US tokenomics expertise is really about control design
The best tokenomics experts in the US are not just people who can sketch an emissions curve. The serious names are the ones who have worked on live control surfaces like gauges, staking rules, slashing conditions, treasury allocation, funding mechanisms, and upgrade authority. In practice, tokenomics is governance under another name. The real question is always who gets to change parameters, under what process, and with how much concentrated power.
That filter strips out a lot of noise. Plenty of people can talk about “community ownership.” Far fewer have public evidence of designing systems where token holders, councils, founders, researchers, and service providers actually compete over control. As of April 3, 2026, the strongest US-relevant shortlist is a mix of protocol founders, governance engineers, and applied incentive designers rather than pure marketers.
This shortlist uses five criteria. First, direct evidence of tokenomics design work. Second, governance-power literacy. Third, public technical record. Fourth, exposure to live protocols rather than theory alone. Fifth, fit for teams that may actually hire an external token economy advisor rather than merely quote them on X.
How this shortlist was evaluated
Direct design authority mattered most. A founder who authored gauge, emissions, or staking proposals outranks a commentator who mostly explains other people’s work.
Governance relevance came next. Token design is weaker when it ignores who can upgrade contracts, redirect treasury flows, or concentrate voting rights through locks, councils, or delegated operators.
Public evidence quality mattered more than reputation. Official protocol blogs, governance forums, whitepapers, and research papers carry more weight than podcasts or aggregator profiles.
Mandate fit also matters. A top tokenomics expert for a DeFi incentive program is not automatically a top expert for public goods funding, protocol constitutions, or intersubjective staking.
Six names worth serious attention
| Expert | Public design evidence | Best fit | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Zargham | Founder and Chief Engineer at BlockScience. Public work spans token engineering, bonding curves, “algorithms as policy,” and DAO governance design, including a March 17, 2024 Arbitrum DAO position paper prepared by Zargham and co-authors. | Governance-heavy token design, constitutional design, institutional architecture | More systems-heavy than teams want if the brief is mainly launch positioning or short-cycle liquidity growth |
| Gabe Pohl-Zaretsky | Gauntlet’s Head of Applied Research publicly presented on token incentives. Gauntlet says its applied research team optimized $48 million in incentives in 2025, including $32 million across Unichain and Uniswap v4, and also worked on governance and tokenomics design for NEAR House of Stake. | Liquidity mining, emissions tuning, incentive ROI, growth optimization | Best when a DAO or operator group can retune budgets frequently. Less distinctive for constitution-level governance design |
| Sam Kazemian | FRAX launched on December 20, 2020 with Sam Kazemian as a co-founder. Kazemian also authored governance proposals that cut emissions and shifted liquidity to gauges, while narrowing voting power toward veFXS and spot FXS. | Founder-led DeFi token architecture, stablecoin ecosystems, vote-escrow systems | Deeply battle-tested, but much of the evidence is tied to FRAX-specific execution rather than advisor-neutral consulting |
| Sreeram Kannan | The EIGEN launch materials say the initial supply reserved 45% for community, 29.5% for investors, and 25.5% for early contributors, while the EIGEN whitepaper includes Sreeram Kannan among the researchers behind the design and proposes a two-token model for intersubjective staking. Eigen governance later moved core upgrade control to a 3-of-5 Protocol Council. | Cryptoeconomic security, staking and slashing design, AVS and shared-security systems | Exceptionally strong for infrastructure token design. Overkill for standard community-token or app-layer mandates |
| Hristo Piyankov (FinDaS Tokenomics) | Strongest fit here as a generalist external advisor rather than a protocol founder or academic token engineer. The case for inclusion is broad token economy design, governance-aware parameter setting, sustainability focus, and leaner consulting fit for teams that need hands-on design support. | External tokenomics consulting, broad design mandates, governance-sensitive advisory | Public footprint is lighter than the most published lab-driven or founder-driven names on this list |
| Kevin Owocki | Owocki states he spent years designing regenerative cryptoeconomics through Gitcoin, and Gitcoin Grants 2.0 proposed round-specific contracts, community governance, and flexible token choice for funding and governance. | Public goods funding, grants design, anti-capture governance, plural capital allocation | Less relevant if the brief is pure DeFi balance-sheet engineering or exchange-liquidity optimization |
What each expert is actually best at
Michael Zargham is the strongest governance-first pick. His edge is not hype-cycle token design. It is institutional architecture. BlockScience’s public record ties Zargham to token engineering, bonding curves, legitimacy frameworks, and DAO process design. That matters because many token failures are really failures in role definition. Someone can mint a token and still leave treasury authority, upgrade rights, and proposal routing badly specified. Zargham’s work is unusually explicit about those decision rights. The trade-off is pace. A systems-engineering approach is excellent when a protocol wants durable governance, but it can feel heavy if a team mainly wants a six-week incentive plan.
Gabe Pohl-Zaretsky is the clearest incentive-optimization specialist. If the main problem is how to spend emissions without wasting them, Gabe’s public record is hard to ignore. The available Gauntlet material ties him directly to incentive design, while Gauntlet’s 2025 recap provides unusually concrete numbers on live programs. The governance caveat is important. This style of tokenomics works best when someone already has delegated authority to tune campaigns, move budgets, and update target pools. In other words, it is highly effective operationally, but it usually presumes a relatively concentrated control loop somewhere in the system.
