Welcome to the first official Oregon Blockchain Group Newsletter, designed to share the work of our VC, Research, Engineering, and Marketing branches with our alumni, partners, and the world.

To kick things off, a message from our President, Evan Thompson!

"The Oregon Blockchain Group is here to stay.

This spring, we closed our most successful recruitment cycle to date, bringing our membership to 52 members across our Marketing, Engineering, Research, and Venture Capital branches. The talent and passion in this group is unlike anything we've seen before, and I couldn't be more excited for what's next. 

A huge thank you to former President Cameron Coleman, whose leadership has turned OBG into the thriving community that it is today. My mission is to take everything Cameron built and sharpen it, pushing every member to produce work that's professional, and genuinely impactful not only on our community here at Oregon, but throughout Web3.

This is the term where OBG solidifies its position as one of the premier organizations at the U of O, being a highly selective and deeply connected group where its members graduate college ready for their careers ahead. I am so pumped."

Cameron Coleman traveled to Washington D.C alongside Stand with Crypto, representing OBG and Oregon at the nation's capital!

Drew Manley and Cameron Coleman travelled to ETHCC in France, participating in the hackathon and placing 3rd in the world track! 

And most recently, 12 of our members went on our annual site visit in New York City, visiting tons of amazing companies (Allium, Turnkey, Artemis, Galaxy Digital, Solana, NBA, Gemini, Hype) making valuable connections & getting to meet our NYC-based alumni!

Armaan Hajar has received one of the most prestigious recognitions awarded to an undergraduate researcher, being named the Barry Goldwater Scholar for his research in decentralized ML and ML for biomedical applications.

Drew Manley, Val Levy and Justin Hatch placed first in the Solana track and second in the Polymarket track at Quackhacks last fall. 

Jacob Cordova, Finian Kierstead, and Braydon Perko, placed top 10 in the Penn Pitch competition amongst hundreds of submissions from students all over the globe in a highly competitive research competition. 

Sani Dhay’s paper on creating a heuristic for address clustering (figuring out which addresses are owned by a single person) on ethereum.was accepted to the ACNS Conference in New York City.

The group also introduced its newest branch, Marketing, designed to showcase to everyone the amazing work being done within OBG, and ensure the things done in OBG are recognized not just locally, but globally. 

Additionally, we welcomed 15 new members this spring across all our branches, now bringing group membership up to 52, determined and driven individuals. 

Additionally, OBG wants to deepen our connections with our alumni, as such, we are starting the Alumni Connect program, allowing our members to connect with alumni and learn from them to prepare themselves for whatever the world has to throw at them.

If you are an alumni of OBG, and are interested in this program, please fill out the form. 

The Venture Capital sector has expanded to 18 members, navigating through what we believe to be the worst of the bear market while staying true to our “long everything” philosophy. Each week, they continue to build strong analytical foundations through weekly workshops covering topics such as Dune dashboards, comparable analyses, and structured investment frameworks. One of their most recent pitches this year was the team’s analysis of $SKY, which has outperformed their Ethereum benchmark by 14%, a promising sign of the sector’s progress in developing robust investment theses.  

Additionally, Venture Capital has introduced the Prediction Markets fund, led by Mateusz Palusinski, which aims to make trades on Polymarket on short-term trades in the political, crypto, and economic landscape. 

As the term concludes, the branch also celebrates the contributions of two outgoing VC directors, Jennifer Barnett and Jeremy Mitaux-Maurouard, whose leadership helped grow the team from 6 analysts to 16 and laid the foundation for the branch’s ongoing success. 

Research gained serious momentum this term across blockchain infrastructure, prediction markets, and DeFi:

Caroline Nielson and Archie Webber are investigating whether prediction markets show superior calibration and faster information pricing than polling aggregates during geopolitical shocks.

Anna Debarro is  improving blockchain verification throughput via OS-level scheduling and memory optimization.

Armon Behikeesh and Shaurya Saxena are examining how demand for RWA responds to changes in traditional interest rates. 

Jake Thompson and Aaron Pham are comparing moneyline spreads and prediction accuracy across blockchain prediction markets, centralized platforms, and traditional sportsbooks.

Xavier Vortigern is analyzing the extent to which DeFi token returns are driven by market beta versus protocol-specific fundamentals across time.   

Cameron Coleman, Director of Research, is leading two projects: Tokenizing SNAP, a three-phase blockchain framework to modernize America's $113B food safety net; and a study on payment infrastructure and market efficiency in crypto-native AI agent service markets.

Engineering had its most productive term yet, growing to 12 engineers, welcoming 4 new members, and producing over 25,000 lines of code across eight projects.

A major highlight is the branch’s collaboration with DASMAC on Dropset, an unchain order book providing NASDAQ-style bid/ask trading to Solana. The engineering team has contributed across the full stack - expanding Solana compute unit test suites, building a Rust-to-Typescript code generation pipeline via Codama, CI/CD setup, and exploratory work account verification and agentic integrations - while also producing weekly one-minute demo updates for DASMAC’s social media channels. 

Along with this, the branch is partnering with Lokahi Therapeutics to build Trial Weave, a first-of-its-kind mobile application and medical research tool that will allow users to track their progress on certain medications and compare outcomes across demographic cohorts, generating research-grade data suitable for clinical trials. 

Beyond client work, the Engineering branch has pursued a diverse range of personal technical projects. 

Ethan Terrero has been creating a Polymarket arbitrage bot in Rust, exploring latency-sensitive trading strategies, and redirecting the same engine for weather markets on Kalshi.

Diego Carpenter has built a tool that notarizes AI-generated content by anchoring output hashes on-chain for verification. 

Matthew Stone is working on making a fully functional CRM platform for door-to-door sales to significantly reduce operational costs. 

Eleanor Stenberg is analyzing sector-level GEX anomalies across the S&P 500 from 2020-2026. 

Jack Bernstein-Sheehan is designing a fantasy football pre-draft research tool powered by a custom mock-draft engine. 

Finn Fujimura is exploring how Hyperliquid perpetual futures enable retail exposure to pre-IPO companies. 

Justin Hatch is developing Lethe, a privacy-first, AI-driven platform that audits medical bills and drafts dispute letters. 

As the newest sector within OBG, Marketing has been making moves to position OBG as the golden standard of college blockchain clubs, ensuring each of OBG’s members is recognized as experts in their respective fields. 

Beforehand, all of OBG’s marketing responsibilities fell on the Director of Marketing’s shoulders, the introduction of the marketing team allows each member within marketing to produce amazing content, while giving them the time and opportunity to pursue other projects.

Introducing the Marketing Branch!

Editorial Lead: Ruhi Kotwal

Creative Lead: Chris Richardson

Community and Growth Lead: Libby Wise

Director of Marketing: Shantam Tyagi

Oregon Blockchain Group’s continued efforts throughout this term have propelled the organization forward across Venture Capital, Research, Engineering, and Marketing, the work showcased demonstrates a high level of talent, discipline, and professionalism that continues to raise the bar for what OBG represents. OBG is continuing to build on this foundation, pushing itself to produce work that is both technically strong and genuinely impactful across campus and throughout Web3. 

To our alumni and partners: thank you for being a part of this journey. Your support fuels our momentum, and we are excited to showcase this drive in everything that comes next.