Who Is Joanna Cook? SOON Founder and SVM Blockchain Pioneer Explained

Joanna Cook is the co-founder and CEO of SOON, short for Solana Optimistic Network, a blockchain infrastructure project built around the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM). SOON focuses on bringing SVM-based execution to different blockchain ecosystems while providing infrastructure for high-performance applications and multichain development.

Cook has a background spanning traditional finance and crypto. Before founding SOON, she spent years in financial markets and later held roles at Coinbase, Optimism, and Aleo, giving her experience across institutional crypto, Ethereum scaling, and zero-knowledge infrastructure.

Early Background and Career

Joanna Cook entered the crypto industry after spending approximately 13 years in traditional finance, including experience in foreign-exchange trading at Citi. Her early career in financial markets gave her exposure to global financial infrastructure and institutional capital markets.

Cook later moved into the cryptocurrency industry and became involved with Coinbase. At Coinbase Institutional, she worked in business development and product-related roles and was involved with the launch of the Coinbase NFT Marketplace.

She subsequently joined Optimism, where she worked in business development, before becoming Vice President at Aleo, a blockchain project focused on privacy and zero-knowledge technology. Her experience across traditional finance, institutional crypto, scaling infrastructure, and privacy technology eventually contributed to the creation of SOON.

How Joanna Cook Created SOON

Joanna Cook co-founded SOON with the goal of bringing the performance characteristics of the Solana Virtual Machine to broader blockchain ecosystems. SOON uses a Decoupled SVM architecture designed to separate execution from the underlying settlement and data-availability layers.

SOON initially developed its infrastructure as an SVM rollup framework, with the project moving from devnet to testnet and then to Alpha Mainnet within roughly six months. Its Alpha Mainnet used Ethereum as the settlement layer and EigenDA for data availability.

The project later expanded its infrastructure through SOON Stack and InterSOON, with the broader goal of allowing developers to deploy SVM environments across different Layer 1 ecosystems.

How SOON Works

SOON is built around the Solana Virtual Machine and is designed to provide high-performance execution while allowing different blockchain ecosystems to use SVM-based infrastructure. Its architecture separates the execution environment from settlement and data availability, allowing developers to use SVM execution without requiring the entire Solana blockchain architecture.

Through SOON Stack, developers can deploy SVM-based chains and applications on different underlying networks. InterSOON is designed to extend this infrastructure across multiple Layer 1 ecosystems, creating a framework for applications that need high-performance execution and cross-chain connectivity.

The SOON token is the native token of the ecosystem and is used for network-related functions, governance, and participation within the SOON ecosystem. The project’s published documentation also describes builder incentives and community participation as components of the token ecosystem.

Joanna Cook’s Role at SOON

As co-founder and CEO, Joanna Cook has been responsible for guiding SOON’s overall strategy, product direction, ecosystem development, and partnerships.

Her work has focused on positioning SVM technology as an execution environment that can be used beyond the Solana blockchain itself. Cook has also promoted SOON’s approach to multichain development, including integrations with ecosystems such as Base and BNB Chain.

Under her leadership, SOON has also explored applications beyond infrastructure, including trading and AI-focused products. Cook has described the project’s more recent direction around an AI Capital Market, where autonomous agents can create, trade, and interact with on-chain assets.

Why Joanna Cook Matters in Crypto

Joanna Cook is known for combining experience from traditional finance and major crypto infrastructure organizations with her work building SOON.

Her career spans institutional finance, Coinbase, Ethereum scaling through Optimism, privacy infrastructure through Aleo, and SVM-based blockchain infrastructure through SOON. This gives her experience across several different parts of the blockchain industry.

Through SOON, Cook has focused on making SVM execution available across a wider range of blockchain ecosystems. The project’s development also reflects the industry’s broader interest in alternative virtual machines, modular blockchain infrastructure, and high-performance execution environments.