Max Kantelia is Co-Founder of Zilliqa and Founder of Zilliqa Group. He has been a central entrepreneurial force behind the Zilliqa blockchain project, originally backed by Anquan Capital, and the surrounding group of technology and entertainment ventures. Current first-party Zilliqa material has described Kantelia as Founder of Zilliqa Group; older profiles used the CEO title. The exact nature of his August 2026 role within Zilliqa Group should be verified against the most current Zilliqa Group first-party source. Zilliqa the network itself has had separate executive leadership with leadership transitions including an interim CEO appointment in 2025.
Zilliqa was founded in 2017 by a team of researchers and entrepreneurs including Kantelia and a research team associated with the National University of Singapore. The blockchain was notable for being among the first to deploy sharding in a live public network, launching its mainnet in 2019. Zilliqa 2.0, a major protocol upgrade introduced EVM compatibility and a new proof-of-stake consensus model, representing a significant architectural evolution.
Kantelia's background includes finance and technology entrepreneurship through Anquan Capital. He has also been associated with MetaMinds, a spatial web and entertainment venture connected to Zilliqa Group; MetaMinds' current active status in 2026 should be independently verified before definitively characterizing it. In 2025, Zilliqa's X-Bridge cross-chain bridge was exploited; the response and current bridge security status should be consulted from official post-mortems.
