Why the room needs them.
Rodrigo Coelho is chief executive of Edge & Node, the core development team behind The Graph, and was the protocol's first employee. He spoke on securing onchain finance at Proof of Talk Paris 2026.
The full account.
Rodrigo Coelho is chief executive officer of Edge & Node, the core development team behind The Graph, a protocol for indexing and querying blockchain data. He was The Graph's first employee. HackerNoon reported in April 2025 that he met co-founder Yaniv Tal at a co-working space in 2017, while Tal was developing the project's pitch deck, and joined later that year. Coelho described his early role as that of a "jack of all trades from setting up the social channels, to handling the booth and the swag at hackathons". He later served as Edge & Node's chief spirit officer, and became chief executive on 23 January 2025, succeeding Tegan Kline.
Before The Graph, Coelho worked as a technology entrepreneur. Business Daily Network reported in March 2025 that he co-founded an application development shop in the late 1990s and went on to found and exit two technology startups as chief executive. He studied at Arizona State University, graduating magna cum laude.
Under Coelho, Edge & Node has extended its work into payments for autonomous AI agents. In October 2025 the company unveiled ampersend, a platform for managing agents' payments, spending limits and policies from a single dashboard. CoinDesk reported that it was built on Coinbase's x402 payment protocol and Google's A2A communication framework, integrates the Ethereum standard ERC-8004, and was developed with Coinbase, Google and the Ethereum Foundation's decentralised AI team. On 2 June 2026, Crypto Briefing reported that Edge & Node had embedded compliance capabilities from blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs into ampersend's agent execution layer, so that agents can check counterparties against sanctions and risk screening before a transaction completes. Coelho said at the time that compliance and security "cannot be layered in after the fact".
Coelho spoke at Proof of Talk Paris 2026 as chief executive of Edge & Node, on the panel "DeFi Under Attack: Securing Onchain Finance and the Machine Economy", held on the Hecto Main Stage on the summit's second day, 3 June 2026, from 16:30 to 17:10. He shared the session with Kostas Chalkias, Charles Guillemet and Jason Jiang, and it was moderated by Nikola Stojanow.
What Rodrigo believes about the next ten years.
Years of shipping.
Lines that keep proving correct.
“Compliance is a primary concern at financial institutions, and ampersend now brings the tools and capabilities to meet the standards enterprises require to adopt agentic commerce at scale.”
“As enterprises and financial institutions move from pilot programs to live agentic workflows, compliance and security cannot be layered in after the fact. We've embedded TRM Labs' institutional-grade capabilities directly into the agent execution layer so regulated buyers can deploy with the same rigor they expect from any mission-critical system.”
“I was a jack of all trades from setting up the social channels, to handling the booth and the swag at hackathons”
What they have built, written, and backed.
Built
- ampersendA platform from Edge & Node for managing autonomous AI agents' payments, spending limits and policies from a single dashboard, unveiled in October 2025. CoinDesk reported it was built on Coinbase's x402 payment protocol and Google's A2A framework and developed with Coinbase, Google and the Ethereum Foundation's decentralised AI team. TRM Labs compliance capabilities were embedded into its agent execution layer, as reported on 2 June 2026.
- Early team, The GraphThe Graph's first employee, joining in 2017; by his own account, his early work ranged from setting up the project's social channels to running its booth at hackathons.
The next Proof of Talk is in Abu Dhabi.
Louvre Abu Dhabi, 3–4 December 2026. Admission is by application, and the room is capped at 2,000.
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