In this episode, we dig in with Vishakh, the co-founder of Cryptonomic. Cryptonomic is NYC-based startup building developer tools to enable decentralization and digital sovereignty in a multi-chain future. Vishakh gives us the inside scoop on how his team has grown and evolved, why he believes in a multi-chain future and how Cryptonomic is helping build towards that starting with the first Tezos wallet.

While working at J.P. Morgan for several years, Vishakh found himself spending more and more of his time outside of work exploring the crypto world. The ethos of the community and the opportunity to help shape the future reminded him of the early days of the internet. Seeing how difficult it is to develop anything useful due to the lack of infrastructure and tooling drew Vishakh and his co-founders to leave their jobs and start Cryptonomic.

The open source-first mentality of the Cryptonomic team and their involvement in the early days of the Tezos community led to them receiving a grant from the Tezos Foundation to develop the first Tezos wallet. It was really interesting hearing about that, as well as how they’re navigating the design and user experience challenges of the crypto space. We had a great discussion with Vishakh and can’t wait to check back in with him in the future.

Enjoy!
Show Notes

[0:54] Vishakh’s background and path to crypto.
[6:38] Origins of Cryptonomic.
[9:18] Problems Cryptonomic is aiming to solve.
[11:22] Team overview and how it’s grown and evolved over time.
[16:45] Current work on Tezos and rationale behind chain agnostic philosophy.
[19:05] Thoughts and approaches for picking blockchains to develop on.
[25:49] How Cryptonomic decides what to build.
[31:47] Story behind Cryptonomic’s involvement in the Tezos community and how it led to them receiving a grant from the Tezos foundation to build a Tezos wallet.
[34:26] Cryptonomic’s design-first approach and lessons learned.
[36:499] Backgrounds of original designers at Cryptonomic and what their first 30 days looked like.
[40:54] Advice for putting together teams for crypto projects.
[46:27] How Cryptonomic has run user testing and challenges of doing it in the crypto space.
[53:03] Team composition, skill sets, process, and the challenges of distributed teams.
[59:33] Dynamics of open source development and Cryptonomic’s business model.
[1:06:02] Plans for release of Tezos wallet and measuring success.
[1:11:29] Interesting tidbit about Vishakh.

Links

* https://cryptonomic.tech/
* https://tezos.com/
* https://twitter.com/vishakh
* https://twitter.com/CryptonomicTech
* https://tezos.foundation/news/tezos-foundation-is-issuing-a-grant-to-cryptonomic-project-for-wallet
* https://medium.com/@CryptonomicTech
* https://medium.com/@CryptonomicTech/setting-sail-2035e609a609
* https://github.com/Cryptonomic