Propose an edit: Armani Ferrante

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Title Category One sentence summary Infobox, one "key: value" per line Article body, markdown, use [[wiki links]] and end with a ## References section

Armani Ferrante is an American software engineer, the founder and chief executive of Backpack, and one of the most consequential builders in the [[Solana]] ecosystem. Before founding a company he wrote Anchor, the open source Rust framework that became the standard way to write Solana programs; Backpack's own history notes that around half of all Solana projects are built with it. Nearly every launchpad, bot and trading protocol in [[the trenches]] runs on program code shaped by his tooling.

## Alameda and Coral

Ferrante worked as an engineer at Alameda Research early in his career, part of the FTX adjacent developer community around the Serum exchange. In 2022 he founded Coral, the company behind the self custodial Backpack wallet and the xNFT standard, raising about $20 million in a round whose backers included FTX Ventures. That association nearly killed the company: when FTX collapsed in November 2022, Backpack lost $14.5 million, roughly 88 percent of its operating capital, overnight.

## Mad Lads

Rather than fold, the team launched Mad Lads in April 2023, an NFT collection issued as xNFTs inside the Backpack wallet. The mint topped NFT charts across all chains in its first week, became the largest Solana collection by market cap, and its proceeds funded the company through the bear market. Mad Lads holders became a recognizable tribe in Solana meme coin culture, and the collection is a canonical example of an NFT launch rescuing a startup.

## Backpack Exchange

Backpack Exchange opened in beta in November 2023 under a Dubai virtual asset license, positioning itself as a regulated, self custody friendly exchange built by people who had watched FTX fail from the inside. In February 2024 the company raised a $17 million Series A led by Placeholder at a reported $120 million valuation. In January 2025 Backpack acquired FTX EU for $32.7 million, taking over a MiFID II license in Cyprus and committing to process claims owed to the collapsed exchange's European customers, a symbolic full circle covered widely in crypto media. Ferrante has framed the company's mission around self custody and exchange transparency in numerous interviews since.

## Significance

Ferrante occupies an unusual position in the trench economy: he does not run a meme coin casino, but the wallet, the exchange, the NFT community and above all the Anchor framework he created are load bearing infrastructure for the people who do.

## References

- https://learn.backpack.exchange/blog/a-brief-history-of-backpack
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-28/ftx-alameda-alum-raise-17-million-for-crypto-exchange-backpack
- https://www.theblock.co/post/279602/crypto-exchange-backpack-founded-by-ex-ftx-and-alameda-employees-raises-17-million-in-series-a
- https://iq.wiki/wiki/armani-ferrante
- https://www.coinage.media/s4/backpack-ceo-armani-ferrante-on-battling-back-from-the-ftx-collapse
- https://solanacompass.com/learn/Unlayered/from-ftx-to-next-gen-cex-armani-ferrante-backpack

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