Nikhil Padala

At Akuna Capital, I watched a signing system add 8 milliseconds of latency to every crypto trade across 12 exchanges. That's millions in daily volume slowed down by a key management path nobody had measured. I fixed it in three weeks through AWS instance tuning, NUMA-aware scheduling, and a rewritten signing path.

At Gemini, I ran SRE for exchange infrastructure handling $2B+ in daily volume at 99.99% uptime. I implemented PTP nanosecond time synchronization on Solarflare hardware. I learned what institutional-grade signing looks like at real transaction volume.

Before that, at Upside, I built an ICO whitelabel platform: smart-contract deployment to multiple chains across multiple client launches, with transient secure custody and clean operational handoff at each go-live. $500M+ shepherded through launches over 16 months, zero breaches. At FlexTrade, I led Linux infrastructure for institutional trading and shipped SOC-2 and MiFID II compliance frameworks globally.

The pattern across 15 years was always the same: teams making smart decisions locally that compound into expensive architecture problems 18 months later. The signing library chosen under deadline pressure. The key management system designed for 10 users that now serves 10,000. The compliance framework that worked for one jurisdiction but breaks for three.

I started ZeroCopy Systems to prove the thesis: TEE-based deterministic signing on AWS Nitro Enclaves can run at 42µs, 3,095× faster than AWS KMS. I built the full platform from scratch: 40+ Rust crates, PCR0-pinned attestation, hardware-isolated execution. That's the reference implementation I bring to every engagement.

Now I work as a fractional CTO for two types of teams: AI agent companies racing to meet the EU AI Act Article 14 deadline (August 2, 2026), and crypto trading firms whose signing latency is leaking alpha they haven't measured.

If that sounds like your team, let's talk.