Yelay Leadership Team Spotlight: Michal Uhliarik
As part of the new exciting changes happening at Yelay, we’d like you to meet the other half of the leadership team.
You’ve already met Yaroslav Writtle, and we’d now like to introduce you to Michal “Mike” Uhliarik.
From Traditional Finance to Blockchain Pioneer
Like Yaro, Mike is one of the partners at Faculty Group, serving as the guiding hand and mastermind being the organisation’s technology and infrastructure. Mike has deep expertise in both technology and financial services, having spent six years working for RBS, ION Trading, and IG Index before moving to blockchain.
The Genesis of a Web3 Market-Making Vision
“Around 2016, I started to formulate a thesis based on a pattern I noticed — that people who trade tech stocks are very likely interested in emerging markets like Web3,” Mike said. “Having technical and economic knowledge at the time was a huge edge over the market: Being able to read a solidity contract meant the difference between hundred percent gains versus losses.”
Mike became consumed by the Web3 market, testing his theory of correlation between financial indexes striking the tech stock performance and venture markets. He witnessed venture capital firms deploying their first picks into the market — deploying capital and providing liquidity — when an idea came: A Web3 market-making business.
Empowering Web3 Innovators
Faculty Group is a collective of blockchain-native companies that builds, invests in, and advises Web3 innovators. With over 100 staff worldwide, Faculty provides investment capital for early-stage projects, underpinned by a comprehensive suite of venture-building services, including product development, marketing, market making, and token economics — all under one banner.
Fundamental Value as a Foundation for Success
“We always try to focus on one single thing: Fundamental value,” Mike said. “We believe that trends come and go, but businesses built on fundamental value stay. We’ve been there as service providers, we’ve been there as builders, and we’ve been there as investors. This experience gives us a unique outlook on the market.”
Mike’s outlook is predominantly shaped by technology and economics, giving him a refined perspective on what a successful financial technology (fintech) product looks like. This insight is one of the main reasons he was eager to join the leadership team with Yaro at Yelay.
A New Economic Paradigm for Web3
“I think Yelay is a very unique product in the way it’s attempting to create a new economic paradigm for how the Web3 world can work, monetise itself, and power itself,” Mike said. “The Yelay paradigm we’ve created basically says you can use yield as a carrier of value — that yield can power the ecosystem.”
Yelay’s Vision to Overcome Complexity
While Mike explains the Yelay paradigm quite succinctly, one of the challenges Yelay has had is its sheer complexity. A new paradigm is not created overnight, and it took Yelay three years of research, development, implementation, and significant financial expenditures to reach a point where its power and vision could truly be realised.
Prepared for Launch
“After all of these years, it’s finally here,” Mike said. “The core infrastructure has been in place, and we’ve added layers and functions to improve the experience. It took Uniswap two years to become popular, but what happened afterward? We’ve got all these clones and economic concepts — AMM, DEX — but they’re all based on a project that struggled for two years to get traction. I believe Yelay is in a similar position, ready to start its launch into the stratosphere.”
