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Icofunding was founded two years ago by a team of four people, including Adrián Calvo. They believe in the potential of the blockchain to democratize fundraising and investment and to enhance innovation and entrepreneurship. Although from different backgrounds, they say they share "the same passion for new technologies and blockchain".
How did you get involved with the blockchain for the first time?
I first heard about Bitcoin in 2010 when my brother told me that some people were talking about a new internet currency on IRC. I found it very interesting, since I saw it as video game money, but for the whole internet.
When I started following him and when I was involved in the ecosystem it was in 2013, after trying to explain it to a friend. Most of the information then concerned the way of making money with mining or trading. Very few people were talking about the technology itself. So I decided to focus on this and to try to share my discoveries by myself.
What and who inspires you in space?
I really admire people who are constantly looking for new ways to improve technology through level 1 or 2. At the moment it is one of the most interesting open source projects to be involved with.
What are the opportunities in blockchain in terms of improving people's lives?
Those that are in developing countries are those that can benefit most from the blockchain. When you do not have easy access to financial services or you can not trust your government to manage your national currency, having a way to own your money and be responsible for it is very important.
Is this altruism something that inspires you in your work?
As a developer, it's really inspiring to see how everyone in this community is so open about everything they do. It started not just as an open source project with the launch of Bitcoin, but now most of the companies that create applications are sharing their code and their research.
Even companies like JP Morgan and ING have shared their projects and research with the community.
Why are there so few women in blockchain?
Since the technology is still immature, usability is a pending task. Most of the people involved in the blockchain right now come from a technical background or have a strong interest in new technologies such as early adopters. These are two traits usually associated with men.
What can be done to correct this?
Until there are no barriers and no discrimination towards any group, the community will become more diversified once it moves from the initial phase of adoption. This will happen after improving usability and finding real use cases.
How do you feel about the wild fluctuations of the cryptocurrency market in 2018? The first news seems to suggest that the Bull-ish conditions could come back. Is it premature?
Wild price fluctuations are always a problem as they shift the focus of technology or make it difficult for developers to anticipate revenue and expenses.
Do you think there will ever be mass adoption of technology?
So far, adoption has come mainly from technicians and speculators. If we want to achieve mass adoption, we must first find use cases to which people are interested. To be honest, I do not think technology is ready for mass adoption yet, but scalability and usability are one of the main areas of interest right now, so maybe in a year or two we can start see that growth.
What will 2018 bring to the crypt and the blockchain?
It seems similar to 2015, so constant growth and a lot of work without too much distraction at the protocol level, while the application level could be affected by the lack of funds and users.
We will probably see more people losing their jobs as a result of the trend of recent months, some companies and the team are closing due to lack of funds, and more mergers and acquisitions by larger companies.
The ICO have had their day after all the problems with the projects that have not materialized and people have lost money?
For the last two years I have worked at Icofunding to help other people with their ICOs, so this is something I have seen closely. People thought that investing in ICO meant only making money, but the truth is that you can also lose money.
Most of the projects launched an ICO because of the promise of easy money, and the people who bought the tokens did not do much diligence because it seemed like everything was a good investment. For this reason, the quality of the projects that make an ICO has decreased enormously during 2017.
I do not think we have seen the end of the ICOs, but they will be different in the future. People need more guarantees before buying project tokens from a team they've never heard of before.
What will replace them? How can we restore that trust?
The two trends I am seeing right now are security and governance tokens. With the security tokens you have the same investment products that we already had, but with ease of transferability and greater transparency. Having these resources on a blockchain like Ethereum also allows you to create applications that connect them.
Governance solves the problem of trust, since it reduces the amount of trust that must be put into a team. For over a year we have developed the system of coin governance (CGS), a governance mechanism for ICOs, which allows investors to withdraw the funds allocated in the event of fraud and poor execution.
The CGS holds funds raised in a smart escrow contract, gradually releasing it to the project and providing a mechanism for investors to recover their funds if they do not behave as expected. The solution is fully functional and implemented on Kovan testnet (https://testnet.cgs.vote).
C & # 39; is more regulation needed in space?
It depends if we want more people to join the ecosystem or not. If not, then we're fine. But if we want to create tools for more people and allow older players to be an active part of the ecosystem, then yes. Another question is whether we want that regulation now or whether it is better to wait a little longer until the technology is no longer mature. Regulation is not always bad, it can also be done well.
If so, this does not go against the original vision of Satoshi?
It depends on what is regulated and how it is done. Some tokens are already touching the regulated markets, so if you want to do something with them, you have to follow the old regulation, which adds a lot of friction to a technology like blockchain. A new regulatory framework that takes into account these new technologies could improve usability.
There are also banks and companies that have been testing the technology for some years via PoC, and now I'm not sure I can start it and how to do it.
Obviously you have many different interests, but what do you spend most of your time working on?
I spend most of my time working with security tokens and adapting what we have to new regulations. But what I follow most is the development of Ethereum 2.0 and the adoption of Lightning Network.
Who are the heroes not celebrated in the world of blockchain?
Those who spend hours and hours watching the code looking for errors to correct and the small optimizations probably do not get enough attention. There are many, one of the names that comes to mind right now is Alexey Akhunov. I also like the way the Solidity team works, especially Christian Reitwiessner and Alex Beregszaszi.
Does technology need more time to mature before mass adoption?
Absolutely. During 2017 we have already encountered scalability problems in very few applications with some traction. This is a technological limitation, so it will take time to fix. Maybe a couple of years. At that point, we will probably have better tools for the end user to make the various apps easier and safer.
Was there anything else you wanted to talk about that I did not ask you?
Yes. As mentioned above, this will be a slow year in terms of adoption and there will be many changes in the ecosystem (team reorganizations, company closures, acquisitions, etc.).
Many teams that have entered the ecosystem during the ICO look will likely leave due to financial problems. This is not new, we have already done something similar a few years ago so there is no need to panic.
Every day there are new developments in the basic layers in the right direction. Many people are working hard to solve the problems we have been able to identify during the last intensive testing period in order to adapt to new waves of users.
