KeyrockTrading [prog] — GABRIEL JACOBS

Gabriel Jacobs is a visual engineer based in NYC. With dual backgrounds in fine
arts and technology, he solves problems through storytelling, visual design,
analytic research, systems technology, and product fabrication.

This multi-disciplinary approach applies to work across a variety of fields,
including finance, marketing, fabrication, photography and digital media,
computer programming and fashion.

PURPOSE

SELECTED PROJECTS

WHEN

DESIGN

FINANCE

GENERATIVE AI

World Building

Selected Imagery

Keyrock Trading

 Keyrock Trading
 Brussels Belgium
 Series A -> B Startup
 2021-2024

Keyrock is a Brussels-based market-making firm that I joined in 2021 as the company was scaling from its Series A into its B round. I had spent most of college building and running automated trading bots targeting crypto markets, and when I graduated during the pandemic that background translated directly into a role on the operations trading desk.

Over the next three years I moved through three distinct positions within the company, each transition driven by wanting to understand the layer beneath the one I was working on: from live operations into R&D strategy development, and finally into technical research and communications.

Operations Trader 2021-22

Managed and tuned market-making algorithms providing liquidity across a range of digital assets, including thinly traded tokens with minimal order book depth. Bots were built by in-house engineering and R&D. My job was to calibrate them against live market conditions, monitor performance around the clock, and adjust parameters as volatility shifted. Over time I pushed for deeper access to the underlying systems and started working more closely with the engineering teams to understand how the algorithms actually made decisions. That technical curiosity is what led to my internal transfer into R&D.

R&D, DeFi Trading 2022-23

Built and deployed trading strategies from scratch within Keyrock's decentralized finance division. Designed the logic, wrote the code, shipped to production, and monitored performance. This was the first time I owned the full lifecycle of a strategy from idea to live deployment. Specialized in liquidity pool management with a focus on low-risk, medium-return balancing operations across on-chain protocols. The work required a strong understanding of smart contract mechanics, protocol-level risk, and how to manage exposure in real time across multiple chains.

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Technical Researcher 2023-24

Wrote public-facing research, long-form articles, and technical documentation. Broke down complex internal systems and trading services into clear material for current and prospective clients. A lot of this meant sitting with engineers and traders, understanding how something actually worked, and then figuring out how to explain it to someone outside the company. This role combined everything I had built across trading, operations, and engineering into focused research and communication work.

At the end of 2024 I left Keyrock and moved back to the US to build Halflight/Somada.

(All imagery is representational. Work completed at Keyrock is under NDA.)

Index

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