Esteban Ordano

Esteban Ordano is a software engineer who co-founded Decentraland alongside Ari Meilich, who moved on to found Big Time Studios in April 2020. Ordano held the position as Decentraland’s chief technology officer, though he recently stepped back to a more advisory role after the platform became a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Meilich also holds an adviser position in the project despite his departure. Meilich and Ordano are Argentinian software developers with varying backgrounds in the crypto space.

Ordano went to school at the Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires engineering school and worked as an engineering intern at Google for a brief period before starting at BitPay. Ordano also helped build a few Bitcoin-related products.  Meilich studied neuroscience and economics at New York University and used Bitcoin to run his outsourcing business in college, which struggled due to the country’s strict laws. This usage exposed him to the ‘freedom’ offered by blockchain technology, which inspired him to join Voltaire, a ‘hacker house’ in Buenos Aires. Meilich and Ordano met at Voltaire before getting together to start Decentraland.