Avalanche — September 5, 2026

Tesseract's own documentation states it is "built by Contributors behind the successful Yield Yak platform", and the same page routes developer support to the Yield Yak contributors' own Telegram channel (t.me/yakdevs) — corroboration from a second direction inside one first-party document. ONE-DIRECTIONAL: Yield Yak's own docs do not mention Tesseract, and Yield Yak is a pseudonymous contributor collective with no named individual, so no founder edge is or ever should be proposed on the Yield Yak side.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Emil R. Ljesnjanin is founder and CEO of Tixbase, the ticketing platform that migrated to Avalanche and runs its own L1, TixChain. Two Avalanche Foundation posts quote him directly — "said Emil R. Ljesnjanin, Founder and CEO of Tixbase" and "said Emil R. Ljesnjanin, CEO of Tixbase". Same host both times, so medium. tixbase.com has no team page; the Tracxn-only claims of a co-founder "Vincent Harrison" and a second CEO "Chad Phillips" are rejected as aggregator-sourced.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Chi Zhang is co-founder and CEO of Kite (GoKite AI), the AI-agent payments L1 that went to mainnet on Avalanche. PayPal's own newsroom carries Kite's Series A release attributing "Chi Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO of Kite". ROLE CORRECTION recorded in the research pass: the same release calls Scott Shi CTO ONLY — "co-founder" for Shi appears on LinkedIn alone, so no co-founder edge is asserted for him. Kite's own docs corpus (232KB) names nobody: "Founded by AI and data infrastructure veterans from Databricks, Uber, and UC Berkeley."

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Gabe Otte is CEO and co-founder of Dinari, the tokenized-securities issuer whose Dinari Financial Network is an Avalanche L1. Dinari's own blog post announcing the network attributes the quote to "Gabe Otte, CEO and Co-founder of Dinari", and the Avalanche Foundation carries the same release. CORRECTION recorded in the research pass: Ryan Sproule is NOT a Dinari founder — every hit for that name resolves to the co-founder & CTO of Merit Systems, an unrelated company.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Marco van den Heuvel is a co-founder of Merit Circle, which per Lam's ruling 5 (2026-09-04) is an ALIAS of Beam rather than a separate node — Merit Circle did not partner with Beam, it became Beam. The edge therefore points at `beam`. Merit Circle DAO's own press release quotes him as 'Chief Growth Officer and Co-founder of Merit Circle' saying 'we want Beam – our gaming ecosystem – to be wherever games, players and developers are'. CAUTION: this is a December 2023 statement. No source of any kind establishes who leads Beam TODAY, and Beam has since repositioned (see needsResearch).

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Johnny Gault is CTO and co-founder of Multisig Labs. Multisig Labs' own about page reads 'Johnny Gault — CTO & Co. Founder'; GoGoPool's own company page names 'our core founders, Steven Gates and Johnny Gault, met in Barcelona at the first Avalanche Summit in 2021'. Both read from Wayback captures of the orgs' own pages.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Steven Gates is CEO and co-founder of Multisig Labs, the company behind GoGoPool/Hypha. Multisig Labs' own about page carries a LEADERSHIP block reading 'Steven Gates — CEO & Co. Founder' and states the company was 'founded in 2021 by Steven Gates'; GoGoPool's own company page names 'our core founders, Steven Gates and Johnny Gault'. Both pages are read from Wayback captures because the live domains now serve only the end-of-life stub.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Elie Le Rest is CEO and co-founder of Colony Lab, the Avalanche early-stage investment community. The Avalanche Foundation's own Builder Spotlight interview introduces him as 'Elie Le Rest, CEO and Co-Founder at Colony Lab' and quotes him directly throughout. Colony Lab's own docs corpus names no team, so this rests on a single (independent, first-party-editorial) host.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

The pseudonymous account 'lame hillbilly' (@LHBCrypto) states in its own X bio that it is 'co-founder of phar.gg' — phar.gg being Pharaoh Exchange's own domain. Pseudonymous by choice: the handle IS the identity recorded here and no de-anonymization was attempted. Single host and self-asserted, so medium.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Utku is the founder of Salvor, the Avalanche NFT and memecoin lending platform. The Avalanche Foundation's own post quotes him directly and attributes the quote to 'Utku, Founder of Salvor'. He presents publicly by first name only; no surname is asserted here and none was sought.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Phillip Liu Jr is COO of The Arena, named alongside CEO Jason Desimone as the new leadership that rebuilt the platform after the November 2023 acquisition of Stars Arena. Single host — the Avalanche Foundation's own post — so medium.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.

Jason Desimone is CEO of The Arena. The Avalanche Foundation's own post names him CEO of the new leadership that took over after the November 2023 acquisition of Stars Arena; the podcast episode page bills him as 'CEO of The Arena'; his own X bio reads 'Founder & CEO @TheArenaApp'. Modeled as WORKED_AT rather than FOUNDED deliberately: the platform he leads was ACQUIRED, not founded, by him — see the contradictions section of the task note.

Confidence is computed from the corroboration sources — anti-circular firewall: self-sourced claims never reach High alone.