Zora Co-Founder Dee Goens Replaces Jacob Horne as CEO

Dee Goens has taken over as chief executive of Zora, replacing co-founder Jacob Horne, who is leaving the company after more than six years, Goens said in a post on Wednesday.

Goens, also a co-founder, inherits a company that has cut itself to fewer than 10 people and rebuilt its product around trading pairs on other networks rather than the Creator Coins it built on Base last year.

Fees on Zora’s Base deployment, the only one DefiLlama tracks, totaled $14,768 in August, against $2.51 million in August 2025 — a 99.4% decline, according to DefiLlama. Over the past 30 days the deployment took $14,971 in fees, of which $6,165 went to Zora itself, and its pools traded $551,284.

“After more than six incredible years as the company’s co-founder and CEO, Jacob is transitioning out of Zora and onto his next chapter,” Goens wrote. “I will be stepping into the CEO role as we continue building and stewarding Zora.”

Fewer Than 10 People

Goens said Zora reduced headcount earlier this year and is “now smaller than we were at the start of the year, less than 10 people.” He did not give a prior figure or say how many people left.

“As a result, we’ve gotten more AI native with agents running throughout Slack, writing code, and resolving incidents,” he wrote.

Pairs, Not Creator Coins

Zora opened Custom Pairs on Aug. 20, letting users choose what asset a new token is paired against instead of pairing it to $ZORA or a Creator Coin, according to Zora. The feature is live on Base, Robinhood Chain and Solana, and carries a 1% trading fee of which 0.70% goes to the token’s creator, per Zora’s documentation.

Goens said more than 4,000 pairs have been created since launch. Zora put the figure at more than 2,000 on Aug. 28.

Zora also began issuing on Robinhood Chain and Solana over the summer, added crosschain trading across those two and BNB Chain, opened trading through its agent in direct messages, and dropped the charges it had applied to DMs and comments, Goens said. The company launched attention markets on Solana in February.

Buybacks Top Of Mind

Goens listed five priorities, starting with “aligning our business with $ZORA token holders by implementing buybacks / rewards.” He gave no size, funding source, timetable or mechanism.

The rest were rebuilding community trust “by over communicating our progress,” onboarding new users with an emphasis on the mobile app, restarting distribution of community incentives, and acting on feedback.

“There’s a ton of work for us to get through as we eye the end of the year,” he wrote.

$ZORA 94% Below Record

$ZORA traded at $0.00814 at 19:52 UTC on Wednesday, down 8.5% over 24 hours, up 11.5% over seven days and up 55% over 30 days, for a market capitalization of $36.3 million and a fully diluted value of $81.3 million, according to CoinGecko. The token is 94.4% below the $0.1456 it reached on Aug. 11, 2025.

The token was at $0.00831 in the five minutes before Goens’ post went up at 18:02 UTC, putting the move since at roughly 2%. It has turned over $21.4 million in the past day.

ETH traded at $2,466.98, down 0.4% over 24 hours.

Horne’s Next Chapter

Horne describes himself on his personal site as “cofounder of Zora, previously at Coinbase.” He and Goens have worked together for more than six years, both said. Horne ran Zora through an NFT marketplace, an Ethereum Layer 2, and the June 2025 shift to Creator Coins, which made every Zora profile a tradable token. The Defiant reported in December that $ZORA slipped to $0.038 as the model’s highest-profile launch, the creator coin of journalist Nick Shirley, fell 79% from its record within 48 hours. The token has lost a further 79% since.

“I’ll be sharing more on what I’m spending my time on next in the near future,” Horne wrote. “In the meantime I’m eternally grateful for the community, experiments, lessons and crazy journey over the past few years.”

Goens said Horne is “not going too far” from crypto.