Chainlink Labs hires former StarkWare and Cboe Digital legal chief as Head of Legal

Chainlink Labs just made one of the more interesting legal hires in crypto this year. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, known professionally as KK Kirkbos, has joined the decentralized oracle provider as Head of Legal, bringing a resume that reads like a tour of crypto’s most consequential legal battlegrounds.

A legal career built across CeFi and DeFi

Most recently, she served as General Counsel at StarkWare, the company behind StarkNet’s zero-knowledge rollup technology focused on Ethereum scalability. Before that, she held the role of Chief Legal Officer at Cboe Digital, the crypto arm of the exchange operator that also runs one of the largest options markets in the world.

She also served as General Counsel at Maple Finance, a decentralized lending protocol. In other words, she has sat in the legal hot seat at a Layer 2 scaling company, a regulated exchange, and a DeFi lending platform.

The hire reportedly came about through Ben Sherwin, Chainlink Labs’ General Counsel, who reached out to Bos after reading her academic work.

Why Chainlink needs legal firepower right now

Chainlink has been aggressively pursuing institutional collaborations in onchain finance. The company has worked with major financial institutions on cross-chain interoperability and tokenized asset projects.

The company currently has multiple open positions within its legal and compliance departments, reflecting a deliberate strategy to build out a legal team that can handle the growing demands of operating at the intersection of DeFi protocols and traditional financial regulation.

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