Andrew Beal
Andrew “Andy” Beal is a lawyer and institutional strategy professional focused on cryptocurrency regulation, blockchain technology, and digital asset markets. He is Head of Institutional Strategy at Forta Foundation and Co-Chairman of Athlone Town AFC, and previously led EY’s crypto team and advised virtual currency businesses on legal and regulatory matters. [6]
教育背景
Beal graduated from Loyola University New Orleans with a BBA in Marketing and Music Industries Studies in 2009. He then attended Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where he earned his JD in Corporate Law in 2012. [1]
职业生涯
Beal began his career in the legal sector and worked as an Attorney at Crowley Corporate Legal Strategy from May 2012 to February 2016. He advised emerging technology and virtual currency companies on corporate matters, anti-money laundering requirements, Bank Secrecy Act compliance, and state money transmitter licensing. His work included advising exchanges, wallets, payment processors, cryptocurrency developers, foundations, cloud mining businesses, and Bitcoin ATM operators. He also contributed to the Uniform Law Commission’s Virtual Currency Model Law Framework and commented on California Assembly Bill 1326.
From February 2016 to April 2021, Beal worked at EY, first as Manager of Blockchain and later as Senior Manager and Crypto Team Lead. He helped develop the firm’s strategy and consulting work in the cryptocurrency sector and managed client engagements with cryptocurrency companies, fintech firms, and banks. From April 2022 to April 2025, he also served as a national judge for EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year program. Since May 2021, Beal has been Head of Institutional Strategy at Forta Foundation, where he helps institutional asset issuers understand the on-chain use of their tokenized assets and the associated risks.
Beal became an investor in Cesena Football Club in December 2023. In October 2025, he joined Athlone Town AFC as Co-Chairman, with responsibilities associated with the Irish football club. [2]
演讲演示
Security vs Censorship
At the DeFi Security Summit in November 2025, Andrew Beal examined the trade-offs between blockchain security and censorship resistance, discussing how networks could block malicious activity to protect users and how intervention strategies depended on each project’s objectives and circumstances. He outlined intervention mechanisms at different layers of the blockchain stack and considered examples involving exploits, suggesting that security controls could become more centralized at the application layer as lower layers moved toward greater decentralization. The presentation also included Ben's research on economic censorship in optimistic-rollup fraud proofs, which modeled how attackers could bribe block proposers to exclude legitimate transactions. The research found that longer challenge periods and special rounds designed to increase the cost of censorship raised the budget required for such attacks, while noting the model's limitations and identifying areas for further study. [5]
Future of Web3 Security
At ETHDenver in February 2025, Andrew Beal discussed how real-time threat detection and transaction firewalls could help prevent Web3 exploits and limit the movement of stolen funds. Using the Bybit attack as an example, he explained how artificial intelligence and machine learning could improve threat detection, while firewalls at rollup remote procedure call (RPC) endpoints or sequencers could simulate transactions and assign risk scores before execution. He noted that transaction-level screening could block potentially malicious activity without pausing an entire protocol and presented data on how these systems might have identified previous attacks. Beal also outlined potential developments in transaction security, including broader adoption of firewalls by rollups, configurable screening policies, decentralized block building with security controls, and AI-powered systems that can screen large volumes of on-chain transactions. [4]
