Dera Finance builds the Dera Protocol,
a permissionless yield infrastructure layer for digital assets.
Dera Finance is developed and maintained by Dera Labs Limited.
Origin
Ian Gerstgrasser and Joshua Shabo began work on what became the Dera Protocol in 2024, joined shortly after by Matthew Pratt as founding smart contract engineer. Dera Labs Limited was incorporated in the United Kingdom in June 2025 as the legal entity developing and maintaining the protocol. The team brings together fintech and DeFi engineering, institutional sales and operations, and a CEO focused on strategy, capital, regulatory work, and distribution. Dera is built by a small, senior team that writes carefully and ships deliberately.
Core Team
Ian Gerstgrasser
Co-founder & CEO
Leads strategy, capital, regulatory, and distribution. Key Account Manager at HP Germany (enterprise public sector), with previous roles in Customer Retention at Salt and Project Management at Catenamedia. MBA, IBMI.
Joshua Shabo
Co-founder & CTO
Leads smart contract architecture and protocol engineering. 15+ years across fintech and crypto, including one of the highest-revenue crypto platforms of 2024, and major UK financial infrastructure.
Matthew Pratt
Founding Smart Contract Engineer
Builds and audits the protocol's Solidity contracts. Previously at Coinbase and Nethermind, where he shipped high-performance Rust services and production smart contracts for institutional DeFi.
Jamal Shah
Operations Lead
Runs company operations, reporting, and internal process. Previously Business Operations lead at VEON, where he built data-driven systems for scaling international markets.
Aniket Yadav
Growth & Analytics
Runs growth marketing, analytics, and campaign performance. Specialises in AI-driven marketing automation and data-led acquisition.
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