Chris Li is the co-founder and CEO of Ava Protocol and was previously a smart contract expert at Block.one. Before founding Ava Protocol, Chris Li built a strong foundation as a Messaging Protocol Engineer at Microsoft and distinguished himself as a successful serial entrepreneur. He is a seasoned EVM smart contract developer, a Web3 Foundation grant recipient, and a core contributor to Polkadot. Additionally, Chris serves as a lecturer at the Polkadot Blockchain Academy at UC Berkeley and as a judge at the Permissionless Hackathon. He is a graduate of Southeastern University and holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Chicago.