Meet the Founders - Bryan Chen.srt

1
00:00:06,400 --> 00:00:07,920
So, Bryan, can you 

2
00:00:07,920 --> 00:00:12,560
start us off and maybe just tell us
your name, your role at Acala, 

3
00:00:13,360 --> 00:00:16,160
where you live and where you work
from? 

4
00:00:16,160 --> 00:00:20,960
Yeah. This is Bryan Chen. I
live in Oakland County, New Zealand. 

5
00:00:22,720 --> 00:00:24,720
I'm the CTO and the
Co-founder of Acala. 

6
00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:30,800
Cool. I'm going to ask you a couple of
just personal questions for us to get to 

7
00:00:30,800 --> 00:00:35,920
know you a little bit better.
Could you maybe tell people when 

8
00:00:35,920 --> 00:00:37,920
you're not
coding and building 

9
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:41,200
everything on Acala,
what do you like to do in your free time? 

10
00:00:42,480 --> 00:00:49,280
In a lot of my free time essentially, I just
like to code 

11
00:00:50,080 --> 00:00:54,080
or maybe read new things, learn new
things. So 

12
00:00:54,080 --> 00:01:00,560
not necessarily writing the code.
I usually spend quite a lot of time 

13
00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:03,440
learning for example different new
programming languages and different 

14
00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:08,320
new technologies and
browsing the hackers news 

15
00:01:10,640 --> 00:01:14,960
to check out any new
interesting 

16
00:01:14,960 --> 00:01:17,040
things. So,
I probably spend a lot of time on 

17
00:01:17,040 --> 00:01:22,000
those activities. But other than
those ones, I play some games, 

18
00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:26,240
just for PS5. I
spend some times on that. I have a 

19
00:01:26,240 --> 00:01:31,680
Nintendo Switch, also
spend a lot of time on that. 

20
00:01:36,240 --> 00:01:38,160
If I get to choose
where 

21
00:01:38,160 --> 00:01:41,280
to spend my spare time on, so those
two things will be the main things. 

22
00:01:42,320 --> 00:01:48,720
Coding, learning and gaming.
Cool. What about something 

23
00:01:49,440 --> 00:01:52,560
about you, maybe something that you've
done in your past or something 

24
00:01:53,760 --> 00:01:56,000
interesting that people
might not know about you? 

25
00:01:58,240 --> 00:02:05,440
Well, my
life journey is not that exciting in a 

26
00:02:05,440 --> 00:02:09,200
sense.
I was born in 

27
00:02:09,200 --> 00:02:12,160
China
and came to New Zealand when I was 13. 

28
00:02:13,600 --> 00:02:17,680
I went then to high school,
went to university. 

29
00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:27,680
All of my jobs have been
programming jobs and writing softwares for 

30
00:02:27,680 --> 00:02:32,160
startups.
It's kind of a normal pathway. 

31
00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:35,840
There's no
like this, yeah. 

32
00:02:37,120 --> 00:02:46,320
What was your first startup?
Laminar is the first one I'm the 

33
00:02:46,320 --> 00:02:49,440
Co-founder of, for
all the other ones I was 

34
00:02:49,440 --> 00:02:53,600
just an employee.
The first startup I joined was 

35
00:02:53,600 --> 00:02:57,360
actually
founded by my friends and 

36
00:03:00,480 --> 00:03:05,040
classmates at
Auckland Uni. They had this idea 

37
00:03:05,920 --> 00:03:11,200
as the final project
and then they took this idea and built a 

38
00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:16,320
startup from it, which is quite
interesting. It's 

39
00:03:16,320 --> 00:03:22,640
called Kami. It's a
PDF annotation web app. 

40
00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:26,640
It's getting quite a big
traction during Covid. 

41
00:03:28,160 --> 00:03:31,360
Due to Covid, because people need to
study 

42
00:03:31,360 --> 00:03:33,440
from home and there's a lot of
homeschooling. So 

43
00:03:34,160 --> 00:03:40,800
those tools are getting quite useful.
So, yeah. I was the first employee there. 

44
00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:43,120
That's
also the time that I learned a 

45
00:03:43,120 --> 00:03:45,520
lot of things,
especially about startups. 

