Will Warren

The Builder Behind Your DEX

When Will Warren resigned as Co-CEO of 0x Labs on May 15, 2026, the crypto internet spent about six hours paying attention, then moved on. That's about right. Warren spent the better part of a decade doing work that was designed to be invisible: open protocol infrastructure, swap APIs, liquidity aggregation, order routing. The kind of plumbing you notice only when it breaks.

0x Protocol sits underneath some of the most-used DeFi apps on the internet. When you swap tokens on a wallet app, hit a DEX aggregator, or interact with a market maker's quoted price, there's a decent chance 0x's infrastructure is involved - handling the routing, the smart contract execution, or the API that priced the trade.

Warren co-founded 0x in October 2016 alongside Amir Bandeali, one month before the broader public had any real framework for understanding what Ethereum could do. The founding thesis was simple and very large: all forms of value will eventually be tokenized on public blockchains. Build the exchange layer now. Everything else follows.

All forms of value will end up tokenized on public blockchains.

- Will Warren, 0x Co-founder

That thesis has held up, roughly. NFTs, tokenized funds, stablecoins, synthetic assets - the surface area of what gets tokenized keeps expanding. What Warren correctly predicted was that none of it would matter without exchange infrastructure. You can tokenize all the assets in the world; without a way to trade them, they're collectibles.

From Laser Labs to Liquidity Pools

Warren grew up scientifically. He earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from UC San Diego in 2013, then spent time in the Coordinated Robotics Lab working on computer vision for mobile robots. After graduation, he landed at Los Alamos National Laboratory - the facility built to develop the atomic bomb, now repurposed for cutting-edge physics research.

At Los Alamos, Warren worked on DARHT experiments and diagnostics from 2013 to 2014, then returned in 2015 as a graduate research assistant doing laser diagnostics, optics, and signal processing. These are not soft skills. Laser diagnostics involves building precise measurement systems for high-energy experiments. It demands rigor and comfort with systems where a small error produces large, visible failures.

He'd also enrolled in a PhD program in Structural Engineering at UCSD in 2014. Two years in, he dropped it. Not because the work was difficult - obviously the work was not difficult for him - but because Ethereum had started doing something that structural engineering couldn't: it was building programmable financial infrastructure from scratch. Warren bet on the more interesting problem.

He spent two years in a PhD program before dropping out to pursue Ethereum full time. The academic world lost a physicist. DeFi gained an infrastructure builder.

The 0x Founding Moment

In October 2016, Warren and Amir Bandeali co-founded 0x. The original vision was a shared protocol layer for decentralized exchanges on Ethereum - open infrastructure that any project could plug into rather than each DEX reinventing exchange logic from scratch. In 2017, the project won first place at the Consensus Proof-of-Work Pitch Competition run by CoinDesk, validating the idea in the industry's most visible venue.

The same year, Warren briefly served as a technical advisor to Basic Attention Token (BAT), the Brave browser's reward token. This was a signal of the network Warren was building: early Ethereum projects were small enough that the same few builders touched everything.

Building the Exchange Layer

0x Protocol's core bet was architectural. Most DEXes were building exchange logic into their own smart contracts. Warren and Bandeali argued that exchange functionality should be a shared public good - a protocol layer any application could use, with routing, settlement, and liquidity aggregation as open APIs.

The protocol launched v2.0 in September 2018. By 2020, 0x had introduced the API concept that would define its growth: professional market makers using 0x infrastructure to offer competitive prices across DEX markets. Within three months of the API launch, it was driving nearly 40% of WETH-DAI volume on Ethereum - starting from zero.

That inflection point mattered. DEXes had spent years operating as mostly illiquid, high-slippage alternatives to centralized exchanges. Warren's insight was that the answer wasn't just better UX - it was professional market makers. Bring the infrastructure to accommodate them, and the liquidity follows.

Multi-Chain Expansion

By 2021, 0x had expanded beyond Ethereum to Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Optimism, and Celo. Each chain brought new liquidity sources, new user bases, and new protocol challenges. Warren's team built infrastructure that abstracted the complexity: a single API surface that developers could integrate once, then deploy across chains.

In 2022, 0x raised a $70M Series B, bringing total funding to $109M. The round validated the infrastructure thesis at scale. The following year would test it differently.

The CFTC Settlement

In September 2023, the CFTC charged 0x with facilitating off-exchange commodity transactions - specifically, leveraged tokens developed by a third party that traded on 0x's protocol. The company settled for $200,000 without admitting or denying the allegations. Warren discussed the case publicly on the Unchained podcast, framing it as a clarifying moment in the ongoing negotiation between DeFi builders and regulators. For a protocol that had never offered leveraged products itself, the case was a reminder that open infrastructure creates responsibilities its builders don't always choose.

What He's Said

AI agents don't see chains, they see opportunities.

- Will Warren, on 0x Cross-Chain API, March 2026

Our Cross-Chain API removes the last major friction point for autonomous systems by abstracting away blockchain complexity.

- Will Warren, 2026

Diverse use cases, such as tokenized assets and NFTs, have enabled DEXs to thrive and maintain relevance.

- Will Warren, on DEX market dynamics

The co-CEO model has slowed decision-making in a hyper competitive market.

- Will Warren, on stepping down, May 2026

The Graceful Exit

On May 15, 2026, Warren announced he was stepping down as Co-CEO of 0x Labs. The language he used was unusually direct: the co-CEO model had slowed decision-making. In an industry where speed determines survival, that's a structural problem, not a personal one. His solution was to hand sole leadership to Amir Bandeali and remove himself from the bottleneck.

He called it "a personal decision" and emphasized his continued role as major shareholder and board member. This isn't the language of someone cashing out - it's the language of a builder who understood that the organization needed a different shape to move faster. Warren's nearly decade-long run as co-CEO included navigating two brutal crypto winters, a CFTC enforcement action, a successful Series B, and the shift from single-chain DEX infrastructure to multi-chain developer platform.

The transition comes as 0x is pivoting toward AI-agent use cases - autonomous systems that need to transact cross-chain without human oversight. Warren's parting public commentary framed this clearly: "AI agents don't see chains, they see opportunities." 0x's Cross-Chain API, which entered private beta in March 2026, is designed for exactly this use case.

Career at a Glance

Track Record

• Co-founded 0x Protocol, one of DeFi's most-used exchange infrastructure layers, in October 2016
• First place, Consensus Proof-of-Work Pitch Competition by CoinDesk (2017)
• First place, DRS Infrared Imaging Competition at UCSD (2013)
• University Fellowship, UCSD Department of Structural Engineering (2014)
• Undergraduate Research Scholarship, Warren College Provost (2012)
• Grew 0x API from 0% to ~40% of WETH-DAI Ethereum volume within three months of launch
• Raised $109M in total institutional funding, including $70M Series B in 2022
• Expanded 0x Protocol to 10+ blockchains: Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Optimism, Celo, and more
• Navigated CFTC enforcement settlement in 2023, contributing to DeFi regulatory precedent
• Built 350-person team across engineering, operations, and protocol development

Five Things About Will Warren

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