szyma.co

mx

aspmx.l.google.com

alt2.aspmx.l.google.com

alt1.aspmx.l.google.com

alt4.aspmx.l.google.com

alt3.aspmx.l.google.com

ns

clyde.ns.cloudflare.com

khloe.ns.cloudflare.com

caa

txt

google-site-verification=rdMKYxrSgjgvAmEt4yvrSyzBTBq4dotuu8sKlo6py8g

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all

dmarc

v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=none

# szyma.co
# Search engines and AI agents are welcome.

User-agent: *
Allow: /

# AI / LLM crawlers, explicitly allowed
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-User
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: meta-externalagent
Allow: /

User-agent: CCBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Bytespider
Allow: /

User-agent: Amazonbot
Allow: /

User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Allow: /

User-agent: cohere-ai
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://szyma.co/sitemap.xml

# Mariusz Szyma

> Product leader in crypto, regulated fintech and AI. Twelve years of shipping products since 2014, in startups and large companies. Based in Opole, Poland, working remotely and globally.

## Now (updated 2026-09-10)

- Finishing sixteen months at UR (https://ur.app), a fintech spun out by Mantle's founders: owned KYC, KYB, KYT and onchain transaction monitoring under FINMA rules; B2C, B2B and B2B2C launched; built partner.ur.app for the partner channel.
- Published 23 long reads in Polish on RWA and stablecoins, plus 22 English masterclass chapters (September 2026).
- Looking for a Head of Product role where crypto meets regulated fintech and AI: identity, compliance, onchain products. Remote from Poland, occasional travel is fine. Also open to contracts and advisory.

## Who he is

- Builds and launches digital products since 2014.
- Crypto: led product at Mantle Network (2022-2025). Ran the BitDAO to Mantle rebrand, the BIT to MNT token migration and the chain launch. Launched mETH Protocol, Mantle's liquid staking protocol, which grew from zero to $1.5B TVL in three months and went through the COOK token generation event. Shipped six products as lead: Bridge, BIT to MNT Migrator, Treasury Monitor, Safe multisig integration, Delegate app and Reward Station.
- Fintech: at UR (2025-2026) owned onboarding and compliance product: KYC, KYB, KYT, onchain transaction monitoring, the Sumsub and ReadID implementations, FINMA requirements turned into product rules, KYC funnel completion and conversion. Built internal AI tooling for KYC conversion monitoring and activation campaigns.
- Head of Product and board member at QZ Solutions (2016-2019), spun out of Future Processing: built the product function from zero as part of the executive team. Shipped a machine-learning data-labeling product for hyperspectral and satellite imagery that helped growers decide what to plant where; ran a machine-learning effort to identify varroa mites on bees from image data (2018). The precision-agriculture product was acquired by a US company.
- Advisor at Cookie3 (since 2022), onchain behavioral analytics: product strategy and go to market, first customers for Cookie.fun and their KYB tool.
- Crypto background: Bitcoin since 2013, Ethereum since the ICO, Polish community lead for the Decred DAO in 2018, PoW miner, PoS validator, yield farming since 2019, member of DeveloperDAO and PieDAO. Privacy tech is a personal interest.
- Languages: English fluent, German native, Polish native. Education: Digital Product Management, Boston University (2017-2018); Master of European Studies, Opole University of Technology.
- AI: designs, builds and ships his own apps on LLM and image-generation pipelines, builds and runs AI agents in production for research, data analysis and internal tooling, prototypes with Claude Code. Machine learning products since 2018.

## Apps he built

- Muro (https://usemuro.com): AI paint color visualizer for iOS, live in the App Store. 27,304 colors from 14 paint brands, batch rendering of twelve colors, 4K output, subscription.
- Zdobny (https://zdobny.com): AI fashion styling platform on the web. One photo in, a full outfit visualized on the user.
- Umowly (https://umowly.com): B2B SaaS for beauty salons on subscription. Online booking on a private link, automatic reminders, client card, calendar, database migration. No marketplace, no commission.

## Expertise

DeFi and liquid staking, DAO tooling and governance, blockchain bridges and multisig operations, token migrations and TGEs, banking KYC, KYB, KYT and compliance, identity verification (Sumsub, ReadID, FINMA implementation), onboarding funnels and conversion, AI and LLM product development, AI agents and agent pipelines, machine learning and computer vision on image data, data labeling, 0 to 1 launches and product strategy, fullstack JavaScript, React, Node and Solidity, Figma and UX/UI.

