Rafael Belchior is a researcher at INESC-ID and a Fulbright awardee (MIT Connection Science & MIT Media Lab). He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Instituto Superior Técnico, where he received the Best INESC-ID Ph.D. Student award. He has authored 29+ publications with 2000+ citations (h-index 17), including a cover article in Communications of the ACM and a paper at IEEE S&P. He is a distributed systems specialist focusing on blockchain technologies and AI agent interoperability. His work explores secure communication between heterogeneous blockchain systems and AI agents, enhancing the resilience and privacy of next-generation payment infrastructures and digital asset platforms. He has held engineering roles at Blockdaemon, Quant Overledger, and the Linux Foundation (Hyperledger). Rafael Belchior actively contributes to open-source initiatives, including the Internet Engineering Task Force SATP protocol, and serves as a maintainer of Hyperledger Cacti, the Linux Foundation’s flagship enterprise blockchain interoperability framework. He also volunteers as a mentor in the Hyperledger mentorship program, supporting new contributors to the blockchain ecosystem.