46
00:03:50,080 --> 00:03:52,960
Let's see. An interesting question
that I actually 

47
00:03:52,960 --> 00:03:56,240
took from Tim Ferris, one of the
podcasts that I listened to. 

48
00:03:56,960 --> 00:04:01,600
This question is: "if you had a huge
gigantic billboard that could reach 

49
00:04:02,160 --> 00:04:05,760
a billion people, what would you put on
that billboard? 

50
00:04:05,760 --> 00:04:07,920
What message would you tell
people?" 

51
00:04:09,600 --> 00:04:14,160
The first thing come to my mind is "buy
Bitcoin!". 

52
00:04:14,160 --> 00:04:20,640
Yeah, that's good.
That would have been a good 

53
00:04:20,640 --> 00:04:22,720
billboard in like
2010. 

54
00:04:27,280 --> 00:04:32,560
So, I know you mentioned you
code, you learn a lot and you 

55
00:04:32,560 --> 00:04:35,120
game.
Maybe this is the same answer, but, when 

56
00:04:35,120 --> 00:04:38,720
you feel stressed or unfocused and you
need 

57
00:04:39,600 --> 00:04:43,200
a way to get out of that,
do you have any tactics that you use 

58
00:04:43,200 --> 00:04:44,640
for
dealing with that? 

59
00:04:48,960 --> 00:04:53,600
I would say I work very hard
but I also fail 

60
00:04:53,600 --> 00:04:59,760
when I am not productive. So I will just
stop working for a 

61
00:04:59,760 --> 00:05:03,280
while.
I'd do something else which could be 

62
00:05:03,280 --> 00:05:06,160
watching some youtube videos,
playing a game 

63
00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:11,600
that
doesn't require me thinking, 

64
00:05:11,600 --> 00:05:16,160
no strategy game that would use
more of my mind. So just some relaxing 

65
00:05:17,120 --> 00:05:20,320
game. So I can
just 

66
00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:23,200
do something and have my mind not
thinking of any 

67
00:05:23,840 --> 00:05:31,120
hard problems.
Yeah, Cool. 

68
00:05:33,440 --> 00:05:39,920
Okay. So Let's move on to kind of more
your career. You mentioned 

69
00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:44,240
your past with moving to
New Zealand, working in startups, but 

70
00:05:44,240 --> 00:05:48,480
could you maybe talk a little bit
about what led you to blockchain and 

71
00:05:48,480 --> 00:05:51,600
crypto and
what got you into the Laminar 

72
00:05:51,600 --> 00:05:56,240
and Acala world?
I don't remember 

73
00:05:56,240 --> 00:06:00,480
when I first heard of Bitcoin, but it's
somewhere when I was still in Uni, so 

74
00:06:01,120 --> 00:06:03,680
many years ago. The first time I heard
of Bitcoin, 

75
00:06:03,680 --> 00:06:06,960
I heard it's just some kind of digital cash
thing. 

76
00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:12,400
That was very early stage. Actually
there's a 

77
00:06:12,400 --> 00:06:14,640
bit more background story I need to tell
you first. 

78
00:06:17,040 --> 00:06:21,360
When I was high school,
as a young kid, my parents 

79
00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:25,920
didnt't give me a lot of
pocket money. Many 

80
00:06:25,920 --> 00:06:28,800
young people think try to figure a
way to make some money so we can buy 

81
00:06:28,800 --> 00:06:33,680
things we like.
As a kind of computer boy, 

82
00:06:33,680 --> 00:06:37,120
you just need to
go to the internet, google "how to make money 

83
00:06:37,120 --> 00:06:41,920
with computer".
There's a software, I 

84
00:06:41,920 --> 00:06:43,280
don't remember
the name, but 

85
00:06:43,280 --> 00:06:46,080
you could download. It's from probably
some research 

86
00:06:47,200 --> 00:06:51,440
labs or some universities. If you run
some dispute computation software in 

87
00:06:51,440 --> 00:06:55,600
your computer
to do some calculations, then you 

88
00:06:55,600 --> 00:06:58,400
could make some money.
Just by running a software, you can make money. 