## What people say

- Ng Ying Zhong, Chief Product Officer at UR (September 2026): "Mario owned some of the most complex areas of our fintech and compliance product stack. He became the product team's subject matter expert for key identity and verification technologies. One of Mario's most valuable contributions was helping establish a much stronger data-driven culture within the product team." Full letter and reference available on request.
- Mateusz Drożdżyński, CEO of Pilot (YC W17), 2017: "Reliable and deeply committed. He can manage projects independently. You won't need to monitor his progress or worry that something won't be done on time."

## Compliance implementation work

- https://szyma.co/compliance/ : Mariusz is the product manager between a firm's lawyers, its compliance officer and its engineers. He turns signed-off requirements (KYC, KYB, KYT, Travel Rule, MiCA, DAC8, AMLR) into product rules, flows, vendor configuration, tests and audit evidence. Not a lawyer, gives no legal or licensing advice.
- Engagements: free Regulatory Terminal + MCP; implementation diagnosis (2 weeks, 5,000 to 10,000 EUR); implementation projects (20,000 to 60,000 EUR); interim product lead (600 to 1,000 EUR a day). Prices are estimates fixed after a first call.

## Contact

- X (fastest): https://x.com/Donmario
- Email: mariusz@szyma.co
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/szyma/
- GitHub: https://github.com/mszyma
- Website: https://szyma.co

<!-- blog:start -->
## Writing (in English)

Masterclass chapters in English on crypto markets, written for practitioners. Editorial rules: every number carries a source and a read date; discrepancies between sources are shown, never averaged; the author's opinions are marked as "my take". Each chapter is also available as clean Markdown at `<article-url>index.md`. Full corpus: https://szyma.co/llms-full.txt

### RWA: Past, Present and Future

A course on tokenized real-world assets in twelve chapters: what a tokenized asset is, how the machine works, who builds it, where the market stands in 2026 and what comes next.

Series page: https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/

- [What a tokenized real-world asset actually is](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/what-is-an-rwa/): A tokenized real-world asset, or RWA, is a token on a blockchain that gives its holder a legal claim on something that exists off the chain: a government bond, a bar of gold, a share in a fund.
- [A short history of tokenization, 2017 to 2026](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/history/): Tokenization has been tried four times since 2017, each time on a different kind of asset.
- [Anatomy of a tokenized fund: the stack and what it costs](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/the-stack/): A tokenized fund looks like one product with one fee, but it is eight separate jobs, each done by a different firm that wants to be paid.
- [Who holds the keys to a tokenized fund](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/who-holds-the-keys/): On an ordinary crypto token, whoever holds the private key controls the balance.
- [How a fund's price gets on-chain](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/oracles-and-nav/): A tokenized fund trades on no exchange, so a lending market that accepts it as collateral needs someone to write its value into the chain.
- [Which blockchains RWAs live on, and why](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/chains/): Tokenized assets sit on a dozen blockchains, and asking which chain wins mixes several different businesses together.
- [Where RWA stands in September 2026](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/state-of-the-market/): In early September 2026 tokenized real-world assets that investors could actually hold in their own wallets were worth about 39 bn USD.
- [RWAs in DeFi: collateral, leverage and stablecoin reserves](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/rwa-in-defi/): The promise of putting a Treasury fund on a blockchain is that other software can use it: lend against it, hold it as a reserve, loop it for extra yield. In September 2026 that promise is real but narrow.
- [Tokenized stocks and Robinhood Chain](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/tokenized-stocks/): A tokenized stock is a token whose price follows a listed share, such as Nvidia or Apple, and which can be held in a crypto wallet and traded at any hour.
- [Who's who in RWA, layer by layer](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/whos-who/): A tokenized fund is not one company's product. It is a chain of firms: a manager picks the assets, a platform issues the token and keeps the register, a custodian holds the underlying, an oracle reports the price, and…
- [What works, what doesn't, and 2027 to 2030](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/whats-next/): Tokenization has been sold as a way to put every asset on a blockchain. After nine years of attempts, a fair question is which parts of it actually work.
- [How to analyze any RWA in 30 minutes](https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/thirty-minute-teardown/): A new tokenized product arrives with a press release, a yield and a list of famous partners.

### Stablecoins: Past, Present and Future

A course on stablecoins in twelve chapters: what one USDC really is, how a peg holds, how issuers earn, where stablecoins are used, the rules, the players and what comes next.

