Blockchain startup Bancor Protocol has announced a cohort of experts joining its Foundation as advisors.

The list includes founding partner of Draper Associates and DFJ Tim Draper; Founders Fund investment team member Brian Singerman; co-founder and Executive Director of ID3 (Institute for Innovation & Data Driven Design) John Henry Clippinger; entrepreneur and early stage investor Lee Linden; Asana co-founder Justin Rosenstein; Founder and CEO of Financial Algorithms (Final) Yariv Gilat; and software developer Guy Corem.

In addition, Bernard Lietaer, International currency design and implementation expert, is joining the BProtocol Foundation as its Chief Monetary Architect. Dr. Lietaer is known as the “Architect of the Euro” for designing the ECU, the mechanism which enabled the currencies of twelve countries to converge, while he was at the central bank of Belgium.

“We could not be more humbled or excited to welcome Mr. Lietaer to the BProtocol Foundation’s effort to bring sustainable complementary currencies to communities all over the world. We had been following Bernard’s work for years and were inspired by his research to pursue technological solutions that would allow for diverse currencies to thrive. Together, we can turn this big vision into a beautiful reality for all.” Said Guy Benartzi, Foundation Council member.

In his role as the Chief Monetary Architect, Dr. Lietaer will focus on currency design, guidance on scaling and global implementation for user-generated community currencies, and on the research efforts to document and popularize best practices as communities start using Bancor’s Smart Tokens.

“I have been following the emergence of community currencies all over the world for decades. I needed to read the Bancor Protocol white paper three times in order to be convinced that it was a breakthrough. It is a solution for which I didn’t dare to hope” said Lietaer.

New Partnerships

Bancor Protocol has also announced that it has entered into partnerships with a number startups and initiatives in the blockchain space including Smart Contract Japan, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), Gnosis, Status, Civic, Aragon, IMToken, Antshares, and Starbase.

“We look forward to adding even more partners to this list who share our vision for a more liquid and user-generated value system on blockchain”, Bancor said.

These announcements come just before the kickoff of Bancor Protocol’s token allocation event, scheduled to start today at 14:00 GMT.