Oleksandr Proskurin is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Arkis, an on-chain prime brokerage protocol. Proskurin has a background of over a decade in traditional finance and is a co-author of the open-source financial machine learning library, mlfinlab. He transitioned into the blockchain sector to build institutional-grade financial infrastructure. ^{[1] [2]}​

Education

Oleksandr Proskurin holds multiple advanced degrees in business and finance. He earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Kyiv Mohyla Business School between 2017 and 2019. Prior to his MBA, he completed a Master's degree in Banking and Finance from the same institution from 2010 to 2012. His undergraduate studies were at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, where he obtained a Bachelor's degree in Systems Analysis, graduating in 2010. ^[2]

Career

Proskurin's career began in traditional finance and project management before shifting towards quantitative trading and later, decentralized finance. He started his professional journey at UkrSibbank, part of the BNP Paribas Group, in the Financial Monitoring Department from August 2010 to September 2013. He then moved into IT project management, first at the electronics retailer Foxtrot from 2013 to 2014, and then at the Fozzy Group from 2014 to 2015, where he managed projects related to loyalty programs and business intelligence. ^[2]​

In late 2015, Proskurin began focusing on quantitative finance, developing and managing a portfolio of mid-frequency algorithmic trading strategies as a self-employed Head of an Algorithmic Trading Desk. ^[2] This experience led him to found Machine Factor in January 2017, a Kyiv-based digital asset firm where he developed and operated proprietary market-neutral trading strategies on both centralized and decentralized exchanges. ^[2]​

Concurrently with his work in digital assets, Proskurin co-founded the quantitative research company Hudson & Thames in London in November 2018. Through this venture, he became a key contributor to advanced financial machine learning tools. This period of his career saw him apply his quantitative skills to both traditional and emerging digital asset markets. ^[2] In late 2022, he co-founded Arkis, taking on the role of Chief Product Officer to lead the development of its on-chain prime brokerage protocol. ^[1]​

Major Projects

Arkis

Arkis is a permissioned, on-chain prime brokerage protocol co-founded by Proskurin and Serhii Tyshchenko in 2022. ^{[1] [3]} The platform is designed to provide institutional-grade credit and margin infrastructure for the DeFi market, functioning as an on-chain prime broker. ^[1] Arkis addresses the issue of capital inefficiency prevalent in DeFi, where lending is often overcollateralized. The protocol's core technology includes a margin engine and a pool-based lending model that allows for undercollateralized borrowing within a permissioned environment to ensure institutional compliance and risk management. As CPO, Proskurin leads the product development efforts. ^[1]​

In February 2024, Arkis announced it had raised $2.25 million in a pre-seed funding round. The round was co-led by G1 Ventures and gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from investors including Blocklabs, Estimation Capital, Psalion VC, and Roosh Ventures. The capital was raised to further the protocol's development, expand the team, and prepare for its public launch. ^{[1] [3] [4]}​

On the objective of Arkis, Proskurin stated, "We are here to leverage blockchain technology to revolutionize the way cross-margin is calculated, bringing even better capital efficiency compared to traditional finance while still preserving security and risk-management controls." ^[3]​

Hudson & Thames and mlfinlab

Through his work as a co-founder of the quantitative research firm Hudson & Thames, Proskurin is a co-author and significant contributor to mlfinlab. mlfinlab is a popular open-source Python library that implements advanced financial machine learning algorithms. The package is based on the research of Dr. Marcos Lopez de Prado, particularly his book Advances in Financial Machine Learning, making sophisticated quantitative techniques more accessible to researchers and traders. Proskurin personally made 383 commits to the project between May 2019 and April 2020. ^[2]​

Views on Decentralized Finance

Proskurin's public commentary focuses on the need to build more mature and capital-efficient financial infrastructure on-chain. He identifies the limitations of existing DeFi credit markets as a primary motivator for his work at Arkis.

In an interview, he described the problem Arkis aims to solve: "The core problem we're solving is the lack of a mature credit market in DeFi. Today’s options are largely limited to over-collateralized lending, which is very capital inefficient, or uncollateralized lending to a whitelisted set of borrowers. The latter relies on off-chain legal agreements and trust, sort of defeating the purpose of DeFi." ^[1]​

He emphasizes the advantages of a fully on-chain approach, explaining, "By moving the entire process on-chain — from credit assessment to settlement — we offer a level of transparency and efficiency that’s just not possible in the traditional or even the 'CeDeFi' world." ^[1]​

Public Engagements

Proskurin is a listed speaker for the Consensus Hong Kong conference, scheduled for February 2026. He is slated to participate in a panel discussion titled "Stablecoins: The CeDeFi Era" on the event's Spotlight Stage. ^[1]​