The 2024 Paris Olympics gave us several unforgettable moments… and memes—one no more memorable than Sha’Carri Richardson’s stare-down as she sprinted towards the finish line. In that moment, Sha’Carri secured gold for Team USA in the women’s 4x100m relay, became the literal face of American track and field, and scripted her ultimate redemption arc. Just three years prior, she had been banned from the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for marijuana.

Sha’Carri is an icon—not just because of her blazing speed (her 100m time is 10.7 seconds) but because she brings her full, unapologetic self to the track. Beyond her signature glam and swagger, she’s known for her elaborate 3-inch nails—each set intricately designed and often adorned with gemstones or dangling charms. Her nails, she says, reflect whatever mood she’s feeling on the day.

We may not all be Olympic gold medalists, but thanks to Winny and her brand, Chipped, we can all channel a little Sha’Carri energy of our own. Chipped is press-on nails with a techie twist. Each set comes embedded with an NFC chip, allowing the wearer to effortlessly share their contact details and links with a simple tap on a smartphone. Despite just being over a year old, Chipped has already been endorsed by luxury marketplace Gilt and even the queen of slay herself, Paris Hilton.

Chipped looks and feels like a product for everyone, because it is. Yet, behind its bold, hyper-feminine branding, it is one big Trojan horse into the world of crypto. On the surface, it’s a stylish networking tool that serves as a conversation starter. Under the hood, it is about unlocking the power of onchain identity—paving the way for proof of personhood, proof of attendance, and verifiable digital and in-person interactions in an era where distinguishing between real and fake is harder than ever. While Forbes, Marie Claire, and other mainstream outlets have raved about Chipped, the brand has also become a staple at every major crypto conference over the past year. After all, if you are a blockchain protocol that actually cares about bringing more women into crypto, what better way than to do so through press-on nails? Just ask Aztec, Cyber, and Espresso, who have all commissioned custom designs through Chipped.

But a love for nail art isn’t all that Winny has in common with Sha’Carri Richardson. She too is unapologetically herself and unafraid to show it. 

Unlike most crypto founders who hide behind avatars, Winny is front and center—posting hot takes, videos, and candid reflections on her founder journey. “If you’re passionate about what you’re building, you should have an opinion on it,” she says. “As a founder, if you’re uncomfortable with putting yourself out there, it’s simply an excuse for being scared that your product just isn’t good enough.”

Luckily for Winny, she couldn’t care less what other people think. Growing up with her mother as her swim coach, why would a few harsh words from strangers on the Internet faze her? While that part of her upbringing clearly shaped her, she otherwise considers her childhood in Guernsey—an island in the English Channel with a population of just 60,000—largely normal. If anything, being the middle child between two brothers made her exceptionally comfortable in male-dominated environments—a skill that would later serve her well in crypto.

Yet it was her seamstress grandmother who left perhaps the deepest of impressions. Once she received her first sewing machine at age 9, Winny was determined to work in fashion. “I had a goal of wanting to intern for Jeremy Scott, and I wrote it on my mirror at age 11,” Winny recalls. Less than a decade later, she manifested that exact dream, as she went on to pursue an undergraduate degree in fashion design and ended up landing an internship in New York City with Aeffe, the fashion house behind Moschino, where Scott was creative director.

Ironically, after chasing her childhood dream, reality was far more sombering. “I ended up not liking fashion as an environment at all,” Winny admits. “You had to constantly explain and justify your creative decisions, and that’s not how my brain works… I just design what comes to mind.” Living on $50 a week as a struggling intern in New York, Winny soon found herself drawn to an unlikely new crowd—a bunch of crypto-mining fraternity brothers from Yeshiva University who had discovered a new and novel way to make some extra cash.

When Winny returned to the UK, crypto was all that was on her mind. Despite briefly stepping away from fashion school, she eventually completed her degree, even going as far as to write her undergraduate thesis on how blockchain could revolutionize supply chain tracking in fashion. And while we have since seen luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton embrace blockchain technology, Winny’s thesis at the time in 2019 was nothing more than pure hypotheticals. “My professor called it the dumbest thing he had ever read,” she recalls.

Yet, Winny remained undeterred. “For the first time in my life, I wanted to reinvent myself,” she says. Over the next few years, Winny committed herself to crypto—from taking coding bootcamps to diving headfirst into Crypto Twitter behind a pseudonymous persona (that’s right, Winny is not her real name). She eventually went on to found Shillr, a Web3 marketing agency, alongside four pseudonymous co-founders. “We didn’t know each other’s real names. We never even got on a video call,” Winny laughs. “We just trusted each other, and it could have all gone horribly wrong.”

Despite working on a number of meaningful projects at Shillr, Winny eventually found herself getting pulled to what is now termed “consumer crypto”—crypto applications designed for everyday users rather than traders or developers.. That turning point came when she collaborated with motion graphics artist Jess Wiseman (whose clients include the likes of Doja Cat and Jack Harlow) on an NFT project they showcased at ComplexCon. “People were drawn to our work because they loved how it looked, not because it was an NFT,” Winny explains. “From there, I saw so much opportunity to build products that were fun-first, without the need for anyone to know it had anything to do with crypto.”

That realization—combined with Winny’s growing frustration over the clunky process of exchanging contact details and scanning endless QR codes at crypto conferences—eventually led to Chipped. Then, one day as she was scrolling TikTok, she started to come across videos of women embedding NFC chips into their manicures.

And there it was: Chipped’s lightbulb moment. Why not create high-quality press-ons with built-in NFC chips, so anyone could achieve a flawless manicure from home? Why not build an app to store and track connections effortlessly? And why not put it onchain, making the data 100% verifiable and truly yours?

Today, people in crypto can’t stop talking about Chipped. But with NFC technology already being used for everything from payments to hotel keys, it’s only a matter of time before tap-to-connect nails become as common as Apple Pay. It is also why Winny remains laser-focused on everyday consumers who know nothing about blockchain. “There’s a ceiling when it comes to crypto, especially women in crypto,” Winny says. “I think crypto as an industry tends to overcomplicate things. At the end of the day, people just want to have fun.”

So far, Winny’s thesis is proving right. Chipped’s New York Fashion Week pop-up drew lines around the block. Paris Hilton included it in the PR Kit for her latest music video, Adored. And yet, Winny insists this is just the beginning. “You’ll soon be able to do more than just share links and contact information,” Winny teases, without giving too much away.

Who knows? Perhaps the next time we see Sha’Carri Richardson in the Olympics, she’ll be sporting a set of Chipped nails—taking proof of gold from the podium to the blockchain.

Want to read this in print? Drop me a DM on X or Farcaster for a link to download a print-friendly PDF once you've collected Winny's story onchain.

Interested in more stories like these? Digital Mavericks by Debbie Soon is an accessible guide to crypto and features inspirational stories from 13 onchain trailblazers. Grab your copy today from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.