There is a particular kind of founder who understands that kindness and clarity are not the same thing. Gurhan Kiziloz is one of them. When he took control of BlockDAG, the blockchain he founded to solve what the industry calls the trilemma, security, scalability, decentralisation, he did not arrive with a listening tour. He arrived with a mandate. Perform, or leave.
Within months, BlockDAG's CEO was gone. Staff followed. The cuts were not ceremonial. They were surgical. Kiziloz identified what he believed was holding the company back, and he removed it. No drawn-out performance reviews. No gentle transitions. The people who could not meet his standard were shown the door. The people who could, stayed, and were expected to run faster.
This is not a management style that wins popularity contests. But Kiziloz is not optimising for popularity. He is optimising for outcomes. And in that pursuit, he is not alone.
When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he cut roughly 80 percent of the workforce within months. The decision was met with outrage, predictions of collapse, and widespread condemnation. The platform continued to operate. Musk's view was simple: headcount is not the same as capability. A smaller team, properly motivated and ruthlessly focused, can outperform a bloated organisation that has lost its sense of urgency. Whether one agrees with the method or not, the principle has a logic to it, one that Kiziloz appears to share.
At Tesla, Musk has been known to sleep on factory floors during production crunches, demanding the same intensity from those around him. At SpaceX, engineers who cannot keep pace are cycled out. The pattern is consistent: results first, comfort second. It is a philosophy that produces casualties. It also produces rockets that land themselves and electric vehicles that redefined an industry.
Kiziloz operates from a similar playbook. He has said that not everyone is designed to ride a rocketship. He means it literally. The pace at which he expects BlockDAG to move is not sustainable for everyone. He knows this. He does not apologise for it. His view is that the mission matters more than any individual's tenure, including, presumably, his own comfort.
BlockDAG itself is an ambitious undertaking. Traditional blockchains process transactions in sequence, one block after another, creating bottlenecks that limit speed and drive up costs. Kiziloz's blockchain replaces this linear architecture with a Directed Acyclic Graph, allowing parallel processing and dramatically higher throughput. It combines the speed of newer systems with the decentralisation of Proof-of-Work and the utility of smart contract compatibility. The technical foundation is sound. But technology alone does not ship products. Execution does. And execution, in Kiziloz's world, requires a team that matches his intensity.
He has described his leadership style as love with a little military. The love is real, those who work closely with him speak of loyalty, of a founder who backs his people when they deliver. But the military is real too. Standards are not suggestions. Deadlines are not aspirational. When Kiziloz sets a target, he expects it to be met. When it is not, he wants to know why, and "we tried" is not an acceptable answer.
This mentality is not new to him. At Nexus International, the gaming company he built to $847.9 million in revenue, he operated the same way. Decisions were made in hours, not weeks. The company scaled without outside investors, without boards, without the bureaucratic drag that slows most organisations. Kiziloz held the reins tightly, not because he distrusted his team, but because he believed speed required clarity of command. BlockDAG is being built on the same principle.
The blockchain industry has seen countless founders who could articulate a vision. Fewer have demonstrated the ability to enforce one. Kiziloz belongs to the latter category. He does not wait for consensus. He does not soften hard calls to preserve morale. He makes the decision he believes is right, absorbs the discomfort, and moves forward. It is a style that creates friction. It is also a style that creates results.
There is a cost to this approach. Some will call it harsh. Some will call it unforgiving. Kiziloz would likely call it necessary. The gap between a blockchain that works and a blockchain that dominates is not filled by good intentions. It is filled by relentless execution, by a willingness to make the cuts others avoid, by a founder who treats mediocrity as an existential threat.
Musk has spoken about the loneliness of these decisions, the weight of knowing that every termination affects a life, a family, a career. There is no evidence that Kiziloz finds it easy either. But there is evidence that he finds it unavoidable. When the mission is building something that lasts, the alternative, tolerating underperformance to avoid discomfort, is simply not acceptable.
BlockDAG is still early in its trajectory. The blockchain has milestones ahead, challenges to navigate, and critics to answer. But it has something that many competitors lack: a founder who has already proven he can build at scale, and who is willing to do whatever it takes to do so again.
Gurhan Kiziloz does not build companies for the faint-hearted. He builds them for the people who want to win as badly as he does. Everyone else, he has made clear, is welcome to step aside.
This article was written in cooperation with Blockdag