Navin Vethanayagam
Navin Vethanayagam is the Chief Brain IQ and the Galaxy Brain of BrainDAO. He also co-founded IQ's KRWQ, the first Korean won stablecoin. [1]
Career
Navin Vethanayagam serves as the Chief Brain of IQ and led the launch of IQ's KRWQ, the first Korean won stablecoin alongside IQ CTO Cesar Rodriguez and IQ COO Andy Cho. [13] [14] [15]
The launch of KRWQ was covered by The Block in October of 2025 with Navin explaining the need for KRWQ:
“KRWQ fills a critical gap in the market. While USD-backed stablecoins dominate today, no credible won-denominated stablecoin has ever launched at scale." [13]
In 2026, Navin and the IQ team hired Dave Shin as COO of KRWQ. He spoke about the hire in a press release:
"Dave has a rare combination of experience as an executive in traditional finance as well as blockchain infrastructure. He understands how major banks, exchanges, and liquidity venues think because he has operated inside them, and he understands how to scale blockchain networks because he has already done it with LayerZero, Klaytn, Immutable, and Tezos. KRWQ is entering a phase where we need that exact mix of credibility and execution. We are excited to have Dave leading our operations," said Navin Vethanayagam, Chief Brain of IQ. [17]
In March of 2026, KRWQ announced the first stablecoin blockchain-based derivative of the Korean won versus the US dollar with EDX, an institutional cryptocurrency exchange backed by Citadel. [16] After the launch, Navin was quoted by Circle in a case study covering how KRWQ is bringing the Korean won onchain reducing trading costs by 50-75%:
KRWQ is taking one of the largest and most important FX derivatives markets, the offshore KRW NDF market, and rebuilding it onchain.” [18]
In 2023, he led the launch of IQ AI's Agent Tokenization Platform alongside IQ CTO Cesar Rodriguez. Prior to leading IQ AI, he was the Chief Community Officer of IQ.wiki formerly known as Everipedia where he focused on growing the site's traffic by focusing on its community, social channels, and press relations. He is also the Chief Brain of BrainDAO, which manages the IQ token. [1][2]
As Chief Community Officer, Navin worked on several projects to improve the site's traffic through the editorial, marketing, and community aspects of building the IQ.wiki platform. He was interviewed by CryptoSlate's Akiba for SlateCast where he discussed the expansion of IQ.wiki onto Polygon and the platform's future plans. [12]
He also worked on the communications around the launch of the IQ token and later Everipedia's partnerships with The Associated Press (AP). He led the press relations and marketing for the Everipedia OraQles project which was used by AP to publish election data on the blockchain for the first time ever. The event was covered by several media outlets including Forbes, Coindesk, Cointelegraph, and Nasdaq News. He also worked closely with AP to create their first NFT which sold for 100.888 ETH on OpenSea. [3] [4] [5]
Navin also wrote several governance proposals involving the IQ token and BrainDAO. He wrote the proposal to fund BrainDAO, IQIP-9: Bridging the Real-world and the Metaverse with BrainDAO. [10] He also worked on governance proposals that involved IQ tokenomics including IQIP-14: New IQ Tokenomics for IQ.wiki which involves establishing new tokenomics for the IQ token after the launch of IQ.wiki. [11] Previously, he wrote IQIP-2: Reducing IQ’s Max Supply which involved reducing the maximum supply of the IQ token and hard capping it to 21 billion tokens. [9] [1]
Navin first joined Everipedia in 2016 as the company's sixth team member. His role initially focused on creating content for the site before expanding into community management and growing the site's traffic. [2][6] [7] [8]
Prior to joining Everipedia, Navin worked as an Associate Business Analyst at Scotiabank in their Global Wholesale Technology - Derivatives division while studying at Western University. [1]
Early Life & Education
Navin Vethanayagam was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He graduated from the Ivey Business School at Western University with a Bachelor of Arts, Honors Business Administration. He previously studied Business Management and Organizational Studies at Western University. [1]
