Conversations with the builders, visionaries and founders who are making the blockchain-based web3 world a reality.
We speak with Meltem Demirors about her long journey into crypto, how the energy in the energy industry is a lot like the vibe in web3 right now, and her ability to perform well in chaotic environments.
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Adam Jackson is co-founder of Braintrust, a decentralized talent network where members vet new applicants, match job seekers with client firms like NASA and Goldman Sachs and perform other tasks to earn Braintrust tokens. Braintrust community members number over 44,000 and have earned a total of just over $38 million, all the while keeping the large middleman fees that freelance firms like Fiverr and Upwork charge. In this episode I talk to Adam about how came up with the idea for Braintrust, being saddled with $250,000 in student debt and what post-dot com San Francisco was like in the early 2000s. Check out Braintrust
Here's Adam on LinkedIn
Here's Braintrust on Twitter
Anthony Sassano is the host of the Daily Gwei, a Monday to Friday recap of all the big news in Ethereum. A native of Australia, Anthony finally found purpose in his life when he discovered the Ethereum community and hasn't looked back since. Sign up for the Daily Gwei newsletter
Subscribe to the Daily Gwei YouTube channel
Follow Anthony on Twitter
Jess Sloss is one of the founders -- he calls himself an "instigator" -- of Seed Club, a collective that helps people create social tokens to run decentralized projects. A native of Canada, Jess comes from a family of entrepreneurs and is one of the nicest, most generous and knowledgeable people in web3 that you will come across. He speaks about how he learned he definitely didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps in the gardening business and how growing up in the 1990s with the early Internet led him into tech. Seed Club runs an accelerator program to help projects explore how they can use web3 tools to reimagine how commercial organizations can be built, in many cases leading the the formation of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Check out Seed Club
Here's Jess on Twitter
Doug Petkanics is co-founder of Livepeer, a decentralized video processing service that utilizes unused video processing space. We talk about troubling developments in regulation that are seeking to put pressure on peer-to-peer systems like non-custodial wallets, how a service like Livepeer is seeking to sidestep those issues and how the vision for web3 deservedly faces criticism today but is aiming for real change.
More on Livepeer
Doug on Twitter
More on the troubling developments in Canada
Georgio Constantinou is a name you might not know, but you should. He's behind the scenes on some of the coolest stuff that's going on in music NFTs at the moment. He co-founded Six, a digital agency that helps artists navigate the web3 world, with the musician RAC and Jesse Grushack of Ujo Music and ConsenSys fame. Along the way, Six has helped Eminem buy a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and helped broker the sale of the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time in Shaolin from the U.S. government to PleasrDAO. We talk about Georgio's early life, how music management is an art form unto itself and how what it was like to hear the elusive Wu Tang album. Info on Six
Georgio on Twitter
More on the Wu-Tang saga
PleasrDAO
Ryan Selkis is one of the most outspoken advocates for the core beliefs of self-determination and stewardship that define the cryptocurrency movement. The co-founder of Messari, a digital asset data and analytics firm, Selkis is unafraid to take on regulators and politicians whom he views as being anti-crypto, such as Securities and Exchange Commissioner Gary Gensler and Senator Elizabeth Warren. We talk about his early days when sports took over his life, his time as the night janitor at his college basketball arena, how the financial crisis affected his plans to work for JPMorgan and what it was like to help Coindesk get on the right track. He also reiterates his sharp criticism of Gensler and Congressional inaction with regard to crypto regulation.
Here's the Messari 2022 annual report Selkis wrote
Follow Ryan on Twitter
More on Messari
In this follow up episode we join Adam Jackson of Braintrust again to dive into how his firm uses a token to incentivize its freelancers to create a vibrant marketplace for temporary work.
Here's the first part of the conversation with Adam
Learn more about the BRST token
The Braintrust white paper
Erin Plante is the senior director of investigations and special projects at blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis. She's had a fascinating career in cyber security, including two stints in Hong Kong where she helped ferret out executives of Western corporations who may have been illegally bribing Chinese officials. Think clandestine, overnight work that imaged entire corporate digital libraries without leaving a trace. She also worked in Africa on corruption investigations where she first understood that cryptocurrency could alleviate the problem of migrant workers having to send bags of cash back to their families in other parts of the continent. At Chainalysis she's worked on fascinating investigations like combating Russian hackers who use the Bitcoin blockchain to ensure their malware never goes offline.
Erin Plante on LinkedIn
Chainalysis's 2022 Crypto Crime Report
More on Chainalysis
Tim Beiko leads the group of Ethereum developers who are working to upgrade the blockchain network in the biggest overhaul since it went live in 2015. The change will usher in a new consensus system that vastly improves Ethereum's energy efficiency and will pave the way for much faster transaction times. I spoke to Tim previously about his early life and how he got into Ethereum here, so today's episode focused on the progress toward ETH 2.0.
You can learn more about the Ethereum All Core Devs team here
More on the Merge
