Jutta Steiner is a Berlin- and London-based blockchain entrepreneur who became one of the most influential technical founders in the Ethereum ecosystem. She studied at the University of Heidelberg and University of Cambridge before entering the software industry. Her public profile is defined primarily by her co-founding role at Parity Technologies and her earlier work at the Ethereum Foundation, though she has since moved into early-stage angel investing.
Steiner served as Chief of Security at the Ethereum Foundation during Ethereum's launch period (2014–2015), overseeing the security auditing process for the genesis release. In 2015 she co-founded Parity Technologies (initially called Ethcore) alongside Gavin Wood. The company built the Parity Ethereum client – for a period the second most-used Ethereum node implementation – and later developed the Substrate framework and contributed foundational infrastructure to the Polkadot network. Under her leadership as CEO, Parity grew into one of Europe's most technically respected blockchain engineering firms. She stepped down as CEO in 2019; Gavin Wood assumed sole leadership thereafter.
Parity's record includes notable setbacks. In July 2017, a flaw in Parity's multi-signature wallet contract was exploited, resulting in the theft of approximately 153,000 ETH. Four months later, a separate bug in a Parity wallet library contract caused roughly 513,000 ETH – then worth around $150 million – to be permanently frozen. These incidents drew significant industry scrutiny and shaped broader discussions about smart contract auditing standards. Steiner addressed both publicly and continued building the company through the aftermath.
Notable investments
Since leaving Parity's executive role, Steiner has acted as an angel investor in early-stage Web3 projects, with a reported portfolio of approximately eight companies. Specific deal names and terms are not consistently disclosed in public sources. Public information about individual portfolio companies and investment sizes is limited. Her known areas of interest align with infrastructure, developer tooling, and privacy-preserving technology – consistent with her technical background.
Team
Steiner operates as a solo angel. She is not publicly affiliated with a named fund or investment vehicle. Her co-founder at Parity Technologies, Gavin Wood (creator of Solidity and co-author of the Ethereum Yellow Paper), continues to lead Parity and the Web3 Foundation separately. Steiner and Wood co-founded the Web3 Foundation in 2017, which funds Polkadot ecosystem research and development, though Steiner's ongoing role there post-2019 is not clearly documented.
Recent activity
Public information about Steiner's investment activity in 2024–2026 is limited. She has appeared at blockchain conferences and maintained a presence in European Web3 circles, but has not made widely reported new investments or public announcements during this period. She is occasionally cited in discussions about Ethereum's early history and the evolution of the Polkadot ecosystem.
Steiner's long-term significance lies less in her angel portfolio – which remains largely undisclosed – and more in her foundational contributions to Ethereum's security architecture and the tooling that underpins multiple major Layer 1 networks. For founders seeking backing, her technical depth in consensus protocols, smart contract security, and developer infrastructure represents the clearest signal of where her investment attention is likely to concentrate.