Series page: https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/

- [What one USDC actually is](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/what-one-usdc-means/): A stablecoin is a token that tries to stay worth exactly one unit of a currency, almost always one US dollar.
- [A short history of stablecoins in five crises](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/history/): Stablecoins did not arrive as a finished design that was later polished. They were shaped by a run of failures, and each one removed a weak design or exposed a weak assumption.
- [How a peg holds: five designs](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/types-and-pegs/): Every stablecoin promises to stay at one dollar, but they keep that promise in very different ways.
- [Under the hood: reserves, minting, redemption and freezes](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/under-the-hood/): A dollar stablecoin is two machines bolted together: a pile of safe assets held by a bank or custodian, and a small program on a blockchain that keeps a list of who owns how many tokens. This chapter opens both.
- [Which chains stablecoins live on, and who distributes them](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/chains-and-distribution/): A stablecoin is issued once but lives on many blockchains, and the chain it sits on changes what it is used for.
- [The rules: GENIUS Act, MiCA and the global map](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/regulation/): Governments spent a decade watching stablecoins grow without a rulebook.
- [Where stablecoins stand in September 2026](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/state-of-the-market/): About 311 bn USD of dollar stablecoins existed on 4 September 2026, two tokens made up more than four fifths of that, and two blockchains held most of it.
- [How stablecoin issuers make money](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/the-business/): A dollar stablecoin looks like a payments product, but its issuer earns money the way a bank earns on deposits it does not pay interest on.
- [Where stablecoins are actually used](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/payments/): Stablecoins moved tens of trillions of dollars on blockchains in 2025, yet only a few hundred billion of that paid for goods, services or wages. Most of the traffic is trading and exchange plumbing.
- [Who's who in stablecoins](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/whos-who/): A list of stablecoins sorted by size tells you whose balance sheet is biggest.
- [What works, what doesn't, and 2027 to 2030](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/whats-next/): Stablecoins are a 311 bn USD market, but size alone does not show which parts of it have customers who would stay without a subsidy.
- [How to analyze any stablecoin in 30 minutes](https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/thirty-minute-teardown/): A new dollar token lands on your desk and someone asks whether it is safe to integrate, list or hold. You do not need a week to form a first view.

### Companies in stablecoins and RWA

Short profiles of the companies that build the stablecoin and tokenization market: what each does, how it differs from its neighbours, and what to watch.

Series page: https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/

- [BlackRock](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/blackrock/): BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, and its BUIDL fund is the reference product for tokenized US Treasuries.
- [Franklin Templeton](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/franklin-templeton/): Franklin Templeton is a US asset manager that put a registered money-market fund on a public blockchain in 2021, three years before BlackRock.
- [Ondo Finance](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/ondo/): Ondo Finance is a New York company that turns Treasury funds and US-listed stocks into tokens for buyers outside the traditional brokerage system.
- [Superstate](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/superstate/): Superstate is a San Francisco company, founded by Compound's Robert Leshner, that started as a manager of tokenized funds and is turning into a transfer agent and issuance venue for tokenized shares.
- [Securitize](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/securitize/): Securitize is the Miami company that keeps the on-chain register for BlackRock's BUIDL and a long list of other tokenized funds.
- [Centrifuge](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/centrifuge/): Centrifuge is a tokenization protocol that asset managers use to put funds and credit portfolios on-chain, best known today for Janus Henderson's tokenized Treasury and AAA-rated loan funds.
- [Maple Finance](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/maple/): Maple Finance is an on-chain lender that raises stablecoins from depositors and lends them to trading firms and other institutions.
- [Figure](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/figure/): Figure Technology Solutions is a US lender and loan marketplace that records home-equity loans on its own blockchain, Provenance, and sells them to investors.
- [Canton Network and Digital Asset](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/canton/): Canton Network is a blockchain for regulated financial institutions, built by the New York software company Digital Asset, in which each participant sees only the transactions it is party to.
- [Chainlink](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/chainlink/): Chainlink is the largest oracle network in crypto and the default price source for most of DeFi.
- [RedStone](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/redstone/): RedStone is an oracle company, founded by a Polish team and operating from Switzerland, that carries the daily net asset value of most Securitize funds, BlackRock's BUIDL among them, onto public blockchains.
- [Pyth Network](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/pyth/): Pyth is an oracle network whose prices come straight from the firms that trade: exchanges, market makers and trading desks.
- [Chronicle](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/chronicle/): Chronicle is the oracle that grew up inside MakerDAO, now Sky, and still secures much of that system.
- [Anchorage Digital](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/anchorage/): Anchorage Digital is a US crypto custodian built around the first federally chartered digital-asset bank.
- [Fireblocks](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/fireblocks/): Fireblocks is a New York software company whose wallet and key-management technology banks, exchanges and stablecoin issuers use to hold and move digital assets.
- [Backed Finance (xStocks)](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/backed/): Backed Finance is a Swiss issuer of tokens that track listed US stocks and ETFs, sold under the xStocks brand on exchanges and on-chain.
- [Robinhood](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/robinhood/): Robinhood is a US retail broker that sells tokenized US stocks to customers outside the United States and runs its own blockchain, Robinhood Chain.
- [Aave (Aave Horizon)](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/aave/): Aave is one of the largest lending protocols in DeFi, and Aave Horizon is its separate market where institutions borrow stablecoins against tokenized funds.
- [Tether](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/tether/): Tether issues USDT, the largest stablecoin by a wide margin and the main dollar of crypto trading and of cross-border payments in many emerging markets.
- [Circle](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/circle/): Circle issues USDC, the second-largest stablecoin and the one most regulated institutions choose first.
- [Paxos](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/paxos/): Paxos is a regulated trust company that issues stablecoins for other brands.
- [Sky (MakerDAO)](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/sky/): Sky, called MakerDAO until 2024, runs the oldest large decentralized stablecoins, DAI and its successor USDS. It has no company behind it in the usual sense: holders of the SKY token govern a set of smart contracts.
- [Ethena (USDe)](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/ethena/): Ethena issues USDe, a synthetic dollar held near one dollar by a hedge rather than by cash in a bank.
- [PayPal (PYUSD)](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/paypal/): PayPal is the first large US payments company to put its brand on a stablecoin.
- [Bridge (Stripe)](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/bridge/): Bridge sells stablecoin infrastructure to businesses: one API to accept, hold, move, convert and issue digital dollars.
- [BVNK](https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/bvnk/): BVNK is a London-founded company that lets businesses send, receive, hold and convert stablecoins and fiat through one API.

