Arthur Hayes joins Covalent as a strategic advisor: 'CQT is undervalued'

Arthur Hayes himself

Recently, Arthur Hayes, co-founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, and current Chief Investment Officer of the family office Maelstrom, has joined the blockchain data infrastructure startup Covalent as a strategic advisor.

Arthur Hayes: CQT has been relatively underestimated, and I will help change this situation.

Covalent previously stated that Hayes will subsequently assist Covalent in becoming a leading data infrastructure startup in the industry, especially within the Ethereum ecosystem, and provide related services for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

Hayes told the media, "Covalent's Ethereum Wayback Machine (EWM) ensures long-term access to blockchain historical data for users, providing the driving force for the development of next-generation use cases, especially the development of AI models."

When asked what prompted him to join Covalent as a strategic advisor, Hayes said, "Covalent's CQT Token has always been undervalued compared to its competitors (such as The Graph) - many investors have completely missed this narrative. Now, as Covalent continues to expand, my goal as a narrative creator is to help narrow this gap."

It is reported that Hayes will receive compensation in the form of CQT tokens in the future. He mentioned, 'In general, we only accept token-based rewards in the employment industry because we believe in aligning ourselves with our team, investors, clients, and retail market participants. We will fight side by side with all those who share the same vision and goals.'

Covalent co-founder and CEO Ganesh Swami told the media that Hayes is currently the only strategic advisor for Covalent.

According to the relevant market data, the CQT token is currently priced at $0.23, an increase of 13.25% in the past 24 hours. The token is currently ranked 347th by market capitalization, with a market cap of approximately $145 million.

Covalent's AI Vision

Covalent was founded in 2019 and provides data infrastructure services for over 225 blockchain networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and Optimism. However, Covalent co-founder and CEO Swami said that the startup has found its main focus in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Covalent recently launched the Ethereum Retrospective Machine (EWM), which ensures the availability of all Ethereum ecosystem data and supports AI developers and users to access all on-chain history.

Swami also stated that today's blockchain networks are increasingly becoming "billboards rather than databases," which means that on-chain transaction data tends to exist for a short period of time (usually two weeks) and then gets deleted. He said that EWM will ensure the long-term availability of Ethereum's transaction data in a decentralized manner.

Swami emphasized that the use cases of artificial intelligence are the extended vision of Covalent's decentralized data infrastructure. "Without decentralized data sets, AI models are vulnerable to manipulation and bias. Specific use cases for decentralized data in AI include copy trading, NFT forensics, secure applications, etc."

The specific role Hayes served at Covalent

Hayes stated that as a "comprehensive" advisor to Covalent, he is helping the startup with "refining token economic models, market positioning, business model adjustments, new types of customer contact, and other matters." As an experienced founder, he plans to teach the project team some "dos and don'ts" to help it grow quickly.

Hayes also briefly explained the process of cooperation: Covalent first met with Akshat Vaidya, the investment director of Maelstrom, at last year's Tokyo ETH Global, and then the two teams had more in-depth discussions on potential cooperation at ETHCC Paris and Token 2049 Singapore with a more serious attitude. The specific details of the cooperation were finalized at ETH Denver last winter.

Hayes said Maelstrom is also the founding advisor of the synthetic dollar protocol Ethena, and the family office recently announced that it will provide consulting services to the decentralized artificial intelligence platform Ritual and the decentralized perpetual exchange Drift (with rich industry resources and sufficient experience in the industry).