AtoBiography

My story begins and ends with capitalism.

What happens when a man grows discontent with the financial system he was born into and learns to apply engineering principles to finance, law, and economics? What happens when a man falls in love with the mathematics behind benign cryptography and machine learning algorithms? What happens when a man turns his technical expertise and endeavors to art? Well, you get Lancenonce :)

Roots and Erasure

To understand my story you have to understand the trans-Atlantic slave trade and how the history of my family was erased and started again. We can only record back to freedom - the 1840s. My great-great-great grandfather John Renfro escaped slavery in Missouri to Illinois. Our family ultimately settled in a town called Metropolis and was there until we moved to Chicago in the early 21st century.

My family history is vague because the order of the day as a black person in the United States is survival. Only recently have we started to deeply record our history. This is because it was illegal for black people to read or write until the end of slavery, and Jim Crow up until the 1960s made education a great luxury for most black people in the United States.

Foundation and Fire

Growing up, my father made it a priority to teach my siblings and me all the context of what has happened in the world. Some of my earliest memories are at the church where he was a pastor, showing us books of African and African American history. We'd spend hours in the church's library reading. We were taught to never hold hatred and to treat people with kindness regardless. It took me years to master this.

My mother is a doctor and a healer. She always tolerated me. My father wanted to shape me into a superhuman. But my mother loved me for who I was and seemed to just want to nurture me. When I ruptured my hamstring at a track meet in high school, my mother saw my devastation and in 2016 took me to my first yoga class. This evolved from physical therapy to a lifestyle - even my regular breathing has evolved from my practice.

The Quest for Power

I grew up with a deep sense of misplacement. I never felt like I belonged in the United States. Our family tree is full of question marks - it starts with slavery records in Kentucky, just with some names. We were moved from Virginia to Kentucky to Missouri, with members more than likely sold off across the United States. My existence is a miracle, and I don't take it for granted.

Before high school, I went through a Rite of Passage and became a man. The only thing on my mind was power. I read and wrote voraciously. The anger I grew up with was my power source. Every time I saw success built on the backs of my ancestors, I would grow angry - but I learned to turn that into fuel.

Technology and Transcendence

My father sparked my curiosity about technology and placed me in robotics club when I started high school. I made a vow with my childhood friend Blake to be the next Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. When Blake died in 2014, I publicly declared at his funeral that I'd carry on our promise for both of us, no matter what.

North Carolina A&T: The Foundation

At North Carolina A&T, I studied computer engineering and threw myself into research with relentless focus. In 2018, I began undergraduate research in natural language processing, working with LSTM networks - this was before GPT models existed, when the field was still exploring the depths of what neural networks could achieve. I was fascinated by how machines could begin to understand human language, spending countless hours training models and pushing the boundaries of what these early architectures could accomplish.

My curiosity led me deeper into the mathematical foundations of computing. I built projects using BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) and LAPACK (Linear Algebra Package), learning to optimize matrix operations and understand the low-level computational primitives that power machine learning. This wasn't just academic exercise - I was building intuition for how computation really works, from silicon to algorithms.

The turning point came in 2020 during my co-op at Apple as a software engineer. While working on production iOS systems, I spent my evenings reading the Bitcoin whitepaper and Ethereum yellow paper. The elegance of cryptographic consensus, the mathematical beauty of proof-of-work, the vision of programmable money - THIS was the technology I needed to find. I realized that blockchain wasn't just another database; it was a new foundation for organizing human coordination and value exchange.

From that moment, I dedicated myself completely to blockchain and cryptography. I took graduate courses in cryptography, diving deep into elliptic curves, zero-knowledge proofs, and the mathematical structures that make secure computation possible. I mastered Solidity, understanding not just how to write smart contracts but how the Ethereum Virtual Machine executes them. I learned Rust, appreciating its memory safety guarantees and performance characteristics that make it perfect for blockchain infrastructure.

DWeb3: Building in the Wild

After graduating in 2022, I started my freelancing LLC called DWeb3 (Davis Web3) and dove headfirst into the Web3 space. I wasn't content to just learn about blockchain - I needed to build on it, to understand its real-world constraints and possibilities. Through DWeb3, I worked on smart contract development, protocol design, and helped teams navigate the complex landscape of decentralized systems.

