Sam Paderewski

Sam Paderewski is a structured credit and decentralized finance (DeFi) professional and Co-Founder of Grove Labs. Before entering decentralized finance, he worked at Citigroup and Hildene Capital Management. His work focuses on real-world assets, tokenized credit and institutional capital allocation through DeFi infrastructure.^{[2] [4] [5] [6]}

Education

Paderewski graduated from Duke University in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science and a certificate in Markets & Management Studies.^{[2] [6]}

Career

Citigroup

Paderewski began his career at Citigroup, where he worked in institutional investment-grade credit sales. His coverage included corporate bonds, credit-default swaps, high-yield bonds and credit indices. He subsequently joined Citi’s CLO Structuring and Syndicate team, helping bring newly issued collateralized loan obligations to market. ^{[5] [6]}

Hildene Capital Management

Paderewski later worked at Hildene Capital Management as a structured-credit analyst and trader. He covered collateralized loan obligations, collateralized debt obligations and other structured-credit instruments. His responsibilities also included developing quantitative models and internal analytical infrastructure. ^{[5] [6]}

Steakhouse Financial and MakerDAO

Paderewski joined Steakhouse Financial in 2022, focusing on real-world asset strategy and analysis. In a 2024 Arbitrum Foundation proposal, he was identified as Steakhouse Financial’s Head of Credit and Real-World Assets. ^[5]

He also worked on real-world asset initiatives as a member of MakerDAO’s Strategic Finance team. In 2023, he joined the Centrifuge Credit Group, a group of credit specialists formed to evaluate and structure onchain credit opportunities. ^[6]

Grove Labs

Paderewski co-founded Grove Labs in 2025 alongside Mark Phillips and Kevin Chan. He serves as Co-Founder, Structured Finance & Credit, focusing on adapting institutional credit products and risk frameworks for onchain capital allocation. Grove Labs is a subsidiary of Steakhouse Financial and develops decentralized credit infrastructure within the Sky Ecosystem. ^{[3] [4]}

At Grove’s launch, Paderewski described the protocol as a bridge between traditional and decentralized finance. He identified collateralized loan obligations as particularly suitable for onchain markets because of their yield profile and structured nature. ^{[1] [3]}

Paderewski has also written about Grove’s approach to institutional credit allocation. His work discusses how onchain allocators evaluate investment vehicles, asset managers, custody arrangements, reporting infrastructure, liquidity and risk controls before deploying capital. ^[7]