Algorand COO Named Blockchain Company’s New CEO

The CEO of blockchain company Algorand has resigned, and the company’s CEO will take his place.

As the Boston firm said in a press release Wednesday (July 27), W. Sean Ford has been named Algorand’s interim CEO, replacing outgoing CEO G. Steven Kokinos, who is leaving to pursue other interests. Kokonis is set to remain at Algorand as a senior adviser until the middle of next year.

“We thank Steven for his time and dedication to Algorand. He has been instrumental in the initial success of our business, and we appreciate his commitment to a seamless transition,” said founder Silvio Micali, an MIT professor and Turing Award winner mathematician specializing in cryptography, secrecy and blockchain. “Sean is well-positioned to work with me to keep the company business as usual and to help us transition Algorand into our next phase of growth.”

PYMNTS profiled Algorand earlier this year, referring to it as “a smart contract platform that aims to provide a faster, cheaper, more secure and more scalable blockchain transaction.”

“By the numbers, Algorand can process 1,000 transactions per second (TPS) and has a block time of less than 5 seconds, which refers to the frequency with which new blocks of transactions are written onto the blockchain and thus completed,” PYMNTS said.

See also: PYMNTS Blockchain Series: What is Algorand? Blockchain secures transactions by spreading the wealth

Ford joined Algorand in 2018 after a stint at LogMeIn, where he served as chief marketing officer. He has held a number of other leadership roles, including CMO and COO at Zmags, CMO at Syncsort and Vice President of Global Business Unit Marketing at Oracle.

Algorand said it has seen “significant growth” this year, including its recent appointment as the official blockchain platform of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the worldwide governing body for confederation football.