15 Women Pioneering the Blockchain Space in 2026

Blockchain was built by a small, mostly male group of cryptographers and developers, but women have shaped nearly every layer since: base protocols, exchanges, banks, regulation, research and education. This guide profiles 15 of them. It is not a ranking. Lists of leading women in crypto are published every year, and the names shift because jobs change, companies are sold and new founders appear.

We used three tests for inclusion:

• Built something durable. A protocol, company or institution that still matters to how blockchains are used.
• Shaped the rules. Policy, law or research that changed how regulators, courts or businesses treat digital assets.
• Widened the door. Education and community work that brought more people, and more women, into the industry.

Titles in crypto change quickly. Where this guide names a role, treat it as the position the person is best known for, and check the person's official profile or the company's leadership page for the current one. Nothing here is investment advice, and a person being prominent says nothing about whether a token or project linked to them is a good buy.

The profiles are grouped by the kind of contribution: protocol builders, company leaders, banking and enterprise, policy and research, and capital and education. A summary table follows the profiles, and the final sections cover where to find women-led communities and how to avoid scams that borrow famous names.

Protocols are the foundations other builders rely on, and three women stand out for creating or hardening them.

Elizabeth Stark is a co-founder and the CEO of Lightning Labs. The company develops software for the Lightning Network, a layer built on top of Bitcoin that lets users send payments quickly and cheaply by settling only the final balances on the main chain. Lightning is one of the most visible attempts to make Bitcoin usable for small, frequent payments, and Stark has been among its most consistent public advocates.

Kathleen Breitman co-founded Tezos with Arthur Breitman and has led its early corporate entity. Tezos is a proof-of-stake blockchain designed to upgrade itself through on-chain governance, so that token holders can vote on protocol changes instead of relying on contentious forks. That design choice influenced later conversations about how blockchains should be governed.

Jutta Steiner founded Parity Technologies. Before that she ran security for Ethereum's early development, including the audit program that preceded its launch. Parity built Substrate, a framework for creating blockchains, and played a central role in the creation of Polkadot, a network of connected chains. Her path shows how security work and protocol design are closely linked.

To evaluate any protocol like these, read its own documentation, look at independent audits and check live network data for activity and decentralization rather than relying on a founder's reputation.

Two more women helped define how value moves on chain, one through decentralized market design and one through cross-border payments.

Galia Benartzi co-founded Bancor. The Bancor protocol introduced a model in which smart contracts hold token reserves and set prices by formula, offering continuous liquidity without an order book. It is widely regarded as an early forerunner of the automated market makers that now power much of decentralized finance. Bancor also raised funds in the 2017 token sale boom, which makes it a useful case study of both the promise and the risks of that era.

Joyce Kim co-founded Stellar alongside Jed McCaleb and served as the first executive director of the Stellar Development Foundation. Stellar focuses on moving money across borders and between currencies at low cost, and it has been used by payment firms and nonprofits aiming to reach people with limited access to banks. Kim's work reflects a strand of blockchain development aimed less at speculation and more at payments and financial inclusion.

Why they matter:

• Benartzi's work shaped the mechanics behind many swaps people use today.
• Kim's work helped establish blockchain as a payments tool for institutions and the unbanked.

Both projects have changed considerably since launch, so check current documentation, governance and token details rather than relying on the early story alone.

Exchanges and large crypto companies are where most people first touch blockchain, and women hold senior roles at several of the biggest.

Yi He is a co-founder of Binance and one of its most senior leaders. She joined at the start as an early hire in customer-facing roles and became a prominent public voice for the company, which grew into one of the world's largest exchanges by trading volume. Binance has also faced regulatory scrutiny in several countries, so read current reporting before using any exchange.

Monica Long is the president of Ripple, the company behind the XRP Ledger-related payment products. Ripple's long legal dispute with the US securities regulator became a landmark case for how digital assets are classified, and Long has been a leading voice for the company during and after it.

Emilie Choi is the president and chief operating officer of Coinbase, the US-listed exchange. Her remit has included corporate development and expansion, and she is often cited as an example of crypto's move into regulated, publicly listed finance.

When using any exchange, the practical checks are the same regardless of who leads it:

1. Confirm it is licensed or registered where you live.
2. Read its policy on holding customer assets.
3. Turn on two-factor authentication, preferably with an authenticator app or hardware key.
4. Avoid leaving large balances on any platform long term.

Blockchain has to connect to banks, custody rules and corporate systems, and two women have been central to that bridge.

Caitlin Long spent years on Wall Street, including at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley, before becoming one of Bitcoin's best-known advocates in traditional finance. She pushed for digital asset legislation in Wyoming, which created frameworks for crypto-friendly banking, and founded Custodia Bank, a Wyoming-chartered institution focused on digital asset custody and banking services. Custodia's dispute with the US Federal Reserve over access to its payment systems has been widely followed as a test of how far crypto firms can integrate with the banking system.

Amber Baldet led blockchain work at JPMorgan, including the development of Quorum, an enterprise-focused variant of Ethereum designed for permissioned use by businesses. She later co-founded Clovyr, which built tools for deploying decentralized applications. Her career illustrates the period when large banks experimented with private blockchains before public networks gained wider acceptance.

What their work shows:

• Regulation and charters matter as much as code if blockchain is to serve mainstream finance.
• Enterprise projects often choose permissioned chains, trading openness for privacy and control.
• Custody is a core issue, because losing keys or relying on a poorly regulated custodian is among the largest risks for holders.

If you use a custody or banking service, check its licensing, how it segregates customer funds and what happens if it fails.

Laws, regulators and researchers decide what blockchain can do in practice. Three women have had unusual influence here.

