MakerDAO Co-Founder Dead at 29

The Co-Founder of MakerDAO was found dead at the age of 29 after some concerning tweets.

MakerDAO Co-Founder Dead at 29
Puerto Rican Beaches

On October 29th it was announced that Nikolai Muchgian, a co-founder of MakerDAO and prominent figure in smart contract security, died in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Muchgian was 29 years old, and very well respected in the smart contract development community. Prominent figures in the community took to Twitter to talk about Muchgian’s contributions as an early architect of DAI, a figure in securing MakerDAO from hacks, and being a generally brilliant technologist in the space.

Confusingly, just a few days prior to his death, Muchgian published a concerning tweet:

“CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are running some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring out of Puerto Rico and caribbean islands. They are going to frame me with a laptop planted by my ex gf who was a spy. They will torture me to death.“

Circumstances about his health and mental wellbeing are not immediately obvious, but that was not the first time Muchgian had written hard to believe–teetering on paranoid–tweets about the CIA. He had previously said likely outcomes for him were “suicided by CIA” or “CIA brain damage slave asset.”

It is currently believed Muchgian was pulled into a rip tide and drowned. The area he was found in had resulted in 8 similar deaths in 2021.