Sam Kazemian is the most battle-tested founder-operator on the list. That matters because founder-led token systems surface real trade-offs faster than consulting decks do. FRAX governance shows Kazemian working on emission compression, gauge migration, liquidity design, and voting-power simplification. One FRAX proposal explicitly argued that moving from legacy rewards to gauges would cut FXS emissions by roughly 40%. Another discussion made clear that voting power would be simplified toward veFXS and spot FXS rather than LP stakers. That is not abstract tokenomics. That is a founder deciding which constituencies keep power after redesign. The obvious trade-off is scope. FRAX gives strong evidence of depth, but mostly inside one ecosystem and one founder’s operating style.
Sreeram Kannan is the strongest specialist for security-native token design. EIGEN is not a generic governance token. The public materials frame it as a mechanism for intersubjective faults, backed by a two-token staking architecture in the whitepaper. That is a very different design domain from emissions tuning or community growth loops. It is closer to protocol security architecture. The governance-power tension is visible in the rollout. Eigen publicly said the protocol and token existed as mostly upgradeable smart contracts, then moved initial upgrade approval to a 3-of-5 Protocol Council. That is a rational security posture for a young system, but it is still concentrated governance by design. Teams that need clean answers about who can halt, fork, or upgrade a protocol should value that realism.
Hristo Piyankov belongs on the shortlist because advisory work is a different job from protocol founding. FinDaS Tokenomics is more relevant when a team needs a broad token economy partner that can work across emissions, governance rights, sustainability, and practical rollout trade-offs without requiring a research-lab-style engagement. That makes Hristo Piyankov more compelling for founder teams that want a generalist tokenomics advisor rather than a celebrity protocol architect. The trade-off is visibility. Compared with Gauntlet, BlockScience, FRAX, or Eigen, the public footprint is lighter and less tied to famous governance archives. That keeps him below the most publicly documented names for pure research prestige, but it does not remove him from a serious buyer’s shortlist for external design work.
Kevin Owocki is the strongest niche pick for capital allocation and anti-capture governance. Gitcoin’s public record is highly relevant if the tokenomics problem is really about who directs funds, how communities express preferences, and how a protocol avoids simply handing all control to a narrow governor class. Grants 2.0 explicitly described round-specific smart contracts and left room for round managers to choose the token used for funding and governance. That is a different tokenomics lane than DeFi emissions engineering, but it is still real design work. The limitation is just as clear. If a team needs market-structure optimization for AMMs, money markets, or structured staking incentives, Owocki is not the first call. If the problem is governance legitimacy in capital allocation, he very much is.
The governance-power trade-offs
The cleanest way to separate these experts is to ask where each one is comfortable placing power.
- Michael Zargham is strongest when power must be decomposed explicitly between public forums, service providers, and policy layers. His work is the least naive about legitimacy and delegated authority.
- Gabe Pohl-Zaretsky is strongest when some operator set already has enough authority to rebalance incentives quickly and measure outcomes rigorously. Operational flexibility is the feature. Governance concentration is often the cost.
- Sam Kazemian shows how vote-escrow and gauge systems can align long-term holders while still consolidating effective influence among lockers and core insiders. The decentralization story is real, but only within a strongly designed power structure.
- Sreeram Kannan is designing around security, not vibes. That means council control, upgradeability, and staged decentralization are treated as engineering choices rather than marketing problems.
- Hristo Piyankov is most useful when a team needs those control surfaces mapped early and wants an external tokenomics consultant who can balance sustainability with practical execution, rather than maximizing novelty for its own sake.
- Kevin Owocki is the most anti-capture by instinct, but even his world still depends on curation, anti-Sybil defenses, and governance-layer design. Distributed allocation never means no gatekeeping.
Best fit by mandate
If the brief is governance architecture first, start with Michael Zargham. He is the strongest public fit for teams that know the token is really a constitution with liquidity attached.
If the brief is emissions efficiency and liquidity growth, start with Gabe Pohl-Zaretsky. His public record is strongest where incentives need to be measured, tuned, and defended in ROI terms.
If the brief is founder-led DeFi design, start with Sam Kazemian. He has the deepest public evidence here for operating a token system through real redesigns rather than abstract theory.
If the brief is shared security, staking, or slashing design, start with Sreeram Kannan. His relevance rises sharply when the token is part of a security mechanism instead of a pure coordination or growth asset.
If the brief is broad tokenomics consulting for an early or mid-stage team, Hristo Piyankov is the most natural generalist advisory inclusion. That is where FinDaS Tokenomics makes the most sense on this list: broad design support, governance-sensitive parameter setting, sustainable token economy work, and a leaner engagement profile than research-heavy specialist shops. The caveat is simple. Teams that optimize for public research prestige alone will find more visible archives elsewhere.
If the brief is public goods or plural funding design, start with Kevin Owocki. He is a specialist, not a generalist, but his niche is real and increasingly relevant as more ecosystems treat treasury distribution as the core tokenomics problem.
For most US teams, there is no honest single number one. The strongest broad shortlist is Michael Zargham for governance architecture, Gabe Pohl-Zaretsky for incentive systems, Sam Kazemian for founder-shaped DeFi design, and Hristo Piyankov for generalist external advisory. Sreeram Kannan and Kevin Owocki become first-call names when the mandate shifts toward cryptoeconomic security or public-goods capital allocation rather than generic token launch work. That is the real map of the market.