89
00:06:58,400 --> 00:07:02,080
It sounded great, right? So, I just
installed software and 

90
00:07:02,640 --> 00:07:04,880
after probably a few months
I earned 

91
00:07:04,880 --> 00:07:09,120
5 US dollar and then my mom was
saying 

92
00:07:09,760 --> 00:07:13,200
"Why are the internet bill and the power bill
so high this month?!". 

93
00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:17,760
I figured that that's just not a
good idea. 

94
00:07:19,040 --> 00:07:23,440
This is a background story.
After a few years, I saw  

95
00:07:23,440 --> 00:07:25,360
Bitcoin saying: download
the software, 

96
00:07:26,080 --> 00:07:30,640
run it, and then you'd make some money, right?
This was the same thing I had heard and done 

97
00:07:30,640 --> 00:07:33,920
before,
which was already proven not to be profitable. 

98
00:07:33,920 --> 00:07:39,280
So I missed the chance of trying to be
become a miner. That 

99
00:07:39,280 --> 00:07:41,280
is probably
one of my biggest regrets! 

100
00:07:45,040 --> 00:07:45,840
When was that?
I was at Uni,  

101
00:07:45,840 --> 00:07:49,360
so it's probably 2009
or 2010. 

102
00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:52,160
Wow, so Bitcoin had just come
out! 

103
00:07:52,720 --> 00:07:57,200
Yeah just come out.
I missed the chance to become 

104
00:07:57,200 --> 00:08:00,800
a very early miner. I
haven't 

105
00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:04,240
actually read too much about Bitcoin back
then. I just thought, oh we have 

106
00:08:04,240 --> 00:08:08,640
Paypal, we have Alipay,
that's internet money. You can 

107
00:08:08,640 --> 00:08:11,840
send money on internet very easily.
Why would we need another thing? 

108
00:08:14,400 --> 00:08:16,320
After
many years, 

109
00:08:19,600 --> 00:08:22,160
at the time when Bitcoin
Cash forked 

110
00:08:22,720 --> 00:08:25,840
and when Bitcoin went to news, I read
it again. 

111
00:08:27,600 --> 00:08:31,120
My colleague also had
some bitcoin and he was talking with me 

112
00:08:33,120 --> 00:08:34,480
about that.
People were 

113
00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:38,400
surprised
that 

114
00:08:38,400 --> 00:08:40,480
when they added up the price,
it shouldn't be more. 

115
00:08:41,280 --> 00:08:44,480
When you cut something,
the price should be the same. 

116
00:08:45,040 --> 00:08:47,760
The Bitcoin cash fork proved that's
wrong on 

117
00:08:48,320 --> 00:08:52,000
internet or on blockchain.
The Bitcoin fork 

118
00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:55,120
and then combined value of both is
much higher than 

119
00:08:55,120 --> 00:09:00,080
original value and this was quite
interesting. That was the thing that 

120
00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:04,080
got me looking into bitcoin
again. 

121
00:09:05,680 --> 00:09:08,400
I was previously following
Bitcoin, but just reading it, 

122
00:09:08,400 --> 00:09:11,760
I never actually thought about buying it.
But this event got 

123
00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:14,720
me more interesting, so I considered
that maybe I should buy some. 

124
00:09:15,680 --> 00:09:21,120
Of course, you really
would have the motivation to study all 

125
00:09:21,120 --> 00:09:24,720
these things if you have your stake
into it. it's not a big stake but of 

126
00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:30,400
course it's some stake. Then I
spent more time researching, 

127
00:09:31,520 --> 00:09:32,720
reading
Bitcoin news and 

128
00:09:37,120 --> 00:09:41,200
actually spent time in
reading the bitcoin white paper, reading 

129
00:09:41,200 --> 00:09:44,800
all those new technologies.
I started thinking that 

130
00:09:44,800 --> 00:09:47,440
this could change
everything! 

