Only when people respect each other, dream teams are formed

What do you want to be when you grow up?

The person my wife loves to spend time with the most. The person my son and two daughters can rely upon when having setbacks. The person my grandchildren want to visit as often as possible.

But in the time while I’m growing up, I want to build the tools and infrastructure for the value of real-estate assets to migrate on-chain. Real-estate investments had a great impact on my life, and I believe everyone should have the opportunity, and Defi is the key.

Tell me something that’s true, that almost nobody agrees with you?

That’s a hard one. Perhaps I should challenge others to share their opinion of my thoughts more often! In terms of Ethereum transaction costs, some disagree with me about the impact PoS will have on the Ethereum economy, more precisely, I believe it to be true, that gas costs will drastically decrease with Ethereum 2.0 for the simple fact that validators’ incentive will be to add value to their staked ETH and not to charge as much as possible for each transaction like miners do. Miners pay electricity bills and hardware, validators earn when the value of their staked asset rises.

Please tell us more about your background, how you got interested in web3 and what you are currently working on?

I could say my passion is in connecting the dots. At the same time, business creation and product development are something that I felt as my calling throughout my 20s. As a student of architectural engineering, I had always been interested in learning how complex systems work, so when I learned about Ethereum in 2016, I immediately immersed myself in the mechanics of blockchain and smart contracts.

Back then, we were not yet sure where this technology might go, so we formed a research group together with Viktor Brajak and Peter Merc, with whom we later on officially founded Blocksquare to bring real estate tokenization infrastructure to any business, from startups to corporations around the globe. Today, the project I’m most excited about is oceanpoint.fi.

What problem does your project solve? What is your vision?

Today, people in real estate see the huge opportunity of real-estate tokenization. Unfortunately real-estate tokenization requires quite a wide range of skills, from tech to legal. Our mission is to simplify the process, so any company can offer tokenization-as-a-service to property owners and connect investors to deals they list and offer. ‍

With Blocksquare operating a real-estate investment marketplace becomes as easy as running your online shop. With oceanpoint.fi we are adding a new layer to our infrastructure, one that will enable tokenized real estate to talk with other defi protocols, while generating outsized returns to stakeholders.

What soft & hard skills have been most helpful in helping you succeed in blockchain/web3/DeFi?

Hard skills are very important. I mean, without them there is no product implementation and whatever you’re building will always stay only on paper. However, I believe soft skills make or break a team.

The crypto, blockchain and defi space is filled with inspiring, bright minds developing amazing projects. A lot of opportunities for talented people with essential hard skills to work on something fresh. So what makes some teams stick together and move forward, when most others would fall apart and stop? I believe in fostering relationships with the people I work with based on open communication, comradeship and a hands-on attitude that is grounds for mutual respect. Only when people respect each other, dream teams are formed.

What’s the best thing about your job? The most challenging?

Running a startup is definitely no easy job. There are always so much you need to do without enough resources. No funding round size can change this. When you are doing something novel, it’s the CEO’s job to keep the whole team aligned on the vision. In a startup, where uncertainty is the only constant, people can become discouraged. Everyone needs to believe that we can move past the challenges we face. Belief is what keeps people motivated, and the most straightforward way for someone to believe is to see. As CEO of Blocksquare, one of my jobs is to break down our long-term goals into smaller ones — wins that we as a team can achieve on a regular basis, getting us closer and closer to our grand vision.

What are the best decisions and the worst decisions you have made in this industry?

Tough one. Best decision was to dedicate more time to carefully research real-estate tokenization before going live with Blocksquare’s ICO. We really wanted to play fair and be sure we can deliver the product before taking in money. Unfortunately, the same decision also happened to be the worst one. While devoting time for additional R&D, the crypto markets crashed and an ICO that at first seemed like oversubscribed, turned into a 400 ETH raise. Thankfully, we were not discouraged and continued with our plans even though we mostly invested our own resources.

Tell us about the greatest working day of your life. You’re at home in the evening, sitting on your couch and thinking about what you accomplished. What made you so happy that day?

I have good and bad days. Ups and downs are part of the game. The wins we achieve are definitely worth celebrating, but I hope my greatest working day is still somewhere in the future. I imagine a day where what we’ve built is used and run by a huge community of people. Where I’m just one of the participants in a big network of people making smart decisions.

What is your favorite web3 project? Among the people you’ve worked/interacted with in web3, who do you admire most and why?

My favorite project is definitely Ethereum, while when it comes to people, my full admiration goes straight to our team and co-founders. We’ve managed to keep working together on this vision for 3 years, building something never been done before in the history of real estate.

What is your vision for your niche? What do you expect to come in the next few years? What developments in the field do you find to be the most exciting?

Focusing on a very hard niche with huge potential like real-estate tokenization is not by any means easy. Unlike most projects in web3, we’ve had to overcome regulatory uncertainty and limitations when implementing a scalable legally enforceable tokenization protocol. What I’m excited about the most is Oceanpoint.fi taking tokenized real estate to the next level. Oceanpoint uses a stablecoin wrapper to overcome the regulatory hurdles i.e. financial licenses, KYC, AML that come when you issue and sell an asset backed token. By year 2, we hope the Oceanpoint protocol will exceed a TVL of $300M+ in tokenized real estate assets, which would be the equivalent to a small sized real estate fund. After the launch of v0.3, real-estate owners will be able to “stake” their tokenized properties and earn crypto as an extra revenue stream.