Decentralisation – Decrypt Asia

Ep. #48: Growing the Crypto Ecosystem with Ella Zhang (Binance Labs)

September 2, 2019 Tushar Agarwal 00:22:55 Comments Off

We managed to catch the very busy Ella Zhang, Head of Binance Labs, on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore to get all the scoop about Binance Labs, what her team has been up to and what they plan to achieve going forward.

Tune in to hear about:

Ella’s very interesting background and how she came to be a part of Binance Labs
Mandate of Binance Labs
Three key pillars – incubation, fellowship and direct investment
Fellowship – https://medium.com/binance-labs/introducing-the-binance-labs-fellowship-270521d2e99d
How does the incubation program work?
Season 1 of Binance Labs incubation: https://medium.com/binance-labs/season-1-binance-labs-incubation-program-buidlers-season-1-ec34b601ccd
Season 2 of Binance Labs Incubation: https://www.binance.com/en/blog/342988062870470656/Binance-Labs-Reveals-13-Startups-in-its-Incubation-Program
What is the investment focus and how has the team’s investment thesis evolved over a period of time
How does Ella think about overall portfolio construction
Drawing from the lessons of the popping of the 2000 internet bubble and outlook on the industry going forward

Ep. #46: Sharding with Nick White (Co-founder Harmony Protocol)

June 11, 2019 Arifa 00:32:13 Comments Off

Following our discussion with the Zilliqa team, we decided to speak to another Blockchain Protocol that is trying to solve the problem of Scalability through Sharding. Hear Nick White, one of the co-founders of Harmony, tell us about what is unique about their Project as well as the IEO that took place recently on the Binance Launchpad.

Tune in to hear about:

What is sharding?
Difference between Transaction Sharding and State Sharding
How does Harmony achieve State Sharing
How does the overall Harmony Network look like?
How does Staking work in the Harmony ecosystem, what are the rewards and what does it take to be validator?
Governance
What DApps are building on Harmony, what is the process to port over from Ethereum or another Blockchain to Harmony?
Binance token sale and roadmap
Plans for Asia

Ep. #45: Smart contracts on Bitcoin with Diego Zaldívar (Rootstock)

May 22, 2019 Arifa 00:36:32 Comments Off

We speak to Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar, CEO and co-founder of Rootstock or RSK (https://www.rsk.co/) and RIF Labs (https://www.rifos.org/). Rootstock, most famously, is known for putting smart contract functionality on the Bitcoin Blockchain.

Tune in to hear about:

Diego’s interesting background and how he got into crypto
What Rootstock is and the concept of Merge Mining?
How Rootstock helps the Bitcoin miners by generating additional returns for them (related to the concept of Merge Mining)?
Why should DApps build on RSK?
What is RIFOS and how did it come about?
Why is RIFOS important – note, it integrates things like storage, name service, data feeds, etc to make it easier to develop DApps
Rootstock’s plans in Asia
Diego’s mantra for surviving in crypto – The rougher the weather is, the calmer you have to be

Ep. #44: Stablecoin adoption through E-Commerce with Dan Shin (Terra)

May 13, 2019 Arifa 00:32:56 Comments Off

We speak to Dan Shin, Co-founder of Terra (https://terra.money/). Prior to Terra, Dan is most notably known for being the Founder and Chairman of TMON (http://www.tmon.co.kr). TMON or Ticket Monster is a Unicorn out of South Korea which was started in 2010 and had a mobile first approach to e-commerce.

Now Dan is launching a stable coin that aims to drive adoption through his experience and networks in the e-commerce industry.