131
00:09:52,480 --> 00:09:54,800
I guess
that led to your path of 

132
00:09:54,800 --> 00:10:00,560
of Co-founding Laminar and Acala?
Yes, that made me think 

133
00:10:00,560 --> 00:10:03,840
that
I really wanted to work in this industry 

134
00:10:04,800 --> 00:10:11,040
I spent more time
understanding the low-level thing, how it 

135
00:10:11,040 --> 00:10:15,120
actually works
and think about if I am 

136
00:10:15,120 --> 00:10:18,160
the guy
designing the things, then how I want to 

137
00:10:18,160 --> 00:10:20,880
design those things?
I started thinking about those things. 

138
00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:26,160
Cool.
I know we're all working 

139
00:10:26,720 --> 00:10:30,640
really hard right now, and we will
be for the foreseeable future, but 

140
00:10:32,400 --> 00:10:35,200
when you do have late
nights and early mornings, 

141
00:10:35,200 --> 00:10:38,640
what would you say is your
inspiration to keep 

142
00:10:39,440 --> 00:10:42,080
going? What's your
ultimate goal? 

143
00:10:43,920 --> 00:10:46,480
I like to build stuff. I like to
see 

144
00:10:47,280 --> 00:10:56,080
the stuff I have been working on.
In my previous job, I helped 

145
00:10:56,080 --> 00:11:00,320
build a product series, see it launched and
see how it's helping people. It's really 

146
00:11:00,320 --> 00:11:03,760
making things better
and improving people's lives. But, 

147
00:11:04,880 --> 00:11:08,720
working on a particular software
industry, then you probably improve a 

148
00:11:08,720 --> 00:11:10,080
small set of people, 

149
00:11:10,080 --> 00:11:13,200
but on blockchain I can see the
chance of 

150
00:11:13,200 --> 00:11:16,240
almost improving and changing the life
of everyone. 

151
00:11:17,600 --> 00:11:22,560
This is a very different
scale. There are 

152
00:11:24,720 --> 00:11:29,280
more possibilities.
Many years ago, 

153
00:11:29,280 --> 00:11:31,920
I was just thinking "oh maybe one day i
can do this", but now 

154
00:11:32,480 --> 00:11:37,680
it's different. I'm actually
pushing us forwards. 

155
00:11:39,280 --> 00:11:41,600
It's just a totally different
feeling. 

156
00:11:41,600 --> 00:11:48,080
Yeah, totally agree.
Let's move on to Acala 

157
00:11:48,080 --> 00:11:54,080
and Karura now. The first couple are
very short questions. Could you 

158
00:11:54,080 --> 00:12:01,360
describe Acala
in three words? Polkadot DeFi Hub. 

159
00:12:01,360 --> 00:12:06,960
That's good! Could you
describe Karura in three words? 

160
00:12:07,600 --> 00:12:14,640
Well, Kusama DeFi Hub.
Maybe could you tell us about 

161
00:12:14,640 --> 00:12:18,240
how Acala started and what the story is
behind? 

162
00:12:18,240 --> 00:12:21,040
How the teams met and how that
all came together? 

163
00:12:22,640 --> 00:12:28,000
So initially me,
Ruitao and Bette co-founded Laminar. 

164
00:12:29,840 --> 00:12:32,160
Ruitao had a lot of
connections and 

165
00:12:32,160 --> 00:12:35,920
experience on the Forex market. We're
thinking maybe building something 

166
00:12:36,640 --> 00:12:41,200
on this area and we also all believed
that DeFi would be the next thing that'd 

167
00:12:41,200 --> 00:12:45,520
go to take off. That's before
for example the compound 

168
00:12:45,520 --> 00:12:50,160
and issue.com token that actually started
the DeFi. 

169
00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:54,640
Back then, when we were
thinking that we wanted to build something 

170
00:12:54,640 --> 00:12:59,200
on DeFi, we
did some research and we figured 

171
00:12:59,920 --> 00:13:04,720
Substrate was/is the best blockchain
building framework and obviously the 

172
00:13:04,720 --> 00:13:08,560
Polkadot shared security
also solves a lot of problems for us. 

173
00:13:10,320 --> 00:13:12,880
I always said to
build with Polkadot on DeFi and maybe something 

174
00:13:12,880 --> 00:13:16,000
with
Forex market, so there will be sensitive 

175
00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:20,480
assets margin trading.
That's the background of Laminar. 

