Pi Lanningham is a software engineer and technology leader with experience across academic, enterprise, and blockchain organizations, including roles at New York University, ADP’s Lifion platform, and Sundae Labs. He currently serves as CTO of SundaeSwap Labs, where he works on decentralized exchange and Cardano-based DeFi systems. ^[3]

Education

Lanningham attended New York University’s Polytechnic School of Engineering, where he earned a Bachelor’s in Computer Science in 2016 and a Master’s in Mathematics in 2018. ^[1]

Career

Lanningham began his software engineering career as a programming intern with the Clerk & Comptroller of Palm Beach County in 2007, contributing to internal software tools and automation projects. During his studies, he also worked as a computer repair technician at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering from 2012 to 2013. In October 2011, Lanningham co-founded Presseract, a news aggregation startup that explored subscription-based access to digital news content. As lead developer, he designed the platform’s architecture, coordinated development efforts, and addressed technical challenges in aggregating content from numerous news sources.

Lanningham joined New York University in 2013 as a Programmer Analyst, developing and maintaining software and infrastructure for the university's operations division. He contributed to development processes, software architecture, and internal systems, including applications related to facilities and space management. In 2015, he was promoted to Software Engineer, where he led a team of developers responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining software systems that support university operations. In February 2016, Lanningham joined Lifion by ADP as a Senior Software Developer. Over the following four years, he worked on enterprise software platforms and was promoted to Technical Architect in 2018, where he helped guide the design and implementation of large-scale technology systems.

In August 2020, Lanningham became a Senior Software Engineer at Attentive, where he worked on software engineering initiatives for the company's customer engagement platform. In May 2021, Lanningham joined SundaeSwap Labs, Inc. as Chief Information Officer during the development of the SundaeSwap decentralized exchange ecosystem on Cardano. In July 2022, he transitioned to the role of Chief Technology Officer, overseeing the company's technical strategy, engineering operations, and product development. He has continued to serve in this position as the platform has expanded its decentralized finance infrastructure and services. ^[2]

Interviews

Cardano Innovations

In a September 2024 episode of the Cardano With Paul podcast, Lanningham discussed Cardano’s broader scaling strategy, emphasizing the need to maintain security and decentralization while pursuing higher throughput through a layered technical roadmap. He described Hydra as a scaling approach focused on peer-to-peer, lower-latency transaction environments suited for specific use cases such as transfers and business settlements, while noting the trade-offs involved in moving activity off the main chain. He also outlined shorter-term scaling efforts, including protocol parameter tuning, node performance optimizations, and off-chain efficiency improvements such as oracle-based data updates. Longer-term directions included research into input endorsers (Ouroboros Leios), faster block propagation, and increased transaction throughput targeting near-instant finality in future network iterations.

The discussion further covered ecosystem development efforts such as alternative node implementations like Amaru written in Rust to accelerate experimentation, while acknowledging the coordination challenges that come with greater implementation diversity. Overall, the interview framed Cardano’s scaling approach as deliberately security-first, with engineering choices aimed at balancing performance improvements against decentralization and network integrity. ^[8]

Cardano Hydra

In an August 2023 appearance on the Cardano With Paul podcast alongside Dan Gonzalez, Lanningham discussed updates to Sundae Labs’ decentralized exchange and broader developments in Cardano scaling technology. The conversation covered the relaunch of SundaeSwap version 2 and the introduction of a community-governed yield-farming program, in which emission rates and reward allocations were determined through governance mechanisms and token-holder participation. The yield farming system allowed liquidity providers to vote on reward distribution across pools and to lock LP tokens to earn rewards, creating a more structured and participatory incentive model. The discussion also addressed how governance was being used to guide liquidity incentives and token utility within the ecosystem.

The conversation then shifted to Hydra, where the speakers described early experiments deploying smart contracts on Hydra and demonstrated its capability for high-throughput, low-latency interactions, such as auctions, gaming, and other peer-to-peer applications. They noted that Hydra is best suited for smaller groups of known or semi-trusted participants rather than large-scale, fully trustless systems, due to its design constraints. They also referenced ongoing research directions, including the “Gummy Worm” protocol, which explores modular Hydra-based architectures for more complex applications, as well as Catalyst proposals aimed at improving Hydra infrastructure, including efforts toward running production-ready Hydra nodes. Overall, the discussion framed Hydra as a specialized scaling solution optimized for fast, targeted interaction layers rather than broad, generalized DeFi deployment. ^[4]

Presentations

Automated Trading

In an August 2025 workshop led by Lanningham, Sundae Labs introduced “Sundae Strategies,” a non-custodial delegated trading system built on Sundae v3 smart contracts. The session outlined how users can create and manage automated trading actions by depositing assets such as ADA into UTXO-based structures, defining trade intent, and signing transactions while maintaining custody of their funds. The workshop covered support for advanced, repeatable trading logic, including strategies such as dollar-cost averaging and trailing stop-loss mechanisms. These strategies can be executed iteratively, with outputs returned either to the user’s wallet or to designated strategy contracts, enabling persistent automation of trading behavior.

A live demonstration showed how users can deploy and monitor strategies using tools such as DeMeter and Lace, covering configuration, execution, and real-time event tracking. Developers were also shown how to build custom strategies using provided templates and libraries, with support for event-driven triggers such as blockchain events, timers, HTTP requests, and key-value state updates. The system was described as a WebAssembly-based runtime (using Baleas) designed for low-cost, flexible deployment of autonomous trading logic. The workshop also outlined future directions, including community-contributed strategies, review mechanisms, and expanded ecosystem integrations for automated trading infrastructure. ^[5]

Panels

Midnight Exchange

In a demo presented during a Fireside Dev Hang hosted by Midnight Capacity Exchange in April 2026, Lanningham demonstrated Sundae Labs’ Capacity Exchange feature for the Midnight protocol. The presentation focused on addressing onboarding and usability constraints in Midnight’s original design, where users previously had to wait 12 hours for Dust generation before transacting, creating friction for new users. The Capacity Exchange system introduced an alternative onboarding flow that enables wallet creation through biometric authentication without requiring software installation and allows users to pay for transactions using existing assets such as ADA or ETH, or through sponsorship by decentralized applications. The system works by generating private transaction proofs locally and coordinating transaction sponsorships, allowing users to complete actions with reduced disclosure of personal data.

The demo also described how the mechanism separates transaction utility from inflation-based staking models by tying rewards to actual network usage, with Dust functioning as a usage-linked resource. It further outlined the potential for broader token interoperability for payment transactions, a marketplace model for leasing capacity, and the positioning of Midnight as a privacy-focused infrastructure layer, alongside plans to open-source components and support developer integration. ^[9]