Ayyan Rahman is a business executive and entrepreneur working in financial technology and digital assets, with a focus on blockchain-based infrastructure and partnerships. His experience includes roles in business development, operations, and investment research. He is the co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of OnRe, an on-chain reinsurance company, and was previously a co-founder of the credentialing platform Gateway. ^[1]​

Education

Rahman attended Boston College, where he graduated in 2022 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. His studies focused on Banking, Corporate, Finance, and Securities Law. ^[2]​

Career

Rahman's career began with roles in the public sector and non-profit management. In 2016, he co-founded Fit Nation NJ Inc., a non-profit organization where he was involved with organizational development and community programming until 2020. In 2017, he worked in the public sector as an assistant to the chief of staff in Middlesex County, New Jersey, where he supported legislative research and community engagement initiatives. He followed this with an accounting internship at the professional services firm HAKS in 2018.

In 2018, Rahman began his work in the digital asset space at a tokenization platform. He has stated that his time there was formative, but he ultimately left the project due to strategic disagreements with the founders over the company's direction. This departure marked his transition deeper into decentralized finance (DeFi), where he became an active contributor to the Yearn Finance community. From 2018 to 2021, he also served as a director at Absolute Strategies.

Between 2019 and 2021, Rahman worked at Liquidity Digital, a firm focused on digital assets. He initially joined as a business development representative and was later promoted to Head of Business Development and Marketing. In this senior role, his responsibilities centered on institutional engagement and forging strategic partnerships. Following this, he joined the venture capital firm Visary Capital as a Research Partner in 2021. He stayed with the firm until 2022, focusing on investment analysis and strategy development while continuing his contributions in the DeFi sector.

In 2021, Rahman co-founded his first major venture, Gateway, where he served as Chief Operating Officer until 2025. He oversaw the company's operations, product initiatives, and partnership efforts. After Gateway was acquired by the digital currency firm Circle in early 2025, Rahman briefly joined Circle in a business development role. His work there involved bringing tokenization and institutional-grade financial infrastructure to market. Shortly thereafter in 2025, he left to co-found OnRe, where he currently serves as Chief Growth Officer, leading partnerships, capital strategy, and market development. ^{[2] [3]}

Ventures

Gateway

Rahman co-founded Gateway in 2021 and served as its Chief Operating Officer until its acquisition in 2025. Gateway operated as a credentialing platform designed for the Web3 ecosystem. Under his leadership, the company achieved several milestones, including raising a $4.2 million seed funding round. The platform gained adoption from over 20 organizations and was used to issue more than 2 million on-chain credentials. Gateway established partnerships with several prominent projects and foundations within the blockchain industry, including Solana, Aave, Monad, Arbitrum, and Gitcoin. The company's work on credentialing and identity in DeFi led to its acquisition by Circle in early 2025. ^[3]​

OnRe Finance

In 2025, Rahman co-founded OnRe and took on the role of Chief Growth Officer. OnRe is an on-chain reinsurance company that aims to tokenize reinsurance risk, thereby connecting capital from the digital asset ecosystem with real-world underwriting returns. The company's stated goal is to provide investors with access to institutional-grade, uncorrelated yield from the reinsurance market, an industry with a total addressable market estimated at over $800 billion. The company operates by sourcing global reinsurance risk through established brokers and tokenizing it, allowing digital asset investors to fund these assets and earn yield from underwriting.

OnRe is built on the Solana blockchain and its primary product is a yield-bearing dollar asset known as ONyc, also referred to as the On-chain Yield Coin. This asset is designed to be a composable collateral asset within the Solana DeFi ecosystem. The company is regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) and operates as a Segregated Accounts Company (SAC). It holds both an Innovative Insurer General Business (IIGB) license and a Digital Asset Business Act (DABA) license in Bermuda. ^{[1] [3]}

Interviews

On-Chain Reinsurance

In an interview with Pine Analytics, Rahman shared his journey into the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, which began in 2018 when he worked on a tokenization platform. After disagreements with the founders regarding their direction, he transitioned into the DeFi space, contributing to the Yearn Finance community and later joining Visery Capital. Rahman's experience led him to co-found OnRe Finance, focusing on democratizing access to the reinsurance industry, a lucrative but traditionally exclusive market. He explained that OnRe aims to leverage digital assets, particularly its proprietary On-chain Yield Coin (ONyc), to enable broader participation in reinsurance deals, which previously mainly benefited wealthy investors. By leveraging stablecoins and creating a user-friendly platform, OnRe hopes to deliver stable returns, improve liquidity, and better integrate with DeFi markets. Rahman expressed enthusiasm for OnRe's growth potential and its ambition to become a leading on-chain asset manager, emphasizing the importance of privacy and regulatory compliance in its operations. ^[4]