Current Position & Biography
Lorien Gabel is the CEO and a co-founder of Figment, a blockchain infrastructure business focused on staking. Investor Thoma Bravo’s current portfolio page identifies him as chief executive and dates the company’s founding to 2018. Figment Japan’s August 2026 announcement also names him as CEO. His work concerns the infrastructure through which institutions participate in proof-of-stake networks, rather than the creation of a single cryptocurrency.
Canada is a documented company market: Figment Japan’s release describes the business as headquartered in Toronto. Thoma Bravo’s portfolio page instead lists New York as its headquarters. These sources support a North American business footprint, not a claim about Gabel’s personal residence or nationality. The company’s Japanese operation adds a concrete international dimension to that footprint.
Notable Contributions
Gabel helped establish a company whose services include validator infrastructure, staking integrations and reporting for digital-asset holders. Thoma Bravo describes Figment’s offering as covering point-and-click staking, reward tracking, APIs and slashing protection. Those are descriptions of company services, not guarantees of returns or the elimination of operational risk.
A December 2021 funding announcement identified Gabel as co-founder and CEO when Figment raised a $110 million Series C led by Thoma Bravo. The announcement described work spanning protocol staking, blockchain research, developer tools and indexing. It also reported participation in The Graph’s core development ecosystem. These are dated milestones, not assertions that every product or relationship remains unchanged today.
In February 2025, BTCS announced a partnership with Figment around its Staker Protection Plan, with WonderFi as the first customer in the proposed pilot. The stated objective was more predictable transaction inclusion and state preservation for Ethereum transactions. Gabel discussed the partnership in the announcement. The February announcement was forward-looking about the pilot. In its May 15, 2025 results release, BTCS subsequently reported launching the Staker Protection Plan during the first quarter, describing it as developed with Figment and WonderFi. These company statements do not independently establish performance or the completion of every pilot objective.
In August 2026, Figment Japan announced that bitbank had selected Figment as infrastructure provider for its staking service. The same release said Figment established its Japanese entity in April 2025 and joined the Japan Cryptoasset Business Association in September 2025. This is a company-reported example of extending blockchain operations into a local exchange market.
Why Katharos Is Following Them
Gabel offers a view into the institutional layer of proof-of-stake networks: how exchanges, custodians and asset managers connect their services to validator operators. His relevance is concrete infrastructure leadership, with company-level partnerships and operational responsibilities that can be examined separately from token prices or promotional claims.
Areas to Follow
Follow validator performance and concentration, staking integration design, reporting quality, slashing safeguards and the division of responsibilities between infrastructure providers and their clients. The Japanese expansion is also relevant to how global providers support local operating requirements.
Reporting Scope
Coverage should distinguish Gabel’s executive leadership from work performed by engineering teams and partners. Company announcements should remain attributed, and planned pilots should not be presented as completed deployments without further evidence. This profile is not an endorsement of staking services or an assessment of investment suitability.
Katharos Category
Exchanges & Infrastructure
Photo Credit
Archival photograph: Lukas Schulze / Web Summit / Sportsfile, “LS2_1219”, November 13, 2023, The Gathering at SUD Lisboa, Lisbon. CC BY 2.0. Cropped and resized. Original photograph: Source 5; license: Source 6.