Tune in to hear about:

Going on the mainnet and what that’s like (funnily, we spoke a couple of hours after Terra hit mainnet)
Different kinds of stable coins why Terra took the algorithmic route
How Terra is trying to drive REAL ADOPTION
How Terra maintains price stability and the role that Luna token plays in that
What is Seigniorage and how Terra is benefiting from it
Go-to market strategy through Terra Alliance comprising Carousell (https://sg.carousell.com/), Qoo1o (https://www.qoo10.sg) etc. + incentives to use Terra
How the user journey for using Terra token would look like on e-commerce platforms
Tech aspects – Building on Tendermint (https://www.tendermint.com/), on boarding validators
Dealing with Regulatory aspects including the failed Basis project (https://www.basis.io/)
Partnerships with Tomochain (https://tomochain.com/), Klaytn (https://www.klaytn.com/) etc

Ep. #30: Cryptocurrency/Blockchain Fund with Czhang Lin (MD JRR Crypto)

November 4, 2018 Tushar Agarwal 00:20:39 Comments Off

In this episode, we speak to Czhang Lin who is the Managing Director at JRR Crypto. JRR Crypto is a Swiss Cryptocurrency/Blockchain Fund with a Chinese team which invests in both Crypto projects and the Crypto Ecosystem. They are the second biggest equity shareholder in the Crypto Exchange with one of the highest trading volumes – Binance!

Czhang is a Taiwanese Canadian who grew up in Poland and took his family business public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. He is an alumnus of INSEAD and Tsinghua University.

Tune in to hear about:

Czhang’s very interesting background and how he got involved in Crypto/Blockchain
JRR Crypto – structure of the fund, investment thesis, areas of focus etc
Crypto ecosystem investments (70% of portfolio): Incubation, Consultancy, Investment banks, Media, Exchanges, Wealth Management, Fund of Funds
Crypto projects reperesent 30% of portfolio
JRR is the 2nd biggest equity shareholder in Binance
Quick overview of the Chinese Crypto/Blockchain ecosystem
Reason for the success of the Chinese Exchanges (OKEx, Huobi etc)
JRR’s acceleration arm: Super advisor (light involvement) and Co-founder (heavy involvement)
JRR’s roadmap
Views on a dual token system (utility + security tokens)

Ep. #28: Hedera Hashgraph, a novel Consensus mechanism with Edgar Seah (APAC Head Hedera)

October 21, 2018 Tushar Agarwal 00:37:58 Comments Off

The Hedera Hashgraph platform provides a new form of distributed consensus – it is a fast, secure, fair ‘Blockchain’ with a novel Governance mechanism. In this episode, we speak to the APAC Head of Hedera, Edgar Seah. Edgar has a very eclectic background with stints in Investment Banking, NGOs and corporates aroud the globe. Tune in to hear about:

Edgar’s background and how ended up as Hedera Hashgraph’s Asia’s head
History of Hashgraph (consensus mechanism)
Hashgraph is leveraged in a private manner by a company called Swirlds and in a public manner by Hedera
Background on Swirlds and Enterprise clients on Swirlds (e.g. Credit Union Consortium)
Motivation behind creating a public ledger in addition to the private ledger
Properties of Hashgraph – Speed, Security (aBFT – Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance), Fairness
Governance and a deep dive into how Hedera is trying to solve this problem – Council Governance (off-chain governance) and Consensus Model (on-chain governance)
Discussion and views on the claim that Hedera is a private Blockchain and not a public one
Regulatory compliance and the path Hedera is taking to achieve mainstream adoption
Hedera Hashgraph’s roadmap and the 20 or so projects building on top of it etc
Specific areas of focus in Asia
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hashgraph
Website: https://www.hedera.com/
Hedera 18 Hackathon website: https://www.hedera18.com/

Ep. #27: Email on Blockchain with George Hartley (Co-founder Sendy)

October 12, 2018 Tushar Agarwal 00:25:06 Comments Off

Our guest for this episode is George Hartley, co-founder of Sendy. Sendy is aiming to bring about improvements to emails by rewarding the attention of email receivers through cryptocurrencies. The attention is rewarded in Sendy tokens which can be purchased by advertisers.

George comes from a mixture of marketing and product background having worked with several startups and marketing agencies.

