Most industries argue about who sits on the board. Crypto is still arguing about whether boards should exist at all. I know this because I've had both conversations - one with a banking executive frustrated by the lack of board opportunities in digital assets, and another with a crypto founder who looked at me with genuine puzzlement when the topic came up. His question wasn't rhetorical. He actually wanted to know. That question innocent as it was is the most revealing thing anyone has said to me about where this industry is, and how far it still has to go

In traditional finance, boards exist partly to manage asymmetric information ,shareholders don't always know what management is doing, so they appoint independent directors to watch over them. In crypto, the market performs much of that function in real time.

Token prices, on-chain treasury movements, protocol governance votes, and publicly auditable smart contracts create a layer of transparency that no quarterly earnings call can match. When a DeFi protocol's liquidity drops 40% overnight, the market has already issued its verdict before any board could convene. When a founder moves funds from a company wallet, the blockchain records it immediately and permanently.

This isn't a hypothetical advantage - it is structurally different from anything TradFi has experienced. The result is that some of the core accountability functions a board traditionally performs are, in crypto-native firms, partially outsourced to market participants, token holders, and on-chain governance mechanisms. That changes the calculus on board composition from the outset.

In traditional tech startups, a Series A typically triggers the formation of a proper board - two founder seats, two investor seats, one independent. This is well-trodden ground. In crypto, the fundraising path has historically looked very different.

Token sales, SAFTs, liquid token rounds, and community raises mean that crypto founders often arrive at meaningful scale without the kind of institutional investor relationships that would naturally push for board formalization. When Andreessen Horowitz or Paradigm lead a round, they do seek governance rights, but many crypto-native firms raised their early capital from retail participants or smaller funds who had neither the leverage nor the incentive to demand board seats.

The founders, frankly, liked it that way. And for a period, particularly during the 2020–2022 bull cycle, the lack of board oversight didn't seem to matter. Until, of course, it did.

Crypto founders often argue that boards slow things down. In a market where a protocol can lose first-mover advantage in weeks, the argument has surface appeal. The 24/7 nature of crypto markets means that a governance structure built around quarterly board meetings feels misaligned with operational reality.

But this is where I'd push back on my founder friend directly: speed without oversight isn't agility, it's exposure. The firms that moved fastest without governance guardrails in this industry include some of its most spectacular failures. FTX had no meaningful board. Three Arrows Capital had no independent oversight. Celsius had a board that was functionally decorative.

Speed is a genuine competitive advantage in product and market positioning. It is not a credible argument for avoiding fiduciary accountability.

Here is a structural reality that rarely gets discussed: there simply aren't enough experienced crypto-native board directors to go around.

Board governance is a skill, and crypto-native governance is a niche within that skill. Most directors with deep crypto expertise are still operators, active founders, fund managers, or protocol contributors. They haven't yet transitioned into the governance-focused, portfolio-of-board-seats career model that exists in mature industries.

At the same time, TradFi executives who have conventional board experience often lack the technical and regulatory fluency to add value in a crypto boardroom. The intersection of "understands DeFi mechanics, tokenomics, regulatory exposure across multiple jurisdictions, and knows how to run a board" is a very small Venn diagram.

This is not a permanent condition. As the industry matures and its first generation of founders and executives moves toward more advisory and governance roles, the talent pool will deepen. But right now, the scarcity is real and it creates a self-reinforcing cycle where firms don't build boards partly because they can't find the right people to sit on them.

Whatever the philosophical debates about boards in crypto, regulation is making them less optional. MiCA in Europe, the evolving SEC and CFTC frameworks in the United States, and licensing regimes across Singapore, the UAE, and the UK all carry implicit or explicit expectations around governance structures, independent oversight, and fiduciary accountability.

Institutional capital, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, asset managers allocating to crypto will not flow into firms that cannot demonstrate board-level governance. The firms that build credible governance infrastructure now will be better positioned to access that capital. The firms that don't will find themselves structurally excluded from the next phase of institutional adoption.

The banking executive's observation about fewer board opportunities is accurate today. It will be less accurate in three years, and the firms driving that change will be the ones that understood governance as a competitive advantage, not a constraint.

To the banking executive: the opportunity is real and growing, but you will need to develop genuine crypto fluency to be effective. A board seat in a crypto-native firm is not like a board seat in a fintech. The technical, regulatory, and market dynamics are different enough that reputational credibility from traditional finance only gets you to the first conversation.

To the crypto founder: you need board members for the same reason every founder eventually learns they do - not because regulators require it, but because the blind spots that come with building something from scratch are exactly the blind spots that kill companies. The best boards don't slow you down. They stop you from making the kind of decisions that end careers and companies. In an industry that has already produced more cautionary tales than it should, that is not a trivial function.

The market may determine prices in real time. But it cannot replace the judgment, accountability, and institutional memory that a well-constructed board provides. The firms that figure that out first will be the ones still standing when the next cycle turns.

My previous article on securing a board role, combined with this one, gives a solid foundation on the topic. But the TLDR is this: the first thing you should do is offer pro-bono board or NED services to people you have worked with in the past who are building something. It builds your credibility, and more importantly it teaches you the actual skill of being a board member, which is different from being an operator. From there you can slowly build your portfolio and reputation. I'll dedicate a full article to this in the coming weeks.

P.S. We held our first C-suite crypto gathering last night in Dubai, at one of the most iconic locations in the world. We missed a few familiar faces, but the night more than made up for it - laughter, joy, real conversations, and people who were genuinely relaxed and open. The kind of environment where deeper thinking gets shared, deals get done quietly, and the conversations you simply cannot have at a conference finally happen. Thank you to everyone who came. We cannot wait to do it again next stop, London.

We want your input - which iconic location should we host you next and what is the right number of people in the room to keep the magic of Dubai alive?

See you next Friday, Sam - founder