Emily From Mantle x Blockchain at Berkeley Meet up
AI x CeDeFi in Crypto Meetup with Mantle & asksurf.ai
What does it look like to build from CeFi to DeFi to RWA and AI and come out the other side with real infrastructure?
Join us for an evening with Emily Bao, Head of Spot at Bybit, Key Advisor to Mantle, and Founder of Byreal, as she shares the unfiltered story behind her journey across three of Web3's biggest shifts.
Food will be provided, and a $1,000 research bounty for students and the SF community will be revealed at the event.
Exclusive 1K Prize for ONLY B@B members
1st Prize: 500 USD
Lucky Draw for 100USD, 5winners
The evening looks like:
Keynote by Emily on Mantle's CeDeFi thesis and AI Hackathon
Apply to Mantle Squad: Internship & Community Program for creators and builders
AI x Crypto Fireside Chat: Ryan Li, Founder & CEO of asksurf.ai, joins Emily for a live conversation on what AI x crypto really means for builders today
Open Q&A + Networking
Exclusive merch drop + $1,000 research bounty reveal
We'll also introduce Mantle AI Hackathon Phase 2 including virtual workshops, mentor clinics, and a Demo Day. Builders at Berkeley: this is your entry point.
Mantle is a top-3 L2 by TVL. $240M in tokenized funds. 80M users from Bybit behind its distribution layer. The infrastructure exists. The products on top mostly do not yet.
Come build them.
Emily Bao
Emily Bao is Head of Spot at Bybit, Key Advisor to Mantle, and Founder of Byreal. She operates at the intersection of centralized and decentralized finance, connecting exchange-native liquidity infrastructure to onchain markets.
At Mantle, Emily advises on market structure strategy, real-world asset adoption, and CeDeFi product development. She plays a central role in shaping how institutional-grade liquidity and tokenized assets flow through Mantle's ecosystem.
At Bybit, Emily oversees Spot at one of the world's largest crypto exchanges, serving over 80 million users globally. She is responsible for market structure, liquidity depth, and trading product development across Bybit's spot markets.
Emily is also the Founder of Byreal, a DeFi protocol built around institutional-grade liquidity and fair launch mechanics.
→ Follow Emily on X: https://x.com/emilyRioFreeman
About Mantle
Mantle is the premier distribution layer and gateway for institutions and TradFi to connect with onchain liquidity and access real-world assets. With $4B+ in community-owned assets, Mantle combines credibility, liquidity, and scalability with institutional-grade infrastructure to support large-scale adoption. The ecosystem is anchored by $MNT, with Bybit as its core distribution engine, and built out through core projects like mETH, fBTC, MI4, and more.
→ Mantle Official X: https://x.com/Mantle_Official
About Surf.ai
Surf.ai is a specialized AI intelligence platform built for crypto and digital assets — delivering reliable onchain research and actionable insights that generic LLMs can't.
Backed by Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and DCG.
Ryan Li — Founder & CEO, Surf.ai
Ryan Li has spent nearly a decade in AI, starting at UC Berkeley. Before Surf.ai, he co-founded Cyber (CyberConnect) and led DLive. He built Surf.ai to give traders and institutions in crypto a research layer they can actually trust.
→ Follow Ryan on X: https://x.com/ryanli