Leadership styles in the cryptocurrency market have long been a subject of contention among industry watchers. While much of the digital currency and blockchain ethos rests on the side of libertarianism, a political philosophy that seeks to maximize political autonomy and freedom by emphasizing free association, technical directions and directions differ enormously.
Ajit Tripathi is one of these observers. A graduate of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Tripathi went on to work for Goldman Sachs in Tokyo and Barclays and PwC in London before turning to the blockchain space in search of a new challenge. He worked as a partner as Ethereum ConsenSys development lab for its FinTech division and worked in Binance’s Banking and Payments division until September.
In an interview with the crypto edutainment platform Kryptonites guest Alex Fazel This week, Tripathi talked about ongoing developments in the DeFi space, the battle of tier 2 technologies Ethereum, Cardano, and Polkadot, and how leadership styles in various projects can actually influence the kind of talent they end up attracting.
It’s one you don’t want to miss.
How Joe Lubin’s ConsenSys Pioneered Ethereum
Tripathi kicked off the show with insights into how Joseph Lubin, the founder of ConsenSys, helped build a brand of engineers, developers, and designers to drive adoption and application building on Ethereum.
“He had this consistent message about this,” Tripathi recalled, “You know, make the world a better place.” He further noted:
“Everyone was suspicious of this completely new technology and this Bitcoin community was really excited to stop the banks and the revolution. [But] Joe was coming in with messages that were about, you know, making the world a better place. “
The narrative that Lubin pushed during Ethereum is the one that continues to this day. Bitcoin advocates largely push the asset as currency and digital gold, while the Ethereum community focuses more on developing use cases and applications built on the technology. (Author’s Note: This doesn’t mean that Bitcoin developers don’t work on the technology or that Ethereum developers don’t consider ETH as money.)
Sharing Tripathi’s sentiment, Fazel mentioned how Ethereum development activity is evident on GitHub, compared to other blockchains and so-called Ethereum “killers”. You can see Ethereum’s business and it just has more people involved thanks to the great leadership direct to ship all of them, ”Fazel noted.
Critics of ETH 2.0 … but the killers have “nothing to offer”
The Cryptonites host then spoke of criticism and skepticism about Ehereum’s upcoming 2.0 update, which sees the network shifting from a proof of work mechanism to a proof of stake consensus mechanism, a move that would speed up the Ethereum network.
But other blockchains like Cardano are catching up, with lower (read: negligible) fees and fast transactions. Fazel said about it: “A lot of people are saying that ETH 2.0 is going to be a very, very difficult and very worried transition, especially geeks are saying it’s not feasible.”
Tripathi was quick to suggest that “no one has really offered anything. He has declared:
“There have been a lot of Ethereum killers, right? Charles (founder of Cardano) is an incredibly smart guy. Tezos founders who are really smart people, but none have the mix. “
“No one has really given anything that is compelling enough and different enough. It has to have more of what Ethereum has to offer, “he added.
Polkadot is still “learning”, but a mistake
Polka dots a relatively new competitor to Ethereum, which allows cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data or asset, not just tokens. Its DOT tokens launched this year and quickly expanded into the top 10 cryptocurrencies, with a current market cap of $ 3 billion at the time of writing.
Tripathi, however, says Polkadot is learning as he goes. “What Polkadot is doing well is that they are learning. You will say, if you look at some of the other competitors, there are a lot of good technologies in this space, but they haven’t spent enough time learning, “he said.
Tripathi added:
“They got stuck on one thing. Or they promised too much they promised the perfect solution. And like Dfinity, I mean, a great team, really, really smart tech people, but they promised Nirvana, you shouldn’t be promising Nirvana as a startup because you don’t know what it’s like. “
As Fazel said for the other The Ethereum killers. “That way you can have the fastest and most scalable blockchain, the highest throughput in the whole ecosystem. But if nobody uses it, then it’s useless, right?” He said.
(Want to know the rest of what Fazel and Tripathi discussed? Stream and watch the full 35-minute episode right below!)
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