective as expressed during the conversation.

Chen explained that her personal beliefs and principles have informed her approach to leadership and professional conduct. According to her account, these principles influenced her entry into the blockchain sector, including her early involvement with Binance and her subsequent role at Trust Wallet. She described character development and long term consistency as relevant factors in her professional decisions.

During the interview, Chen outlined the functional scope of Trust Wallet, describing it as a self custody wallet designed to allow users to manage digital assets directly. She stated that the product was developed to simplify interaction with blockchain networks while adhering to defined security and privacy practices. In her description, Trust Wallet operates as a software interface rather than a custodial or banking service.

Chen also addressed industry level topics, including regulatory considerations, decentralization, and operational responsibility within crypto products. She referred to trust as a factor that influences user retention and described transparency as a necessary practice when addressing technical issues or user losses. Competition was discussed in the context of market dynamics, with an emphasis on internal development processes and execution.

The interview concludes with Chen’s view that technology functions as a tool that can support human activity when applied within clear ethical and operational boundaries. Her comments position Trust Wallet as a product shaped by these considerations, focused on providing access to digital asset management within the broader crypto ecosystem. ^[14]

User Empowerment and Self-Custody #02

In an interview published on November 12, 2024, on the YouTube channel The Room of Eljaboom, Eowyn Chen presented her views on the evolution of crypto wallets, decentralization, and self-custody within the blockchain ecosystem. The discussion reflects Chen’s own perspective, informed by her professional background and role at Trust Wallet.

During the interview, Chen outlined key stages of her personal and professional path, including her education, early career decisions, and subsequent involvement in the blockchain sector. She noted that prior exposure to traditional financial systems and their technological constraints influenced her interest in decentralized architectures. According to Chen, blockchain-based systems offer a framework in which asset ownership and control are managed directly by users rather than intermediaries.

Chen described Trust Wallet’s function as providing infrastructure that supports self-custody and enables interaction with multiple blockchain networks through a single interface. From her perspective, product development priorities include secure key management, multi-chain compatibility, and interface design intended to reduce operational complexity for users with varying levels of technical familiarity.

The conversation also addressed organizational and operational challenges encountered during her tenure, including external disruptions and platform-related risks. Chen framed these situations as part of the ongoing management of a global software product operating within a volatile regulatory and geopolitical environment. She indicated that internal processes emphasize incremental adjustments, risk mitigation, and continuity of operations.

In the final portion of the interview, Chen discussed her longer-term view of Web3. She described potential applications beyond digital asset management, including decentralized approaches to data ownership and distribution. These concepts were presented as developing areas within the broader blockchain landscape, dependent on experimentation, technical progress, and industry-wide coordination rather than immediate implementation. ^[15]