Ran Yi is an entrepreneur and investor known as a co-founder of the decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure project Orderly Network. He is also a partner at the quantitative trading firm Kronos Research and the digital asset liquidity network WOO Network, with a career that spans both traditional finance and the cryptocurrency industry. ^{[1] [2]}

Education

Yi earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied from 2002 to 2006. He later pursued graduate studies at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), obtaining a Master of Business Administration (MBA) between 2012 and 2014. Ran Yi also attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City, beginning his studies in 1998. ^[1]

Career

Ran Yi began his career in traditional finance as an analyst at Freddie Mac from 2006 to 2008, a period that overlapped with the global financial crisis. He then worked in portfolio management at Strategic Investment Group between 2008 and 2012. After completing his MBA, he briefly held a proprietary trading position at China Merchants Bank in 2014.

In 2015, Yi moved into entrepreneurship by co-founding QuattroQuant, a quantitative trading firm, where he worked until 2019. His involvement in the digital asset sector began in 2018 when he joined Kronos Research as an advisor, later becoming a partner in 2019. That same year, he became a core contributor to WOO Network, a liquidity platform originating from Kronos Research.

In April 2022, Yi co-founded Orderly Network, a decentralized trading infrastructure protocol developed on the NEAR blockchain. ^[3][^[5][1]](#cite-id-YMvZosISpn)^[4]

Founding of Orderly Network

Orderly Network was co-founded by Yi in 2022 to create a permissionless, omnichain liquidity layer for decentralized applications. The motivation behind its creation stemmed from Yi's skepticism of both traditional financial systems and centralized exchanges. He viewed the latter as an application of a traditional finance model to cryptocurrency, which he believed did not align with the core principles of decentralization and transparency. ^[3]

The project's mission was further reinforced by the collapse of the centralized exchange FTX in November 2022, which occurred a few months after Orderly Network's launch. This event highlighted the risks of opaque, centralized platforms and strengthened Yi's commitment to building transparent financial systems on-chain. ^{[3] [2]}

Media Appearances

In August 2025, Ran Yi appeared on The NGMI Podcast alongside Ben Yorke, head of ecosystem at WOO Network. The discussion covered developments in on-chain trading, the relationship between cryptocurrency and traditional finance, and broader trends in decentralized finance. The episode also included commentary on topics such as memecoins, launchpad competition on Solana, and the intersection of crypto with artificial intelligence.