Mert is Mert Mumtaz, who co-founded Helius in June 2022 alongside Liam Vovk and Nick Pennie, and serves as its CEO. Helius is Solana's leading RPC, API and developer infrastructure provider. Mert's Twitter Score is 929 out of 1000 (an Excellent rating) as of August 2026, placing him at rank #31 (top 0.1%) out of 483,944 accounts tracked.
Mert previously worked at Coinbase as a software engineer and is widely known as an active angel investor in crypto. His tracked investments include PRAXIS, Berachain Foundation, Squads, Switchboard, Monad, Eclipse, Elmnts and Infinex.
Mert has led Helius through several funding rounds and product expansions. Helius raised a $9.5M Series A led by Foundation Capital in February 2024, with Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Chapter One, Propel, Balaji Srinivasan, Kyle Samani, and Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal among the participants. In September 2024, Helius raised a $21.75M Series B led by Haun Ventures and Founders Fund, with Foundation Capital, Chapter One, 6th Man Ventures, and Spearhead also participating. Helius operates the largest Solana validator by active stake at 0% fees and launched the hSOL liquid staking token in 2024. ZK Compression, co-developed by Helius and Light Protocol, reduces the cost of onchain state on Solana by up to 1000x and launched in 2024. In June 2026, Helius acquired Light Protocol to build a programmable onchain ZK privacy layer for Solana, enabling private payments and confidential DeFi.
Who follows Mert on X?
Mert has 1,985,025 followers as of August 2026 on X and has made 76,406 posts since 2020. The accounts that follow Mert include 3,431 founders, 807 angel investors, 1,950 influencers and 44 VCs, among them Toly, Marc Andreessen, Solana, ZachXBT, Cobie and Chris Dixon. Mert has been mentioned by 1,537 accounts a total of 3,417 times.