Most Influential 2021: Brian Armstrong
Coinbase’s CEO took the U.S.-based exchange public this year in a direct listing on Nasdaq.

Brian Armstrong, the 38-year-old founder of Coinbase, took the U.S.’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume public this year. In addition to his work making mass crypto adoption easy, Armstrong has been a vocal critic of onerous financial regulations, even proposing that the U.S. appoint a crypto-specific industry watchdog. Although a proposed savings feature called Lend was waylaid by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Coinbase continues to expand its revenue streams with a non-fungible token (NFTs) platform and credit card. Recently, Coinbase worked with decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Compound to bring users greater returns on their DAI holdings. Something of a crypto “incumbent,” Coinbase continues to innovate.
The Complete List: CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2021

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Protocol Research: GoPlus Security

Wat u moet weten:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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Foundation behind restaking protocol EigenLayer plans bigger rewards for active users

An Incentives Committee would direct programmatic token emissions, focusing allocations on participants that secure AVSs and contribute to the EigenCloud ecosystem.
Wat u moet weten:
- The Eigen Foundation has unveiled a governance proposal aimed at ushering in new incentives for its EIGEN token, shifting the protocol’s reward strategy to prioritize productive network activity and fee generation.
- Under the plan, a newly formed Incentives Committee would manage token emissions, prioritizing participants who secure Actively Validated Services and expand the EigenCloud ecosystem.
- The proposal includes a fee model that channels revenue from AVS rewards and EigenCloud services back to EIGEN holders, potentially creating deflationary pressure as the ecosystem grows.








