Parity Technologies, the firm building the Polkadot and Kusama blockchain ecosystems, has added three senior executives to round out its leadership team, alongside founder and CEO Gavin Wood.

Eran Barak was named chief operating officer, Peter Ruchatz chief marketing officer and Fahmi Syed chief financial officer.

It’s a bullish sign for the Polkadot project, as elsewhere crypto firms are shedding jobs as the industry anticipates a potentially prolonged bear market.

Barak, a computer science graduate from Tel Aviv University, has held senior roles at Thomson Reuters, Amdocs and Symphony Communications.

Ruchatz, who will be building Polkadot’s brand, driving market education and community engagement, has held senior positions at Microsoft and Salesforce.

Before joining Parity, Syed was COO of hedge fund FIFTHDELTA, which launched in 2021 with $1.25 billion in assets under management. Prior to that, he was part of the non-investment team of hedge fund Marshall Wace.

Last November, CoinDesk revealed Parity Technologies co-founder and CEO Jutta Steiner was leaving her longstanding leadership role, which Wood took over from her.