176
00:13:22,080 --> 00:13:26,560
When we designed the Laminar protocol,
we built a prototype on 

177
00:13:26,560 --> 00:13:31,520
Ethereum
that is depending on DAI as the 

178
00:13:31,520 --> 00:13:35,760
current source, as USD, and it's also
using compound as a money market. 

179
00:13:38,560 --> 00:13:40,560
Then we want to build a
similar thing on 

180
00:13:41,680 --> 00:13:44,720
Polkadot. We see this one
fundamental 

181
00:13:45,280 --> 00:13:47,520
dependency we need to have is a stablecoin. 

182
00:13:49,040 --> 00:13:52,720
So we figure we can either build a
stablecoin ourself 

183
00:13:53,360 --> 00:13:56,960
or maybe we can see if anyone else is
building a stablecoin 

184
00:13:56,960 --> 00:14:00,480
and use the stablecoin. But by then,
because we are very early, 

185
00:14:00,480 --> 00:14:02,320
there's no one who's actually building
a stablecoin. 

186
00:14:03,920 --> 00:14:09,120
So then we thought,
if some other people want to build a 

187
00:14:09,120 --> 00:14:11,200
stablecoin, we can maybe build it
together. 

188
00:14:11,920 --> 00:14:19,600
That was our thought process and,
in September 2019, 

189
00:14:20,800 --> 00:14:24,240
there was the
the first ever Substrate hackathon, 

190
00:14:25,280 --> 00:14:29,840
hosted by PolkaWorld,
in Hangzhou in China. 

191
00:14:31,440 --> 00:14:35,040
I was invited as a judge
for the hackathon. 

192
00:14:37,600 --> 00:14:39,200
Me, Ruitao and Bette flew
there. 

193
00:14:41,760 --> 00:14:45,280
We met a lot of people there.
I was 

194
00:14:45,280 --> 00:14:48,880
very active on a lot of chinese
Polkadot 

195
00:14:49,440 --> 00:14:52,471
community, but, you know, I'm in New Zealand
and they are in China so we never 

196
00:14:52,471 --> 00:14:55,360
saw each other face-to-face.
That was the first time 

197
00:14:56,400 --> 00:15:01,840
I saw a lot of people face-to-face
That was also the time when we met 

198
00:15:01,840 --> 00:15:05,680
Fuyao.
We've known Fuyao for quite a while, 

199
00:15:05,680 --> 00:15:10,160
because he created the
Polkawallet, the very first 

200
00:15:11,200 --> 00:15:17,520
mobile world app for Polkadot. It is one of the
first things built on the Polkadot 

201
00:15:17,520 --> 00:15:20,480
Substrate.
So we met Fuyao and his team. 

202
00:15:20,480 --> 00:15:26,240
They joined
the hackathon. 

203
00:15:26,240 --> 00:15:31,360
So we saw the energy
that they really wanted to build 

204
00:15:31,360 --> 00:15:34,400
something new to break or solve all
those 

205
00:15:35,040 --> 00:15:38,320
problems we have in the current
society. 

206
00:15:39,520 --> 00:15:43,120
You can see he has a really big
energy and big passion about it 

207
00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:46,640
and so we talked with each other.
They had already created 

208
00:15:46,640 --> 00:15:49,360
a Polkawallet
product but they're also thinking about 

209
00:15:49,360 --> 00:15:49,677
building a stablecoin
as well. 

210
00:15:49,677 --> 00:15:50,800
If they wanted to build a
stablecoin, we want to build a stablecoin, 

211
00:15:55,680 --> 00:15:59,760
maybe we could try to build it together!
That is kind of the 

212
00:16:00,960 --> 00:16:04,080
how the founders of Acala met and how
we 

213
00:16:06,240 --> 00:16:10,160
started this journey.
Then after this hackathon, 

214
00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:13,600
we're back to New Zealand and they went
back to Shanghai. 

215
00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:18,400
Then we started,
as Bette would say, "cold-dating for females". 

