Who Is Andrew Masanto? The Nillion Co-Founder

Andrew Masanto is a co-founder of Nillion who also lists Hedera Hashgraph and Reserve among the projects he helped start, and Nillion's Covenants contracts recorded eight covenants from their September 2026 launch on Ethereum mainnet to the late-October close. Half of those eight came from the address that deployed the contracts.

Six of those covenants resolved and two expired by the late-October close, and the deploying address posted both that expired. Over the same weeks 43 nodes registered from 42 owner addresses, and the staking contract they bonded into held about 24.71 million NIL.

Andrew Masanto at a Glance

Who Is Andrew Masanto?

Andrew Masanto is a co-founder of Nillion, a network for sealed onchain instructions, and one profile page is the main source for the roles below. Masanto's profile on Concordia's site, last updated in May 2024, names him a co-founder of four companies.

Concordia runs an annual summit alongside the UN General Assembly, and Masanto's page sits in its community section.

Three of the four companies on his profile are crypto projects (Nillion, Hedera Hashgraph and Reserve), and the fourth is the pet company PetLab Co.

Nillion first focused on blind computing, the earlier work its roadmap describes as computing over data that stays encrypted. Our explainer covers how Nillion's blind computing keeps data encrypted, and the newer Covenants product reached Ethereum mainnet in late September 2026.

Andrew Masanto's Career: From Linklaters to Hedera, Reserve and Nillion

Masanto's profile traces a path from finance and law into crypto. It says Masanto started as an investment banking analyst at Rothschild in Australia and then worked as a lawyer at Linklaters, which it calls a Magic Circle UK law firm.

That profile also credits Masanto with founding Higher Click, a marketing agency it says he exited in 2012.

Was Masanto One of the Hedera Hashgraph Founders?

Masanto's profile says he started Hedera Hashgraph in 2017 as its founding chief marketing officer (CMO) and lists him among its co-founders. Hedera's Form D filings with the SEC put two other people on the record.

Hedera's Form D of August 2018 describes a Delaware company formed in 2017 that sold $82.6 million of token rights through SAFTs, its first sale dated 31 July 2018. It names two related persons, Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon, both as executive officers and directors.

Its amendment of September 2018 and a new Form D in March 2019 list the same two people and no third. Harmon was chief executive on that first filing, and our profile explains how Mance Harmon co-founded Hedera with Baird.

Baird signed the filing as a manager, and he's the hashgraph inventor behind Hedera's patents. A Form D asks for officers and directors, plus any promoters, and has no field for founders. So, the filings neither confirm nor rule out Masanto's founding role, which rests on his profile.

Reserve and PetLab Co

The same profile names Masanto the founding CMO of Reserve and dates that role to 2019. Reserve's token is RSR, and our guide explains Reserve Rights (RSR) and the Reserve DTFs it backs. Outside crypto, the profile lists Masanto as a co-founder of PetLab Co.

Nillion

Nillion is the latest of the profile's dated crypto roles, and it says Masanto started the project in 2021 as founding CSO. The Swiss commercial register fits that year. An association named Nillion Network entered the register in Zug with statutes dated 24 November 2021. Its new-entry notice ran on 8 December 2021 and gave the association's purpose as building and improving the Nillion network.

What Is Nillion Crypto?

Nillion crypto means the network Masanto co-founded and its NIL token, and Nillion's homepage calls the network "a decentralized network for Encrypted Markets". An author seals an instruction to a condition and posts it onchain, where no one can read it, and the instruction opens itself once the condition is met.

Those sealed instructions are Covenants. Nillion's docs say Blacklight L1 is the network that powers them, and it runs on Ethereum mainnet. The docs' own example is "If ETH < $2,000, sell 0.5 ETH," an order whose payload stays encrypted until enough of its assigned nodes agree the condition has been met.

In late October 2026 the docs limited conditions to the prices of ETH and BTC, as well as USDC and SOL, and said that scope would widen in later phases.