Tune in to hear about:

George’s background and journey in the blockchain/crypto space
Views on email marketing
What Sendy is about (https://sendy.network/)
Problems that exist in email marketing today and how Sendy is trying to address those
Stakeholders in the Sendy ecosystem and role of the token
How the current business (https://www.smartrmail.com/) is going to be leveraged/affected?
Sendy’s roadmap

Ep. #26: Infinite cash, monetary policies and synchronicity with Andrew Pantyukhin Pt. 2/2 (CEO Tangem)

September 30, 2018 Tushar Agarwal 00:39:41 Comments Off

In the second part of the interview with Andrew Pantyukhin, we speak about certain topics that occupy a great deal of his mindshare beyond the company that he is trying to build (Tangem – https://tangem.com/)

Tune in to hear about:

Concept of money as a means of communication
Making cryptocurrencies ubiquitous – infinite cash for everyone (along the lines of Universal Basic Income)
Optimistic and pessimistic views how the world looks like in a few years
Subsistence economies and monetary policies
Synchronicity in the world
Why speculation in crypto could be a good thing?

Ep. #25: Banknotes for Cryptoassets with Andrew Pantyukhin Pt. 1/2 (CEO Tangem)

September 23, 2018 Tushar Agarwal 00:44:24 Comments Off

In this episode, we speak to Andrew Pantyukhin, the CEO of Tangem. Tangem is aiming to make cryptocurrencies more accessible to everyday individuals by allowing people to store them in smart and secure banknotes. These banknotes can then be used to purchase items or make transactions just like how we use banknotes today.

Andrew has held several roles in various tech businesses prior to founding Tangem. He is a product guy with background in technology and Venture Capital.

Tune in to hear about:

Andrew’s introduction, background and about early days of crypto
Projects Andrew was excited about in the relatively early days of crypto (21/earn.com – https://earn.com/ and ZCash – https://z.cash/)
What Tangem does
How does on acquire a Tangem Note and how to use it?
What does the customer journey look like for using a Tangem Note
Details about the Tangem note – Is the card reusable? How to top up the card? How much does Tangem Note cost to the distributor and customer?
Tangem’s business model
Tangem’s roadmap and ambitions
Website: https://tangem.com/

Ep. #24: Decentralized CryptoBanking with Alex Wearn (CEO Aurora/IDEX)

September 11, 2018 Tushar Agarwal 00:52:34 Comments Off

Aurora is a decentralized financial platform with IDEX, a hybrid decentralized exchange, as its first product. Subsequent products will include margin lending on the hybrid exchange and a stablecoin to support the Cryptocurrency bank (called Decentralized Capital)

Our guest for this episode is Alex Wearn, CEO of Aurora DAO. He has previously worked with IBM and Adobe and is a graduate of Kellogg School of Management.

Tune in to hear about:

Alex’s background, introduction and journey in crypto
What is Aurora? (Decentralised financial institution)
Problems with the current financial system that Aurora is trying to address
Concept of free banking
Bundling of stable coins: https://www.tokensets.com/
1st product of Aurora ecosystem – IDEX which is a hybrid centralised/decentralised exchange
Decentralised aspect – custody and settlement
Centralised aspect – dispatch of trades to the blockchain
Liquidity providers / market makers on IDEX?
Key challenges during setting up IDEX and how they were overcome – acquisition of users, operating on Ethereum network
Fee structure on IDEX
ETH gas prices – https://ethgasstation.info/
Understanding Mempool (pending transactions) – https://99bitcoins.com/what-is-bitcoin-mempool/
Margin lending on IDEX
2nd product of Aurora ecosystem – Cryptocurrency bank (Decentralised Capital)
Stablecoin (Boreals) and how it’ll work
AURA token – staking token of IDEX network
IDXM token – membership token (3 years of free trades) to bring forth revenues for the company
Daily trading volume – highest was about 20-25m, average is 3-7m
Aurora’s roadmap
Views on the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency ecosystem in general
Website: https://auroradao.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Aurora_Dao
Discord: http://bit.ly/AuroraDiscord