216
00:16:18,400 --> 00:16:22,080
So we just
started trying to work together 

217
00:16:22,080 --> 00:16:26,480
to
have daily stand-ups and just build the 

218
00:16:26,480 --> 00:16:30,120
thing
and see if everything 

219
00:16:30,120 --> 00:16:34,240
would work out.
It ended up being pretty well. We 

220
00:16:35,200 --> 00:16:40,240
enjoyed working with each other and we
managed not to have 

221
00:16:40,240 --> 00:16:43,120
too much issue size,
because we had two things 

222
00:16:43,120 --> 00:16:46,480
in two parts of growth but we didn't have
a lot of time. For example the typical 

223
00:16:46,480 --> 00:16:49,200
remote
working issues. It went all 

224
00:16:49,760 --> 00:16:54,000
very well.
That's how it all started. Cool. 

225
00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:02,960
When you're talking to potential future
developers to join your team, 

226
00:17:03,840 --> 00:17:08,240
how would you describe the culture
of working at Acala and what types of 

227
00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:12,400
technical characteristics but
also what type of 

228
00:17:13,600 --> 00:17:16,320
personality characteristics do you look 

229
00:17:16,320 --> 00:17:18,080
for
in potential hires? 

230
00:17:20,240 --> 00:17:26,000
Working in the blockchain space is
a bleeding-edge technology sector, so 

231
00:17:26,640 --> 00:17:29,840
you need to be very motivated,
because 

232
00:17:30,800 --> 00:17:34,160
things change every day. I know a
lot of people 

233
00:17:34,160 --> 00:17:36,800
that learn Substrate, they try to work on
Substrate but 

234
00:17:37,520 --> 00:17:42,400
there are so many new things coming up
every day that you need to constantly 

235
00:17:42,400 --> 00:17:45,840
adapt your code with the latest
change, because otherwise 

236
00:17:46,880 --> 00:17:48,720
almost daily or weekly 

237
00:17:49,280 --> 00:17:52,080
if you don't update Substrate, everything
breaks and falls apart. 

238
00:17:53,440 --> 00:17:57,200
There's a big frustration there,
but you need to get over it, 

239
00:17:57,200 --> 00:18:00,080
you need to get used to it and then you
need to be 

240
00:18:00,880 --> 00:18:03,102
already motivated to learn the new
things. You should be able to understand 

241
00:18:03,102 --> 00:18:08,800
why things break, you should not
get frustrated "Oh this doesn't work, 

242
00:18:08,800 --> 00:18:13,200
then I need to fix it again!". You should see it
as "well let's introduce a new feature, I can 

243
00:18:13,200 --> 00:18:15,600
do those things that previously were not
possible." 

244
00:18:16,880 --> 00:18:22,960
That's why we want people who
constantly want to learn new things, 

245
00:18:22,960 --> 00:18:27,520
because there are a lot of new things
out there every day and I want people 

246
00:18:27,520 --> 00:18:32,240
that are
also goal-orientated. 

247
00:18:33,520 --> 00:18:39,360
The goal is "get things done",
not just sitting in front of the computer typing 

248
00:18:39,360 --> 00:18:43,680
eight hours a day.
We don't want you to 

249
00:18:43,680 --> 00:18:47,520
just sit in front of the computer typing
but actually doing anything 

250
00:18:48,080 --> 00:18:50,960
productive, because this is
meaningless! 

251
00:18:51,600 --> 00:18:53,280
We want to just get things done. 

252
00:18:55,440 --> 00:18:57,360
Different people have different ways and
we 

253
00:18:59,520 --> 00:19:02,640
would like you to use the most
productive ways for you. 

254
00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:06,000
For example, some people
they enjoy working from home, 

255
00:19:06,560 --> 00:19:10,400
some people
prefer to 

256
00:19:10,400 --> 00:19:14,560
work at night. That's fine, as long as
things get done, 

257
00:19:14,560 --> 00:19:19,840
I'm happy.
As we are a remote team, we 

258
00:19:19,840 --> 00:19:24,800
have people all over the world,
so communication is a super important 

259
00:19:24,800 --> 00:19:29,520
piece,
a super important skill you must possess. 