Hester Peirce is a commissioner at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, where she has been known as Crypto Mom for her willingness to engage with the industry and for dissenting from enforcement-first approaches. In 2025 she took on a leading role in the SEC's crypto task force, which was set up to work on clearer rules for digital assets. Her public statements are a useful guide to how US regulators think about tokens and exchanges.

Sheila Warren has held senior roles in blockchain policy, including leading blockchain work at the World Economic Forum and later heading the Crypto Council for Innovation, an industry advocacy group. Her work centers on bringing governments, companies and civil society into the same conversation about standards and consumer protection.

Primavera De Filippi is a researcher affiliated with France's national research agency CNRS and Harvard's Berkman Klein Center. She is co-author of the book Blockchain and the Law, which examines how smart contracts and decentralized systems interact with legal institutions. Her research has influenced discussion of code, governance and accountability.

Why policy work matters to ordinary users:

• Rules decide which products are available where you live.
• Consumer protections, disclosures and tax treatment vary by country.
• Always check local laws before using any crypto service.

Capital and education determine who gets to build next. Two women stand out for opening those doors.

Katie Haun was a US federal prosecutor who handled early cases involving cryptocurrency before moving into investing. She became a founding general partner leading crypto investing at Andreessen Horowitz, and later launched her own firm, Haun Ventures. Her move from law enforcement to venture capital is often cited as a sign of how seriously mainstream investors began to treat the sector.

Maggie Love founded SheFi, an organization that runs education programs for women who want to learn about web3. Its bootcamps cover topics from NFTs to broader blockchain fundamentals, with the stated aim of making the industry less intimidating and more accessible. Education programs like these matter because many careers in crypto begin with a single guided introduction rather than a degree.

If you want to learn the field yourself, a practical path looks like this:

1. Learn the basics of wallets, keys and transactions using a small test amount.
2. Read one protocol's documentation end to end.
3. Join a beginner-friendly community or study group.
4. Try a hands-on project, such as reading smart contracts or contributing to open-source documentation.
5. Build a portfolio of small, public work before applying for roles.

Be wary of any course that guarantees a job or income.

Here is a quick reference to the 15 women profiled above, grouped by the area they are best known for. Roles change, so verify current titles with official sources.

Name	Best known for	Area
Elizabeth Stark	Lightning Labs, Bitcoin's Lightning Network	Protocols
Kathleen Breitman	Co-founder of Tezos	Protocols
Jutta Steiner	Parity Technologies, early Ethereum security	Protocols
Galia Benartzi	Co-founder of Bancor	DeFi
Joyce Kim	Co-founder of Stellar	Payments
Yi He	Co-founder of Binance	Exchanges
Monica Long	President of Ripple	Companies
Emilie Choi	President and COO of Coinbase	Companies
Caitlin Long	Custodia Bank, Wyoming digital asset law	Banking
Amber Baldet	JPMorgan's Quorum, Clovyr	Enterprise
Hester Peirce	SEC commissioner, crypto task force	Policy
Sheila Warren	Blockchain policy, Crypto Council for Innovation	Policy
Primavera De Filippi	Blockchain and the Law, CNRS research	Research
Katie Haun	Haun Ventures, crypto investing	Capital
Maggie Love	SheFi, web3 education	Education

This list reflects public contributions up to the time of writing. Many other women, including developers, auditors, community moderators and DAO contributors, have shaped the industry without a public profile. Annual rankings from crypto media will surface different names, which is a good reason to compare several sources.

Beyond individual profiles, women-led organizations and open social platforms offer ways to learn, network and follow the industry.

Groups such as Women in Blockchain run talks, mentoring and community events aimed at women working in fintech, traditional finance and decentralized finance. SheFi, mentioned above, focuses on education. Local meetups and conference tracks are also useful, particularly for finding mentors and collaborators.

On-chain social apps are another route, though they carry real risk and should be approached carefully:

• Ideamarket is an Arbitrum platform where users post ideas and pay ETH to rate them, aiming to build credibility signals without media institutions. It is a way to see how markets can be applied to reputation, but ratings can be gamed and funds can be lost.
• Tomo is a social crypto wallet available as a Telegram bot, app, browser extension and developer SDK. It suits people who want wallet features inside social channels, but any wallet you connect to chat apps needs careful security.
• Tribe.run is a Solana SocialFi app for launching and trading markets tied to GitHub repos and alpha rooms. It is aimed at risk-tolerant users, and speculative markets can lose value quickly.

Treat these as experiments, not recommendations. Use small amounts, read the documentation and check whether the contracts have been audited. Your own local laws on trading and financial promotions also apply.

Famous names attract scammers, and some of the women in this guide have been impersonated. A few defensive habits reduce the risk.

Verify identity at the source. Go to the person's company or organization site, then follow the links from there to their official social accounts. Do not trust public reporting, replies or direct messages that claim to be them.

Be suspicious of giveaways. Real founders do not ask you to send crypto to receive more back. Any offer to double, match or multiply funds is a scam.

Check before you sign. Before connecting a wallet or approving a transaction, read what permissions you are granting. Use a separate wallet with a small balance for new or unfamiliar apps, and keep long-term holdings in a hardware wallet.

Separate the person from the product. A respected founder does not make a token safe, and a new token using a well-known name may have no connection to that person at all. Look for the project's official announcement on its own site.

Guard your recovery phrase. No legitimate support person, community moderator or founder will ever ask for your seed phrase or private key.

If you think you have been scammed, move remaining funds to a new wallet, revoke token approvals, report the account to the platform and contact local authorities. Recovering funds is rarely possible, so prevention matters most.