Solal Afota

Solal has a background in math and theoretical computer science. He grew up in the Middle East and competed internationally for the French math team. Passionate about blockchain infrastructure, cryptography, and identity.

Notes4

• Quant employment verification: NOT CONFIRMED. No verified actual role or internship at a quantitative-finance firm was found. The caller lead 'Paradigm Fellow at Paradigm (2025)' resolves to the Paradigm Fellowship run by Paradigm the crypto venture firm (paradigm.xyz); the 2025 program was a two-day student/recent-grad retreat for 30 participants - a student program, not employment, and a crypto VC rather than a quant trading firm. The lead's company record (Financial Services, 'Quantitative trading firm based in New York') instead matches a homonymous entity (the crypto-derivatives trading venue paradigm.co); neither is shown to be an employer of Afota. His other documented roles - Co-Founder at Notebook Labs (crypto/zero-knowledge identity), CTO at Klyra (crypto), and Partner at Patagon Markets (a private-markets investment platform) - are not quantitative-finance employers, and the current ones are index-only. Identity is supported (LinkedIn + IMO + press) but no quant role/internship is established.Jun 16, 2025
• Paradigm the crypto VC states its 2025 Fellowship was 'a two-day retreat' for '30 other obsessive, deeply technical builders' - a short program, not a job or internship; this reframes the caller's Paradigm-lead from employment to a student program.Jun 16, 2025
• Co-founded Notebook Labs, a zero-knowledge Web3 identity protocol built during Stanford's TreeHacks 2022 hackathon; Y Combinator Summer 2022 batch; raised a $3.3M seed led by Bain Capital Crypto (announced 2022-10-27, investors include YC, Soma Capital, Abstract Ventures, NFX).Oct 27, 2022
• Patagon Markets' own site self-describes as a private-markets investment platform ('We are making private markets public') led by CIO Sebastien Bigar-Vann and a CEO/COO, i.e. an investment platform rather than a quantitative trading firm; Afota's Partner title there is index-only.Sep 17, 2026
• Listed as Partner at Patagon Markets (2026-) and CTO at Klyra (2024-) and past Paradigm Fellow (2025) and Co-Founder at Notebook Labs (2022-2024) in the LinkedIn index enrichment; these are index-only claims.Sep 17, 2026
• Notebook Labs co-founders were Nathaniel Masfen-Yan and Dhruv Mangtani; Afota described as founder of the three-person team based in Argentina.Oct 28, 2022
• Won a bronze medal for France at the International Mathematical Olympiad 2021 (14 points, rank 218).Jul 24, 2021
• Businesswire (2022) describes him and his co-founders as 'Stanford University undergrads'; no completed degree is documented on his own profile.Oct 27, 2022
• Attended The British School Al Khubairat (Abu Dhabi): an Instagram alumni post lists 'Solal Afota who graduated BSAK', and a 2021 National News article profiles two Abu Dhabi school friends accepted into Stanford.Mar 3, 2023
• Multiple aggregator/index profiles exist (Crunchbase person/solal-afota, founders.io, startupintros, growjo, contactout, Bloomberg profile 24919203); these are index records, not independent primary-source confirmation of employment.Sep 17, 2026
• Appeared on the WAGMI Ventures Podcast discussing Notebook Labs - a media/data point tied to the 2022 seed round.Nov 1, 2022