Crypto Gloss

Amber Baldet

Amber Baldet is a technologist and privacy advocate who served as JPMorgan Chase’s blockchain program lead from approximately 2015 to 2018 — overseeing the development of Quorum, an enterprise-grade Ethereum fork used for private settlements — before departing to co-found Clovyr with Patrick Nielsen in 2018, a developer platform enabling enterprise blockchain deployment and application distribution; she became a notable voice for privacy-preserving technology in both traditional finance and the broader crypto ecosystem, and has been outspoken on the risks of financial surveillance in digital currency design.

Background

Amber Baldet has a background in technology, art, and security. Before her JPMorgan role, she worked in technology and engineering roles. She is known within the blockchain space for combining technical depth with a philosophy focused on privacy, civil liberties, and resistance to surveillance overreach.

JPMorgan Blockchain Program

Baldet joined JPMorgan Chase approximately in 2015 to lead its nascent blockchain program — one of the earliest major Wall Street bank efforts to build distributed ledger infrastructure. The program sat within JPMorgan’s Corporate & Investment Bank.

Quorum

The most significant technical output of Baldet’s JPMorgan tenure was Quorum — an enterprise-permissioned version of the Ethereum client (go-ethereum / Geth) forked and modified for private blockchain use cases:

  • Private transactions — Quorum added a privacy layer (via Constellation, later Tessera) allowing select parties within a permissioned network to conduct transactions that are invisible to other network participants.
  • Permissioned consensus — Rather than PoW or standard PoS, Quorum used Istanbul BFT (IBFT) or Raft consensus, appropriate for known-participant networks.
  • Whitelisted nodes — Only pre-approved JPMorgan or partner nodes could participate.

Quorum was open-sourced by JPMorgan in 2016. It subsequently became the foundation for the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s technical work and was used by financial institutions including National Bank of Canada, Societe Generale, and others. JPMorgan transferred Quorum to ConsenSys in 2020.

Privacy as a Principle

Baldet’s leadership of JPMorgan’s blockchain program was distinctive for her emphasis on financial privacy as a design requirement, not just a legal compliance checkbox. In industry discussions and conference talks she:

  • Argued that surveillance-by-default financial systems cause harm to individuals, activists, marginalized communities, and dissidents globally.
  • Opposed CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) designs that would give governments real-time visibility into citizens’ financial activity without strong privacy protections.
  • Advocated for zero-knowledge proofs and privacy-preserving cryptography as necessary components of any blockchain-based financial infrastructure.

Clovyr (2018)

After departing JPMorgan in April 2018, Baldet co-founded Clovyr with Patrick Nielsen. Clovyr is a developer tools platform focused on:

  • Making it easier for enterprises and developers to deploy distributed applications across hybrid cloud environments.
  • Enabling application deployment without exposing the full infrastructure stack to a single centralized provider.
  • Supporting decentralized infrastructure choices that reduce dependency on AWS/Azure/GCP monopolies.

Clovyr raised seed funding from investors including Union Square Ventures.

Key Dates

  • ~2015 — Joins JPMorgan Chase to lead blockchain program.
  • 2016 — Quorum open-sourced by JPMorgan; becomes leading enterprise Ethereum fork.
  • April 2018 — Departs JPMorgan to co-found Clovyr.
  • 2018 — Clovyr launches; USV participates in seed round.
  • 2020 — JPMorgan transfers Quorum codebase to ConsenSys (now Consensys Quorum / GoQuorum).

Common Misconceptions

  • “Quorum is a JPMorgan product.” — Quorum was JPMorgan-built and JPMorgan-open-sourced, but it was transferred to ConsenSys in 2020 and is now maintained as an open-source project by the Ethereum/ConsenSys ecosystem, not JPMorgan.
  • “Amber Baldet is a blockchain industry insider uncritical of surveillance.” — Her career post-JPMorgan has been notably focused on privacy-preserving technology and has included explicit criticism of surveillance-enabling CBDC designs and financial monitoring systems. Her JPMorgan work on enterprise blockchain was driven by a conviction that private financial transactions should remain private.

Social Media Sentiment

  • r/CryptoCurrency: Discussed as a notable crossover figure from traditional finance; respected for privacy advocacy but relatively niche compared to higher-profile crypto personalities.
  • X/Twitter: Followed by cryptography researchers, privacy advocates, and enterprise blockchain practitioners. Her positions bridging JPMorgan work and cypherpunk principles are seen as unusual and credible.
  • Developer communities: Clovyr and her advocacy for decentralized infrastructure are discussed in building-focused and regulatory policy circles; has less retail market visibility.

Last updated: 2026-04

Related Terms

See Also

  • ConsenSys — acquired Quorum from JPMorgan in 2020
  • Privacy Coin — privacy-preserving money aligned with her advocacy
  • AML — anti-money-laundering surveillance regime she has critiqued in CBDC design

Sources