SingularityDAO appoints Chris Poulin as CTO and head of AI

The merger between artificial intelligence and decentralized finance is growing. SingularityDAO focuses on creating AI-driven investment portfolios.

DeFi portfolio manager SingularityDAO has appointed research scientist Chris Poulin as new chief technology officer and head of artificial intelligence, underscoring the company’s ambitions for AI-driven investment solutions. 

In his new role, Poulin will be tasked with developing SingularityDAO’s DynaSets, an AI-powered system for building a curated basket of crypto investments. DynaSets hold a collection of DeFi tokens in one contract, allowing investors to more easily manage their portfolios. The job description also entails developing new AI-driven products for the DeFi sector.

Prior to joining SingularityDAO, the MIT-trained Poulin served for 13 years as managing partner for Patterns and Predictions, a Boston-based predictive analytics company. He also served as senior director for machine learning and data science at Microsoft.

Decentralized finance has emerged as one of the biggest use cases for blockchain technology, but its proponents say future iterations of DeFi protocols are likely to include more automation features, including AI-managed derivative products, AI-mitigated risk management solutions and user scoring. Artificial intelligence has also been posited as a potential value driver for automated market makers, DeFi lending and even insurance.

Related: The future of finance is DeFi intelligence

DeFi continues to attract yield-seeking investors looking to earn passive income on their crypto holdings. Investors have also been keen to scoop up early-stage DeFi plays for their potential to appreciate quickly. The DeFi sector has a total market capitalization of around $116 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

The DeFi market recently set another milestone after the industry’s total value locked, or TVL, reached a new peak. On Monday, industry sources put TVL at around $160 billion, which narrowly exceeded the peak from May of this year. As Cointelegraph recently reported, DeFi protocol BENQI reached $1 billion in TVL less than a week after launching. The milestone was achieved much faster than other leading DeFi projects that launched over the past year.