Neel Somani

Email: moc.liamg@inamosyajleen

I'm the founder of Eclipse: Ethereum's fastest L2, powered by the Solana Virtual Machine, with $65M raised to date. I also incubate and invest in early-stage crypto startups, several of which have achieved unicorn status.

Previously, I worked as a quantitative researcher at Citadel in the commodities group. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a triple major in mathematics, computer science, and business administration, focusing my research on type systems, differential privacy, and optimization.

Selected Research:

Solana & Ethereum Transaction Fee Mechanisms: In this SoK, I outline the design goals of an ideal Solana transaction fee mechanism and evaluate the state-of-the-art proposals.	2024
PrivGuard: I worked with Prof. Joseph Near and Prof. Dawn Song to define a type system capable of automatically enforcing common privacy and security regulations, including GDPR and HIPAA.	2022
Duet: This is a type system that allows developers to check their code for differential privacy, statically and automatically. I used TEEs and popular machine learning algorithms to build privacy-preserving services.	2019

Media Coverage:

Blockchain Builder Eclipse Labs Raises $50M Ahead of Layer-2's Mainnet Debut: Modular blockchain Eclipse has secured $50 million in a Series A funding round led by Placeholder and Hack VC, bringing its total funding to $65 million.	2024
Neel Somani - Eclipse, L2s, and Ecosystem Building: We begin with an overview of Neel's personal journey in crypto, from exploring Cosmos and appchains, to thinking about Rollups-as-a-Service, to now building an L2.	2023
Ex-Terra Developer Neel Somani Raises $15M for Cross-chain Rollups: Somani's new project, Eclipse, is designed to be deployed on multiple chains in case a Terra-like event happens again.	2022
This 24-year-old quit his job at hedge-fund powerhouse Citadel to build anew on the Terra blockchain — which collapsed two months later: "I recognize this was a setback, but also it comes [with] the territory. I knew what I was getting myself into when I quit my job to do crypto."	2022