On a public chain a pending order can be read before it lands, and that visibility is what front-runners trade on, as our guide to front running and crypto orders explains. Nillion offers a private condition, sealed inside the encrypted layers so observers can't tell what a covenant is waiting for.

Nillion's roadmap names this first phase Dusk and gives it August to November 2026, with "Dusk live on Ethereum mainnet" among its milestones. The next phase is Darkfall, which targets the same Covenants on other EVM chains from November 2026 to February 2027. Both windows are targets the project set for itself.

How Many Covenants Has Nillion's Network Run?

Nillion's Covenants contracts went live on Ethereum mainnet in late September 2026, and by the late-October close they had recorded eight covenants from three addresses. Six of the eight resolved and two expired, with the first posted in early October 2026 and the last in mid-October 2026.

Four of those eight covenants came from the address that deployed the contracts, and the contracts logged no covenant between mid-October 2026 and the late-October close. A second address posted three, and a third posted one. All six that resolved did so the day they were posted. Both that expired were the deployer's. Each needed shares from all its committee's nodes, 16 in one and 14 in the other.

The node side of the network Masanto co-founded kept growing for longer. Forty-three nodes registered from 42 owner addresses, the last of them in late October 2026, and the registry showed no covenant author among their owners or operators at the close.

Operators bond NIL to register a node, and the staking contract held about 24.71 million NIL at the close, 2.443% of NIL's supply on Ethereum.

Set side by side, Nillion's network reached the late-October close with more registered nodes than covenants for them to serve, 43 against eight.

One Safe held the admin and upgrade roles on the market, registry and config contracts at the close, and it needed three of its five signers to act. That Safe's own transaction counter still read zero at the late-October close, and the market contract's posting pause was off.

Method: every log the four contracts emitted from deployment to Ethereum's last block before the late-October close, read in 10,000-block windows and decoded with the code Sourcify verifies as an exact match behind each census contract address in Nillion's docs. The counters, the roles and the Safe's settings come from that same block.

Check: a second RPC provider returned the same market and registry logs, and both contracts' own counters match the totals. The staking contract's NIL balance equals every recorded stake minus every withdrawal, to the last unit.

How Do You Trade Ethereum on Phemex?

Phemex's NIL perpetual came off the exchange under a notice of 25 June 2026, and the NIL/USDT spot pair followed under a notice of 3 July 2026.

Nillion's Covenants run on Ethereum mainnet and pay node operators in ETH from each covenant's escrow, so ETH futures are the Phemex market closest to the network he co-founded.

The ETHUSDT perpetual's late-October close was 2,323.52 USDT, 0.20% below the previous day's close. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.

1. Fund your Phemex account with USDT and move it into the futures wallet.

2. Open the ETHUSDT perpetual and pick leverage low enough to ride out a sharp ETH swing.

3. Set a stop-loss when you enter, so the position closes at a loss you chose in advance.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is NIL coin?

NIL is the token of Nillion, the network Andrew Masanto co-founded, and node operators bond it to register on Nillion's Ethereum contracts. It's unrelated to the NIL deals that pay college athletes for their name, image and likeness.

Who founded Hedera?

Hedera Hashgraph's SEC filings of 2018 and 2019 name Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon as its executive officers and directors. Andrew Masanto's Concordia profile also counts him as a Hedera Hashgraph co-founder, its founding CMO from 2017.

Is Andrew Masanto a Nillion founder?

Masanto's profile says so, naming him a co-founder who started Nillion in 2021 as founding CSO. Nillion Network, the Swiss association set up to build the network, entered the register in Zug that December.

What crypto projects has Andrew Masanto started?

Masanto's profile lists three, as founding CMO of Hedera Hashgraph in 2017 and of Reserve in 2019, and as founding CSO of Nillion in 2021. Outside crypto, it adds PetLab Co.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.