My freelancing work took me to the cutting edge of Web3 innovation. At Metagov, I built SAFE for DAOs - a Simple Agreement for Future Equity implemented in Solidity that enabled decentralized organizations to formalize investment structures on-chain. This project taught me how traditional financial instruments could be reimagined for the decentralized world.

With EZKL, I worked on one of the first GPT-level zero-knowledge machine learning models, pushing the boundaries of what was possible when privacy-preserving computation met artificial intelligence. I also wrote the company's first comprehensive documentation, translating complex cryptographic concepts into accessible technical guidance for developers entering the zkML space.

At Giza, I designed and implemented the Giza Agent - an AI agent equipped with an ERC4337 wallet that could autonomously interact with blockchain protocols. This project synthesized my background in machine learning with my blockchain expertise, creating intelligent systems that could navigate the decentralized web independently.

But through all this work, I discovered something fundamental about myself: freelancing never fit me. I'm not a mercenary - I'm a missionary. While I could execute on other people's visions effectively, my heart yearned to build something that aligned with my deeper purpose of democratizing access to financial opportunity and building infrastructure for the next generation.

It was during my work in Nigeria that I first encountered the broken reality of international payment rails. Watching talented developers struggle to receive payments for their work, seeing how traditional banking systems failed entire populations, I realized that the infrastructure we take for granted simply doesn't exist for most of the world. This wasn't a technical problem, it was a systemic one.

Sereel: From Payments to Capital Markets

This realization led to the birth of Sereel. Initially, we focused on payment infrastructure, trying to solve the immediate problem of moving money across borders efficiently. But working with my cofounder, we began to see a larger opportunity: if blockchain could fix payments, what about capital markets themselves?

We realized that the same technologies enabling programmable money could enable programmable capital markets. Why should access to investment opportunities, liquidity, and financial instruments be limited by geography or legacy infrastructure? We evolved Sereel into what it is today: a protocol for tokenized assets that enables anyone, anywhere, to participate in global capital markets while maintaining local regulatory compliance.

The journey from studying LSTMs in a university lab to building global financial infrastructure on blockchain represents more than just career progression - it's the synthesis of technical mastery with social purpose. Every algorithm I studied, every line of code I wrote, every mathematical concept I internalized was preparation for this moment: using technology to democratize access to financial opportunity.

The Awakening

In my final semester, I traveled to Africa for the first time. I only spent 10 days in Ghana, but it changed my life. Especially the trip to the slave dungeon - this was when I became Ato. In that dungeon, a spirit came about me. It was a rage so thick you could feel it. I cried for 30 minutes - not a whimper, but a release of hundreds of years of pain.

That night I meditated for hours on the beach. I saw a glimpse of what my work would do for Africa and all people affected by racism and slavery. I realized that fighting back looks different today - it looks like building infrastructure for future generations.

The Evolution

After traveling through blockchain conferences, working with various teams, and experiencing Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, I learned the most important lesson from the book "Menchu Hotep and the spirit of the Medjay": only the weak fight with anger in their heart. The strong fight with love in their heart.

I meditated for 10 minutes at the top of Kilimanjaro on August 12, 2024. I spoke the words "May I fight with love in my heart." Along with my new family in West Africa, this completed my evolution. I took those 400 years of torture, condensed them to a black ball, and absorbed and dissolved it in my heart. This was when I found my true power.

Building the Future

Today, I'm building Sereel: a protocol for tokenized assets with a focus on emerging markets. We tokenize local stablecoins AND local assets, create DeFi markets around them, then fine-tune the DeFi model for liquidity efficiency. It's inspired by the Adinkra symbol Nsere Wa. The symbol features four cowry shells in a cross, symbolizing wealth and prosperity. The name of the company was initially Seree, but we changed it to Sereel to represent the "surreal" experience of the ultimate capital systems.

The name comes from my belief in moving to a new chapter of capitalism - one that's sustainable and accessible to all. Where it doesn't incentivize evil practices like slavery, but incentivizes collaboration, creativity, and help. As Charlie Munger said: "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."

This is my story - from financial discontent to engineering principles to artistic expression. From fighting with anger to fighting with love. From seeking individual power to building collective prosperity.

Thank you for reading my story.