Donovan Solms

Summary

Core expertise

Problems

Trading workflows, swap aggregation, best-execution routing, AMM/DEX systems, market data, prediction markets, zero-to-one products

Leadership

Engineering lead, co-founder/CTO, product strategy, technical architecture, remote teams, governance, treasury operations, stakeholder delivery

Stack

Go, TypeScript, Solidity, React, Angular, Node.js, GraphQL, Postgres, TimescaleDB, Redis, Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, GCP

Blockchain

EVM, Monad, Ethereum, BSC, Avalanche, Fantom, Cosmos SDK, CosmWasm, AMM routing, indexers, smart contracts, IPFS

Experience

1. 2025 — Present

   Technical Co-Founder · Monorail

   Building Signal, a live football prediction-market terminal, and Monorail, a swap aggregator on Monad. Own product, UX, execution systems, integrations, realtime infrastructure, and frontend delivery end-to-end.

   • Launched Monorail to $22M traded in six months with zero incentives; became the top native swap aggregator on Monad
   • Built best-execution routing across 24 protocols using a synthetic-orderbook aggregation model
   • Built an MCP server for Monorail that lets AI agents quote and execute swaps directly, bringing aggregator best-execution to agent-trading
   • Built Signal as a live football prediction-market terminal with real-time probabilities, event-linked trades and one-tap execution
   • Built an AI + Remotion content pipeline for Signal to generate post-match template reports and event recaps from match data
   • Owned full-stack delivery across routing engine, execution, indexers, integrations, frontend, and visual system
   • Tight user feedback loop on X and Discord — feature requests routinely ship same session. Example: mobile numeric keyboard request → shipped same day ↗

   Monorail ↗ · Signal ↗

2. 2022 — 2025

   Lead · Astroport

   Led engineering and protocol delivery for a major Cosmos DEX/AMM. Joined as backend engineer when Astroport was Terra’s largest AMM, continued building through the Terra collapse, then took over project leadership in late 2023.

   • Worked on the protocol when it was Terra’s largest AMM at ~$190M peak daily volume
   • Led expansion and delivery across five Cosmos chains, including the main hub migration
   • Ran multi-chain protocol R&D, CosmWasm-adjacent delivery, governance, treasury operations, and engineering continuity
   • Kept the project shipping through the Terra collapse and later ecosystem rebuild

   Astroport ↗

3. 2020 — 2022

   Co-founder and CTO · Dr Derma · Acquired

   Co-founded and led technology for a regulated online dermatology platform in South Africa. Owned architecture, product roadmap, compliance-sensitive delivery, and remote operating processes through acquisition.

   • Built to acquisition as Co-founder & CTO
   • Architected a medical-grade platform compliant with South African healthcare regulation
   • Stood up a remote-only team with clinical and engineering processes from day one

4. 2018 — 2021

   Core Contributor · Scala

   Open-source cryptocurrency. Worked on the core node software and ecosystem tooling — added IPFS and ZeroNet capabilities to the node, implemented a distributed blockchain downloader, and shipped a user-friendly miner for multiple platforms.

   • Added IPFS and ZeroNet capabilities to the core node (C++ via Go)
   • Implemented a distributed blockchain downloader to speed up node sync
   • Shipped a user-friendly cross-platform miner — broadened the contributor base beyond power users

5. 2017 — 2020

   Chief Technology Officer · iLiveIt

   Led architecture and engineering for a Python-based personalised video and PDF generation platform at scale, supporting international mobile-network product rollouts and bespoke client delivery.

   • Promoted from Senior Software Engineer to CTO in 2017
   • Led architecture for personalised video and PDF generation at scale
   • Grew and mentored the engineering team through international product rollouts
   • Owned direct technical relationships with top-tier mobile-network clients on bespoke solutions

6. 2015 — 2017

   Senior Software Engineer · iLiveIt

   Built a Python-based message distribution platform and scalable data-processing pipelines for mobile network clients; maintained and extended the core messaging services. Promoted to Chief Technology Officer in 2017.

7. 2013 — 2015

   Co-founder and CTO · Trevolta

   Co-founded and built the technology platform for an online travel-crowdfunding marketplace, owning product execution, platform architecture, and early technical operations.

   • 500k users in two months, peaking at 100k in a single day
   • Raised ZAR 1.5M (~US$165k) seed
   • Notable press: Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times

Side projects

Skills

Languages

Go, TypeScript, Python, Solidity, Node.js, C#, PHP

Frontend

React, Angular, viem, ethers

Backend

Go, Node.js, GraphQL, NATS, Protocol Buffers

Data

Postgres, TimescaleDB, MySQL, Redis

Infra

Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, GCP

Blockchain

EVM (Ethereum, Monad, BSC, Avalanche, Fantom), Cosmos SDK / CosmWasm, Solidity flash-swap contracts, IPFS

AI

MCP server design for trade execution, AI + Remotion content generation, Claude Code / Codex in daily build loop

Education

Publications & awards

• Multi-Touch Handbook (2009) — co-authored two chapters on multi-touch hardware and software with Seth Sandler et al.
• Mobile Marketing Association Award for Best Mobile Display (2009) — for the Livemobile Football “mobisite,” a near-real-time match-following UI for nine of the world’s biggest football competitions, optimised for low data usage and high engagement.

Talks & interviews

• Meet IPFS (2021) — conversation with the Scala cryptocurrency team on using IPFS to secure a blockchain against 51% attacks, and the design of libipfs for interacting with IPFS from C++ via Go.
• Scalability of personalised video generation on Oracle Cloud (2019) — interview with Ross Dawson on performance-testing Oracle Cloud against other vendors for personalised PDF and video generation at scale.