260
00:19:29,520 --> 00:19:35,200
Some people will maybe
need a week get something done, 

261
00:19:35,200 --> 00:19:37,040
and
present the thing and other are 

262
00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:42,240
kind of fine with that.
During this absent period, 

263
00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:48,800
some people might
question or say "are you really 

264
00:19:48,800 --> 00:19:49,760
doing anything?" This attitude 

265
00:19:51,120 --> 00:19:55,360
doesn't help. So communication
is a very important skill. 

266
00:19:57,120 --> 00:20:00,960
Another thing I don't want to see is
that some people get stuck 

267
00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:04,080
and they try to fix the problem, but they
just spend 

268
00:20:04,880 --> 00:20:11,840
a long time trying to fix a problem and
that isn't very productive. 

269
00:20:11,840 --> 00:20:14,960
So you should be open-minded and
simply be able to ask for help. 

270
00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:18,800
Feel free to ask for help.
Maybe we cannot help, in that case 

271
00:20:18,800 --> 00:20:21,680
you just need to spend more time
trying to fix it, but 

272
00:20:22,240 --> 00:20:27,840
there's a chance that someone else is
able to offer a different opinion, 

273
00:20:28,560 --> 00:20:30,000
maybe they have seen this issue
before. 

274
00:20:33,200 --> 00:20:36,720
Communication is
also first, so important. 

275
00:20:36,720 --> 00:20:39,680
What types of people are you
looking for right now? I know we've got a 

276
00:20:39,680 --> 00:20:45,520
few roles
posted. Yes, we're 

277
00:20:45,520 --> 00:20:50,160
looking for different areas and
positions. For example, 

278
00:20:50,160 --> 00:20:52,800
we're definitely looking for Runtime
Substrate developers, 

279
00:20:54,480 --> 00:20:57,680
helping to build the core products, the
blockchain nodes 

280
00:20:57,680 --> 00:21:02,480
implement new pallets, improve existing
pallets and maintain them. 

281
00:21:02,480 --> 00:21:06,640
We're also looking for the Solidity
developers because we have the Acala EVM, 

282
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:11,840
which is a very unique EVM. It's unlike
other 

283
00:21:12,640 --> 00:21:16,800
standard EVMs. We have done a lot of
modifications, introduced new features 

284
00:21:16,800 --> 00:21:21,040
and made adjustments. So we will need
Solidity developers to 

285
00:21:21,600 --> 00:21:26,480
help us to shape this; also to help other
things like building 

286
00:21:27,040 --> 00:21:30,880
and deploying the smart contracts on
the Acala EVM, to help to shape the 

287
00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:35,040
the contracts, to take
most advantage of the  

288
00:21:35,040 --> 00:21:36,560
unique features of
Acala EVM. 

289
00:21:37,520 --> 00:21:40,320
We need Solidity developers for
this and we also need 

290
00:21:41,120 --> 00:21:43,840
the front and back and full stack
developers 

291
00:21:44,400 --> 00:21:47,120
because obviously we have a lot of frontend
we need to build. 

292
00:21:49,360 --> 00:21:51,280
We already have the depth
but 

293
00:21:51,280 --> 00:21:55,840
we also have a lot of new things in the
plan. We also for example need 

294
00:21:55,840 --> 00:22:01,360
some nice governance, UI. We also
probably need some nice dashboards UI. 

295
00:22:02,080 --> 00:22:06,720
There's a lot of front-end work
waiting to be completed. 

296
00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:12,160
We are also looking for tech
educators, 

297
00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:15,600
because we have a lot of new unique
features, especially for Acala EVM. 

298
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:18,640
So we would like to have someone who's able
to help us 

299
00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:26,160
write documentations examples and
tutorials in order to help 

300
00:22:26,720 --> 00:22:31,920
other developers to learn the
advantage and how to 

301
00:22:33,600 --> 00:22:38,000
integrate with Acala or learn how to
deploy the smart contracts or migrate 

302
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:41,040
the smart contracts
and getting deployed to Acala EVM. 

303
00:22:42,400 --> 00:22:48,960
Okay great. Just a few more questions.
What would you say makes the Acala and 

304
00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:53,840
Karura team
unique and special to you? 

