When we talk about Web3’s future, the conversation more often than not focuses on infrastructure: faster chains, better scalability, more secure architectures, and so on. But as someone who’s been working with this market for quite a few years now, I’ve come to believe that technology alone is not enough to take Web3 into its next stage of maturity.
The real bottleneck of any business is leadership design: who builds the systems, who sets the norms, whose perspectives shape how we grow — these are also questions that we must ask and consider carefully.
I’ve seen cases where exclusivity in founder networks and uneven access to funding have held companies back from scaling when they were led by fellow women. And to my mind, those are symptoms of a leadership culture that lacks diversity of perspective. Web3 is a highly-innovative space, which is precisely why it needs leadership models that are collaborative and inclusive in nature.
In this piece, I would like to take a closer look at why, exactly, having more women in leading positions is a strategic advantage rather than simply an item box to be checked in the name of abstract “diversity.”
Technology can scale — leadership needs to be able to, as well
Across industries, there’s an ever-growing stockpile of evidence that companies with strong female presence in leadership tend to outperform those without it. To give just one of the more recent examples, Grant Thornton’s survey in 2025 found that greater diversity in the boardroom is likely to lead to better financial performance.
After interviewing over 14,000 organizations across 30+ countries, 17% of respondents felt that their company’s performance improved as a result of gender equality strategies. And on top of that, 20% also added that a greater female presence in senior leadership has made their firms more attractive to clients, partners, and investors.
In other words, having your boardrooms be more gender-balanced isn’t merely an ethical aim, it has a direct correlation to your efficiency as a business. These findings align with what I’ve observed throughout my own career, whether in media, mathematics, investment, or now as CEO of a global exchange.
I’ve often noticed that women tend to lead with a different set of instincts. Our strengths often lie in collaborative decision-making, deliberately building trust — both within our own teams and with outside parties and stakeholders — and thinking in long strategic arcs.
These traits align very well with the needs of decentralized markets, as their real-world adoption continues to grow. After all, Web3 is building what are essentially new financial rails and tools for the broader public to use. Trust, adaptability, inclusion and focus on communities have as much importance here as the quality of your code.
Building inclusive leadership
One of the biggest misconceptions about gender inclusion is that representation can just improve naturally over time. In reality, it very much needs intent and effort.
For example, in my own company, half of the management team is female — a rarity in crypto and in finance generally. This wasn’t really a result of a quota or a diversity campaign, but it did happen because we intentionally designed systems that allow entrance for women. They can grow, receive support and mentorship, and get clear pathways to leadership positions.
We broadened our recruitment channels beyond the traditional tech-finance loop. We built flexible career tracks that recognize different strengths. Most importantly, we gave women equal access to decision-making opportunities from day one.
All of that was a deliberate move. To reiterate, diversity isn’t achieved by itself simply because you announce it. It is achieved by engineering an environment where it can thrive naturally.
What Web3 could become with more women at the helm
Based on both my own personal experiences and the various stories I encountered over the years, I fully believe that Web3’s culture would grow better with more women helping shape it.
For one, it would be more trusted. Even now, despite all the progress it has achieved, this market still has a lingering stigma of being highly speculative. Women leaders are more likely to prioritize sustainability and ethical governance, which are essential qualities if Web3 wishes to achieve mainstream adoption. For a technology that aims to serve millions, if not billions, trust is non-negotiable.
At the same time, becoming more inclusive can have a direct impact on product design. It means that more builders with potentially good ideas gain visibility where previously they may have been overlooked. Introducing more women into leadership roles directly shapes who gets funded, who gets heard, and whose ideas stand a chance at becoming part of the global financial infrastructure in the new age.
Finally, there is a boost to Web3’s overall resilience to think about. Women tend to approach problem-solving with alternative thinking, which means they can point out potential blind spots in existing models and help improve them. And when a crisis situation takes place, whether technical in nature or due to a market shock, teams based on cooperative leadership that women favor have better chances to ride out the wave and recover faster.
All of these are real competitive advantages, and they further prove how greater female inclusion can lead to Web3 being more capable of delivering on its own ambitions.
