Julian Koh is the co-founder and CEO of Aevo, a decentralized derivatives exchange that has processed more than $100 billion in trading volume. His journey began when he left Cornell to pursue cryptocurrency research before building his career at a machine learning firm, a crypto hedge fund, and Coinbase. That decision eventually led him to co-found Ribbon Finance in 2020, which was later rebuilt as Aevo
Who Is Julian Koh?
Julian Koh spent his childhood in both Malaysia and Singapore before moving to the United States for college. He studied computer science at Cornell, then left after two years to focus on cryptocurrency research. During a gap year, he worked part-time at Numerai, a San Francisco firm using crowdsourced machine learning to trade markets, for about seven months, an early exposure to the intersection of quantitative modeling and financial markets that would shape his later work.
From Numerai, Koh joined Metastable Capital, a crypto hedge fund, as a consultant tracking market trends. He then worked as a software engineer at Coinbase on crypto integrations, custody, and staking, giving him firsthand insight into how a major exchange manages infrastructure at scale.
Building side projects with a roommate there gave him the confidence to leave in November 2020 and co-found Ribbon Finance with Ken Chan, a fellow former Coinbase engineer who had also worked at Zilliqa.
Koh spent most of his twenties building and investing in crypto rather than pursuing a conventional finance career, backing more than 40 early-stage startups and a handful of venture funds alongside his work at Ribbon Finance and Aevo. His path from engineer to founder is common among the builders covered in our crypto personalities hub.
Julian Koh’s Career and Contributions
Koh has built one company that changed shape twice: from a DeFi yield protocol into a full derivatives exchange.
Ribbon Finance and the DOV Model
Ribbon Finance launched in November 2020 around decentralized options vaults, or DOVs, letting users generate yield by selling call or put options against their crypto holdings. Its flagship product, Ribbon Earn, paired options selling with fixed-income strategies to smooth out returns. Koh served as co-founder and CEO, with Ken Chan as co-founder and CTO.
The protocol grew quickly in 2021, holding more than $300 million in total value locked at its peak, and closed a $75 million Series B led by Paradigm in March 2022, after an $8.75 million Series A the prior year.
The Aevo Rebrand
In July 2023, Ribbon’s community voted to merge the protocol into Aevo, a Layer 2 order-book exchange for options and perpetual futures built on the OP Stack, aimed at competing more directly with centralized platforms. Holders of the old RBN token received an equal amount of the new AEVO token, and Aevo has since reported cumulative trading volume above $100 billion.
Recent Developments
Aevo kept adding trading incentives into 2026, including a rewards program that gave out 1 million AEVO to traders in April. The platform also worked through the fallout from a 2025 exploit of Ribbon’s legacy vaults, which shut them down and offering a recovery plan to affected users. Koh remains listed as co-founder and CEO throughout, per his LinkedIn profile.
Julian Koh’s Views and Positions
Koh has spoken often about self-custody and DeFi transparency since the 2022 crypto lending collapses. In an October 2022 interview with Jason Choi on The Blockcrunch Podcast, Koh pointed to that year’s failed centralized lenders as proof that people should hold their own keys instead of trusting platforms that promise yield. He also pointed to the lack of oversight at those firms as a key reason funds were mismanaged, arguing that DeFi’s transparent, on-chain design made such hidden risks harder to conceal.
Koh also argued that the DOV market was difficult to stand out in, since most protocols competed for the same small group of market makers. In that 2022 interview, he predicted fees would keep falling as competition increased, one reason he gave for Ribbon’s move toward building its own exchange rather than remaining a yield product.
By early 2024, Koh’s framing had transitioned toward options trading as the next growth area for decentralized exchanges. In a January 2024 episode of 0xResearch, he said pre-launch futures markets were an effective way to acquire users ahead of a token launch, and described plans to make Aevo a cross-chain exchange rather than a single-chain product, arguing that liquidity fragmented across chains was one of the bigger unsolved problems for derivatives trading in DeFi.
Julian Koh in the News
Aevo hasn’t had a smooth ride since 2025. A $2.7 million exploit hit legacy Ribbon vaults that year, after an oracle upgrade left a gap that let someone manipulate pricing on newly added assets, according to CoinMarketCap.
Aevo’s response didn’t go over well with everyone. The platform proposed a recovery plan that cut roughly 19% from what affected depositors could claim back, and users pushed back hard on social media over the haircut. The good news for active traders is that Aevo’s core Layer 2 exchange was never touched by the exploit. The legacy vaults themselves were shut down afterward and are no longer live.
Frequently Asked Questions
Still curious about the person behind Ribbon Finance and Aevo? These are the questions readers ask most often.
Where is Julian Koh from?
Koh grew up between Malaysia and Singapore before moving to the United States to attend Cornell University, where he studied computer science before leaving after two years.
Who co-founded Ribbon Finance with Julian Koh?
Ken Chan co-founded Ribbon Finance alongside Koh in November 2020. Chan, who also previously worked as an engineer at Coinbase and at Zilliqa, has served as Aevo’s co-founder and CTO since the 2023 rebrand.
What is the difference between Ribbon Finance and Aevo?
Ribbon Finance was Koh’s original DeFi protocol, focused on decentralized options vaults that generated yield for users. In July 2023, the Ribbon community voted to merge the project into Aevo, a Layer 2 exchange for options and perpetual futures.
What is Julian Koh working on now?
Koh continues to lead Aevo as co-founder and CEO, overseeing the exchange’s options and perpetual futures products as well as its ongoing trading incentive programs.
What happened to Ribbon Finance’s legacy vaults?
In 2025, Ribbon’s legacy decentralized options vaults were exploited for about $2.7 million after an oracle upgrade allowed price manipulation on newly added assets. Aevo’s main exchange was unaffected, and the vaults were decommissioned afterward.
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