### Standalone

- [Szept: ChatGPT understood my Polish. Claude Code, Gmail and Slack didn't](https://szyma.co/en/blog/szept/): I spend most of my day talking to agents: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor. I write them long instructions, show them screenshots, explain what is wrong with a layout.

## Writing (in Polish)

Long-form articles in Polish on crypto markets. Editorial rules: every number carries a source and a read date; discrepancies between sources are shown, never averaged; the author's opinions are marked as "teza". Each article is also available as clean Markdown at `<article-url>index.md`. Full corpus: https://szyma.co/llms-full.txt

### RWA: przeszłość, teraźniejszość i przyszłość

Kurs o tokenizowanych aktywach realnych w dwunastu rozdziałach: czym jest tokenizowane aktywo, jak działa ta maszyna, kto ją buduje, gdzie jest rynek w 2026 roku i co dalej.

Series page: https://szyma.co/blog/rwa/

- [Czym naprawdę jest tokenizowane aktywo ze świata realnego](https://szyma.co/blog/rwa/czym-jest-rwa/): Tokenizowane aktywo ze świata realnego, w skrócie RWA (real-world asset), to token na blockchainie, który daje posiadaczowi prawne roszczenie do czegoś, co istnieje poza łańcuchem: obligacji skarbowej, sztabki złota…
- [Krótka historia tokenizacji, 2017–2026](https://szyma.co/blog/rwa/historia/): Od 2017 roku tokenizację próbowano cztery razy, za każdym razem na innym rodzaju aktywów.
- [Anatomia tokenizowanego funduszu: warstwy i ich koszt](https://szyma.co/blog/rwa/anatomia-tokenizowanego-funduszu/): Tokenizowany fundusz wygląda jak jeden produkt z jedną opłatą, ale w środku jest osiem osobnych zadań, a każde wykonuje inna firma, która chce za to dostać pieniądze.
- [Kto trzyma klucze do tokenizowanego funduszu](https://szyma.co/blog/rwa/kto-trzyma-klucze/): Przy zwykłym tokenie kryptowalutowym saldem rządzi ten, kto ma klucz prywatny.
- [Jak cena funduszu trafia na blockchain](https://szyma.co/blog/rwa/oracle-i-nav/): Tokenizowany fundusz nie jest notowany na żadnej giełdzie, więc rynek pożyczkowy, który przyjmuje go jako zabezpieczenie, potrzebuje kogoś, kto wpisze jego wartość na blockchain.
- [Na jakich blockchainach żyją RWA i dlaczego](https://szyma.co/blog/rwa/blockchainy/): Tokenizowane aktywa działają na kilkunastu blockchainach, a pytanie, który blockchain wygrywa, miesza ze sobą kilka różnych biznesów.
- [Gdzie jest rynek RWA we wrześniu 2026](https://szyma.co/blog/rwa/stan-rynku/): Na początku września 2026 tokenizowane akty