Just saw that Eugene Shen, co-founder and CTO of Plume Network, passed away earlier this week. The RWA public chain community is in mourning—his team shared a statement saying he was talented, curious, and completely devoted to the project. Really sad to see someone so passionate about building on-chain infrastructure go so young.

From what's being shared, Eugene Shen had solid credentials. He studied Engineering Physics at UBC, spent about a year and a half at Robinhood during their crypto expansion phase, then moved to dydx as a senior engineer before joining Plume in January 2024. His direct supervisor at Robinhood, Johann Kerbrat (SVP and GM there), actually gave him really high praise—called him one of the core members of their crypto engineering team, someone who could scale systems under pressure and helped onboard and mentor other engineers.

The Plume team is saying they're committed to continuing Eugene Shen's vision and the innovation he helped build. Projects that worked with them have been leaving condolences too. Definitely one of those moments that hits different when you realize how much impact someone had on the people around them.