Gary Wachtel – Offchain Labs

Offchain Labs is a Princeton-founded, venture-backed technology company that has spent the past eight years leading blockchain innovation. Best known for developing Arbitrum, one of the most widely adopted Ethereum scaling solutions, Offchain Labs has expanded its product suite to include tools like Stylus, Orbit, and Arbitrum Nitro. In October 2022, the company acquired Prysm (then Prysmatic Labs), the leading consensus client for Ethereum, cementing its place at the heart of blockchain infrastructure and its commitment to growing the Web3 ecosystem.

Gary Wachtel | Offchain Labs | General Counsel

Leading the legal team at this rapidly evolving company is Gary Wachtel, Offchain Labs’ General Counsel. Since joining in August 2023, Wachtel has built the legal function from scratch, guiding the company through complex regulatory terrain, product development questions, and strategic decision-making. With a rich finance, payments, and crypto background, Wachtel brings a grounded, pragmatic perspective to one of tech’s most unpredictable frontiers.

Wachtel didn’t always plan to be a lawyer. After earning his philosophy degree from Muhlenberg College, he worked in several sales roles, then transitioned to a dot-com company during the internet boom of the late ’90s. Anticipating the market’s volatility, he enrolled in night classes at the University of Illinois, Chicago School of Law.

“I needed a hedge,” he recalls. “I wanted to be around smart people solving hard problems.”

His instincts proved prescient: the dot-com bubble burst, and Wachtel launched a legal career at Mayer Brown in Chicago, training in securitization transactions at the firm that effectively invented it.

He practiced through the 2008 financial crisis, a period that tested even the most seasoned lawyers.

“We were at the epicenter of the collapse,” he says, referring to his firm’s reputation for complex financial structuring.

But Wachtel saw opportunity where others saw fallout. He transitioned in-house to Discover Financial Services in 2011, becoming the day-to-day general counsel of a business unit and diving deep into the payments world.

Later, at Circle, a crypto-native financial services company, he expanded his experience with blockchain and digital assets. That role served as a springboard to Offchain Labs, where he began as General Counsel in August 2023.

Starting from zero

When Wachtel joined Offchain Labs, he was a department of one.

“I didn’t walk in with an extremely detailed roadmap,” he admits. “I observed first—how things worked, what types of legal needs existed, how they came up, and how much volume there was in different business areas.”

With help from one of his mentors, he created a 120-day plan to evaluate the company’s maturity level and start to build the legal framework accordingly. The early days were long—steep learning curves and an overwhelming volume of legal needs.

“As with any early-stage company, there were gaps in policies, procedures, and delivery models. Things sometimes took too long and cost too much.”

To address this, Wachtel focused on streamlining. He developed templates, instituted internal policies, and prioritized relationships.

“Without trust and alignment with the business, no legal advice would stick,” he says. “So, I made relationship-building a key part of my job from day one.”

After about 10 months, Wachtel made his first legal hire—a generalist who could mirror his skills and divide the workload. More recently, he added a regulatory and product-focused attorney to support Offchain Labs’ expanding suite of innovations.

“You can’t build a department just by filling seats,” he explains. “I’ve had bad colleagues and great ones—I don’t want to waste time with the former.”

Each hire was carefully vetted, not only for skill but for fit. Candidates met with business partners they’d work with.

“If you don’t like the people you work with daily, what are you doing?” he asks.

Legal leadership in a decentralized world

Wachtel’s role spans much more than contracts and compliance. At Offchain Labs, he is involved in everything from HR and partnerships to product development and operations. He works directly with the CEO and product leads, advising on pivots, partnerships, and go-to-market strategies.

“I’m still a lawyer first,” he says, “but I’m also a business partner. I review contracts, sit in product meetings, and work together with engineering and finance.”

That collaboration has been particularly important in launching Stylus, one of Offchain Labs’ flagship tools, which Wachtel is excited about.

“Stylus lets developers write Ethereum-based applications in languages they already know,” he explains. “Instead of forcing them to learn Solidity, we’re lowering the barrier to entry and enabling more developers to build on Web3.” Wachtel adds, “There are thousands of seasoned developers out there who could exponentially scale Web3 but for their lack of Solidity knowledge – we need to meet them where they are.”

In his view, that’s a real key to scaling the ecosystem, not just onboarding users, but empowering creators.

He also helped stand up Tandem Studios, Offchain Labs’ early-stage investment arm that writes checks to promising startups and helps them build.

We’ve already announced a few deals, and it’s exciting to collaborate with new companies on both legal structuring and tech alignment.”

Mentorship & transparency

While much of Wachtel’s day is spent navigating thorny legal issues in crypto, he’s equally committed to growing his team, as needed, and paying forward the mentorship he received earlier in his career.

“I’ve had amazing mentors,” he says. “I want to build that same environment for my team. It’s not always the fastest way to get things done, but longer term, it’s the most sustainable.”

He describes his management style as egalitarian and transparent.

“I’m not too important to redline an NDA. I don’t delegate for the sake of delegating. We roll up our sleeves together to ensure that the team provides the most efficient support to our business partners so that they can accomplish their goals.”

Wachtel’s long-term aspirations include serving on boards—he previously spent seven years with Legal Aid Chicago—and possibly exploring adjunct teaching. But for now, he focuses on cementing Offchain Labs’ legal function as the company scales.

“I’ve worked at big institutions and scrappy startups,” he says. “At Offchain Labs, I work with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I wake up excited knowing I’ll be part of solving the hardest problems in one of the most dynamic industries.”

In just under two years, Wachtel has built more than a legal team—he’s built a culture of trust, mentorship, and adaptability inside one of blockchain’s most crucial infrastructure companies. As Offchain Labs pushes forward with innovations like Stylus and Tandem Studios, Wachtel’s pragmatic, people-first approach to legal leadership may be just what’s needed to help Web3 scale to its next phase.