Scaling The Lightning Ecosystem
May 18, 2023
About Lightspark
The Internet lacks a protocol for money. We’re building the tools and services to make it happen.
Lightspark builds enterprise-ready infrastructure for the Lightning Network delivering open payments for the Internet at scale. Lightspark services aim to be the fastest, lowest cost, easiest and most reliable way to send and receive payments globally with exceptionally low fees, using Lightning. We’re headquartered in Los Angeles but serving the world.
Leadership Team
We’re a mission-driven, high-intensity team, based in Los Angeles. We’re laser focused on solving real problems for our customers by building best-in-class software solutions to enable a better open payment network to exist and thrive.
David Marcus
Chief Executive Officer
David is the CEO and co-founder of Lightspark. Most recently he led all payments and crypto efforts at Meta/Facebook. In 2018, David started Diem (fka Libra). He joined Meta in 2014 to lead Messenger, which he took from under 200M monthly users to over 1.5B. Previously, he was PayPal’s President. A lifelong entrepreneur, Marcus launched two companies in Europe, then founded mobile payments company Zong in Silicon Valley, which was acquired by PayPal in 2011.
Christian Catalini
Chief Strategy Officer
Christian is co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer. He previously co-created Diem (fka Libra). He is the founder of the MIT Crypto Economics Lab, and designed the MIT Bitcoin experiment in 2013. His research has been featured in top journals — including Science, Nature, Communications of the ACM — and presented to leading global academic institutions and government organizations. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto.
James Everingham
SVP of Engineering
James is co-founder and SVP of Engineering. He is a tech industry veteran and has held leadership roles at Meta/Facebook, Instagram, Yahoo, and Netscape, and throughout his four-decade career, he has guided world-class engineering teams in building transformative technologies.
Kevin Hurley
Chief Technology Officer
Kevin is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. He has extensive experience in the payments ecosystem, including roles at Meta/Facebook and worked on Diem (fka Libra), Novi, Messenger, and WhatsApp payments. Kevin has designed and built numerous aspects of blockchain infrastructure.
Jai Massari
Chief Legal Officer
Jai is co-founder and Chief Legal Officer. Previously she was a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and a leader of the firm’s fintech and cryptocurrency practice. She is a fellow of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business at Berkeley Law School.
Christina Smedley
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer
Christina is co-founder and Chief Marketing & Communications Officer for Lightspark. In the past she has led the marketing, communications, content and brand teams at Amazon, Edelman, Facebook/Meta, PayPal and Robinhood.
Geoff Teehan
Chief Design Officer
Geoff is Chief Design Officer with 30 years of experience as a designer, leader and entrepreneur. Previously he was the VP and Head of Design at Meta/Facebook, and also led design for Meta/Facebook's News Feed and Novi. He co-founded the trailblazing digital product design firm Teehan+Lax, which was acquired by Meta in 2015.
Tomer Barel
Operating Partner
Tomer is co-founder and Operating Partner at Lightspark and President & COO at Melio. He has a diverse background in risk management, operations, data science, and executive leadership roles at Meta/Facebook(Novi) and PayPal - where he oversaw Fraud, Credit, Data Science, Data Platforms, Operations and Customer Service.
Life at Lightspark
We asked a few members of our team to share a little more about their roles and what it’s like to work at Lightspark.
Rachel Malonson
Backend Engineer
What is the technical challenge you are most excited to solve?
I’m really excited about expanding the Lightning Network to support transactions and seeing how impactful that can be for the world.
Why did you join Lightspark?
I was equally excited about the vision and product as I was about the people I’d be working with, which is extremely rare. I worked on payments for a few years at my previous company and experienced a lot of the frustrations with the current systems first hand, so I was really excited about the possibility of making improvements there. Everyone on the team also has extremely impressive backgrounds and experience, so I knew it’d be a great opportunity to learn from some of the best.
What’s the team like?
To me it’s honestly the dream team. Everyone on the team is not only highly intelligent and hard-working but also really kind and generous. They are always willing to lend a helping hand and everyone works really well together to get things done.
Michael Gorven
Senior Production Engineer
What brought you to Lightspark?
The opportunity to work with a team of awesome people, building something new from the ground up. An environment of solving challenging problems is also something I really enjoy.
What does your team work on?
I work on deploying Lightspark’s code and supporting services to the cloud. In terms of code that includes database access, authentication and security all with the goal of enabling Lightspark to help customers manage Lightning nodes at scale.
What’s the best thing about working at Lightspark?
It’s fun and interesting. The team is ambitious and we have some of the best engineers I have ever worked with.
Yun Yu
Senior Software Engineer
Why did you join Lightspark?
This is my second job, I joined my last company post my PhD. I was at my old company for six years and focused on one specific area but had the opportunity to work in different parts of the business. What I have realized though is that the people I work with are important to me and so joining the team at Lightspark is the best decision I ever made - smaller company with huge passion.
What’s the technical challenge you are most excited to solve in your role?
I’m excited to build tools - like data infrastructure. Here I get to think about how to build new things that already existed in my last job and so it’s exciting to determine what we build to help the engineers that will come after me.
What have you learned at Lightspark?
I learnt a lot about how the Lightning Network works and how it can change the way people make payments. I’ve also learnt about what it’s like to work in a small company and build everything from scratch.
Vincent Durmont
Senior Software Engineer
What do you work on?
I’m mainly focused on the architecture of our customer-facing products: our APIs, our website, our SDKs and more. My goal is to enable our customers to use Lightning in a seamless and flexible way.
What’s something you enjoy about working at Lightspark?
I love the fact that we don’t get into long principled debates about the 'right way' of doing things. We look at the options together, analyze pros and cons and make fast decisions. Everyone commits and delivers but we are also working in new technological areas and so we aren’t afraid to change course and adapt if we need to.
What’s the team like?
There are a few things that stand out.
- An impressive combination of experience and expertise in the domains of crypto, payments and technology.
- The fact that everyone is so mission focused - it’s contagious.
- Everyone gets along and really cares deeply about one another.
Corey Martin
Software Engineer
Why did you join Lightspark?
I really believe that Bitcoin and Lightning are the best solution for decentralized payments and I’d like to do everything I can to help make them successful. This team is the right one for the job and I feel lucky to be able to work with everyone.
What’s the team like?
There’s a culture of support and flexibility which makes for a great work experience. At the same time the team is best in class so there are also lots of opportunities for growth and learning.
Describe Lightspark in three words?
Exciting, inspiring and fun.
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