305
00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:00,640
First, I think
all of our team members are 

306
00:23:01,360 --> 00:23:03,680
at least
10 x engineers. 

307
00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:08,720
We all work very hard and we
all 

308
00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:11,920
are very keen to learn new things. We
are not afraid of 

309
00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:16,640
being blocked, not afraid of deep dive
into the code base to the low  

310
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:17,520
level of
things, to 

311
00:23:18,560 --> 00:23:22,480
debug why things don't work.
This is 

312
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:24,800
a very important mindset. We're
all willing to 

313
00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:30,080
go to the bleeding edge and pushing it
forward. 

314
00:23:30,080 --> 00:23:31,680
For us it is very important to expand. 

315
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:39,840
If you were to pick
one product that you're 

316
00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:42,640
building
with Acala and Karura, what would you say 

317
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:45,520
you're most excited about
and why is that? 

318
00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:54,320
I think Acala EVM will be
a super exciting product because 

319
00:23:55,200 --> 00:24:00,480
that is not built for us. It's built for
the developers, it's built for 

320
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:05,280
other projects.
We will hopefully see a lot of 

321
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:10,000
projects
either migrate from existing 

322
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:13,760
smart contracts to Acala EVM, or just
develop for some 

323
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:18,320
brand new smart contracts for Acala EVM.
We have a lot of unique features 

324
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:20,480
that
don't exist elsewhere, like for example 

325
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:23,280
the scheduler which allows a smart contract to
be 

326
00:24:24,080 --> 00:24:29,920
scheduled, to be called later.
On Ethereum people need to either rely 

327
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:33,920
on centralized servers for them or
they need to design some super 

328
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:38,880
complex
expensive token economics to make sure 

329
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:42,560
it's happening.
This is just basically solved with 

330
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:46,080
the building scheduler. There are a lot
more new possibilities 

331
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:49,760
coming up and I'm really excited.
I look forward to see 

332
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:53,360
how other people can leverage on all these
new features and 

333
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:59,840
build something new.
Awesome. Last question: 

334
00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:04,960
so you're building a lot of these
DeFi products but if you think 

335
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:07,840
like maybe five years in the future,
where do you see 

336
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:13,280
all of this going and where do you
see Acala and Karura playing in that 

337
00:25:13,280 --> 00:25:18,400
story? Finance is a concept that exists
since I don't know how many years, 

338
00:25:21,520 --> 00:25:26,800
it probably started when
humans started trading. So it must be a 

339
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:30,080
few thousand years already.
This is never going to die. 

340
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:35,280
I would say in another thousand years from now,
there will be still finance systems. 

341
00:25:35,840 --> 00:25:39,040
That's obvious.
I 

342
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:43,120
100% believe the DeFi will be
very strong 

343
00:25:43,120 --> 00:25:49,280
and much much stronger than today,
in maybe five years from now. Hopefully 

344
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:56,240
DeFi will be able to become
the mainstream finance, so people will 

345
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:59,440
see
the different ways to doing things, 

346
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:01,840
you don't have to rely on centralized
banks, 

347
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:04,400
you don't have to rely on centralized
financial service. 

348
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:09,440
There is a decentralized service that is
much cheaper, it's much faster, it's much 

349
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:16,320
more secure.
I'm hoping we can see this 

350
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:20,640
completely shaping the industries and
also other industries, 

351
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:24,640
because almost every other industry is directly
or indirectly 

352
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:30,320
depending on the financial industry.
Maybe in few years, when the DeFi 

353
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:32,480
is becoming mainstream, the other
industry people, 

354
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:35,280
instead of using the traditional
centralized 

355
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:39,440
financial service, they will start using
the DeFi 

356
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:44,320
to help shaping the products, to manage
their company for example. 

357
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:47,840
They don't need to be a decentralized
product, it could be a centralized 

358
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:51,840
protocol but still benefiting
from DeFi. 

359
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:56,160
Awesome. That's all the questions I
had. I 

360
00:26:56,160 --> 00:27:01,520
appreciate the time. Thanks.
I also enjoyed 

361
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:04,640
present my mind to people.