Please tell us more about your background, how you got interested in blockchain, web3 & DeFi and what you are currently working on?
I graduated from University right when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by WHO. With the entire world shut down, I didn’t have too many options when it came to getting my first job. Within my network, I reached out to a founder who had just started her own digital marketing agency and gave me a shot. I started as an intern, but only 3 people were working on the project, including me, when I joined. This presented an excellent opportunity for me as I was able to take up a lot more responsibility and do many things that a fresher wouldn’t have otherwise done in a regular MNC job. More importantly, my 10 months working at the company helped me with the following things, which I believe are helping me greatly in my career in Crypto:
- Working in a fast-paced environment
- Learning SEO and other digital marketing techniques
- Research writing + writing SEO friendly content
- Managing teams
Together, we grew the company, and today, the project is highly successful in India. My journey in Crypto started in November 2020 when I began working with a research rating agency for Crypto founded by my friend. Initially, I worked part-time in addition to my digital marketing job, and in March 2021, I decided to make the switch full-time.
While the project had to be put aside due to license-related issues and their costs, it helped me get started in the crypto world. Moreover, in my time there, I improved my research writing skills, learned and wrote highly-detailed research reports about the top 20 crypto assets by market cap, and learned from the experience of a seasoned crypto investor.
However, as they say, one closed door opens many others, and when that project was shut down, I reached out to VegaX Holdings, a digital asset management company in South Korea where I’m currently working.
At the moment, I’m working on the following things:
- R&D with VegaX Holdings
- Developing the ecosystem at Konstellation Korea
- Research with LiFinance
- Guest writing for DeFi Planet
Moreover, I’m also associated with the following DAOs:
Tell me something that’s true, that almost nobody agrees with you?
We’re headed towards a multi-chain future.
While this is already true on some level with the exponential growth of Solana, Avalanche, Cosmos, and Terra ecosystems, many people that I talk to believe that the future will primarily be on one chain with vertical movement across different layers like layer 2s as opposed to multi-dimensional movement across layer 1s and layer 2s.
I believe that every chain offers something unique and has its own strengths and weaknesses that attract a different set of user bases. But, as humans, we’re always on the lookout for new things and better incentives; thus we won’t stick to one blockchain and its ecosystem. As a result, liquidity will be fragmented across multiple chains and layers.
What soft & hard skills have been most helpful in helping you succeed in DeFi/web3?
Hard skills:
- Research - Ability to dig through whitepapers
- Writing - Ability to condense 100s of pages of research into short articles/reports written in an easy to understand manner
- Ability to understand Crypto concepts that are still foreign to 99% of the world’s population
- Ability to build and become a part of communities, contributing on different levels
- Shitposting on Twitter
Soft skills:
- Communication - It doesn’t matter how great your idea is if you can’t communicate it to others
- Internal Motivation - A motivation to wake up every day and get things done
- Time Management - Especially in remote working, this skill is key to staying sane and productive.
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What’s the best thing about your job? The most challenging?
The best part about working in Crypto is the sense of belonging to a community that wants to make a change. Additionally, it is also the fact that our industry boasts some of the brightest minds in the world who are passionate about what they’re doing.
The most challenging thing has to be the 24/7 nature of the industry. Crypto never sleeps, and sadly, sometimes even I don’t.
What's the most important or impactful project about DeFi you created/writed? What made it so important or impactful?
In my opinion, I have just started working on the most impactful projects. They are:
- VegaX - We’re helping investors earn Crypto through investment products that make their lives easier as we build a balanced portfolio for them.
- Hold My Ledger - With HML DAO, we’re bringing Crypto to India and onboarding content creators into the industry that can help spread awareness about the topic. We’re creating an easy entry point into Crypto for all the content creators. Moreover, we’re giving them a platform through which they can learn, earn, and own their content.
- LiFinance - We’re building key infrastructure for the multi-chain future that will make life easier for users.
What part should analyst/researcher play in DeFi and blockchain?
As a researcher, I believe my responsibility is to:
- Help the team build better products
- Help the team convey to the masses what the product is all about and why people need to use it
- Simplify complex Crypto concepts and present them in an easily digestible manner
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 truly believe that day hasn’t come yet (I hope it hasn’t)
What is your favorite DeFi/web3 Project? Among the people you’ve worked/interacted with in DeFi/web3, who do you admire most and why?
My favorite Web3 project at the moment is LiFinance because I believe we’re building infrastructure for the future of Crypto. Moreover, this infrastructure will help onboard new users into Crypto and enable them to access new ecosystems at ease.
That one person has to be Mark Murdock, a colleague at VegaX who’s a true degen. We joined the company together, and I have learned a lot about Crypto from him. Moreover, since we disagree on mostly everything, I get to know a different perspective every time.
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?
I envision a future where there is no one-winner, and also the term ‘Ethereum-killer’ is removed from crypto vocabulary. In my opinion, there will be no ‘Ethereum-Killer’; all the different blockchain ecosystem will have their own set of users and dApps that add value to Crypto users.
In the next few years, I believe many of Ethereum’s current competitors will continue consolidating their position in the market and onboard even more users to the ecosystem. Moreover, we will see the development of many more bridges that connect all the different blockchains.
What is the question that has not been asked here that you would have enjoyed reading the answer to from one of your peers?
'What's the biggest blunder you've made in the crypto space' or 'advice you would give to newbies in the space’?
biggest blunder - claimed my Ampleforth airdrop, spent $50 in fees and didn't actually know that you have to add a new token on MetaMask to see it. So I was holding $1500 worth of AMPL token for 6 months without knowing it. Then when I finally realized, I converted everything to ETH (that was a good night)
What quote has actually stuck with you and changed your life?
While no quote stands out, one of my favorite words is “serendipity” which means:
“the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”
I genuinely believe that if we continue putting in our best efforts, things will work out, and in the end, we’ll call the events "a fortunate stroke of serendipity" while instead, it was you and your efforts because of whom things worked out beneficially and not by chance.
