821: Crypto: $17m Raised to Speed Up Mining Blocks Using New "Validators"

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Ceo, Entrepreneurs, Founders, Software, Business, Entrepreneurship, Saas, Startups

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2017

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jae Kwon. After graduating from Cornell in 2005 with a BS degree in Computer Science, he worked as a developer at Alexa and Yelp and has co-founded iDonethis, a productivity service. He since worked on open-source projects including a CoffeeScript compiler and interpreter written in Javascript, an end-to-end encrypted email system called Scramble.io, and a cryptocurrency exchange. He invented and refined The Tendermint Consensus Algorithm with the aim of liberating the blockchain from the costs and drawbacks of proof-of-work mining. His mission is to make the technology more accessible in order to accelerate the adoption of decentralized ledger technology.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Snow Crash
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — GitHub and Chat
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Find the problem and solve it”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:37 – Nathan introduces Jae to the show
02:46 – Bitcoin is something that you want to be small and accessible
- 03:10 – Blockchain is not owned by any entity but is still secure
03:24 – Tendermint is one of the engines that enable the creation of blockchain
04:05 – Tendermint’s partner in Europe is Ponton
04:46 – Tendermint was initially self-funded by Jae
05:03 – Jae saw the need to build Tendermint
- 05:08 – People were struggling with bitcoin fork
05:51 – Proof of work is how bitcoin secures itself, which is like a lottery system
06:40 – The transaction fee for block reward in bitcoin is much smaller
07:55 – Proof of work in the blockchain has its drawbacks
08:30 – The validators are the users of Tendermint—they validate the block and sign off and vote on what the next block should be
09:20 – Jae’s opinion on Dash’s masternode
09:50 – Cosmos is the internet of blockchain
10:18 – Jae has all in his money in Tendermint
10:31 – Team size is 20
10:40 – Tendermint was funded through a fundraiser
- 11:00 – “We avoid the term ICO because we don’t want to be associated with a security offering”
11:13 – Tendermint released their own token and they’ll create the cosmos hub
- 11:30 – The tokens will allow you to vote on the blockchain
12:10 – Tendermint had a cap of $17M
- 12:32 – They were accepting bitcoin and ether in exchange of an atom
13:00 – Part of the liquidation went to the Cosmos software and development
14:00 – Out of the $17M, less than $3M has been liquidated so far
15:47 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The block reward in the blockchain allows people to not just earn tokens, but contribute as well.
Keep your liquidation conservative and focus on the development of your product.
If you see a problem and you think you can create the solution, DO IT.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Jay Kwan, again, launch tendermint to make a lot of the stuff related to blockchain simpler.
0:06.2	They have validators now.
0:07.9	They're kind of rethinking some of the efficiencies around how blocks get processed, how they get validated.
0:14.3	Launching Cosmos coming up here shortly, did a $17 million fundraising event,
0:19.0	of which they've spent less than $3 million funding, the growth business 19 people full time this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what their marketing marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers
0:38.3	they have.
0:39.5	I'm now at $20,000 per talk.
0:41.8	Five and six million.
0:42.7	He is hell bent on global domination.
0:44.6	We just broke our 100,000 unit sold mark.
0:47.4	And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.
0:50.7	Many of you listening right now don't have time to listen to every B-to-B SaaS CEO that I've
0:55.2	interviewed. If you want to get access to the database I've created with year-over-year growth rates,
0:59.6	customer accounts, margins, and many, many other data metrics and data points, you can go to
1:04.1	G-E-T-L-A-T-K-A dot com. Here's the thing, though, this database, I keep it to myself. It's so freaking valuable.
1:12.1	And to preserve the quality of the data and make sure that the people that have access to it have a true advantage, I'm only letting 10 companies on each month.
1:20.0	So we're full this month, but you can go to Gitlatka.com to get on the waiting list for next month.
1:24.3	And look, there's big people on the waiting list.
1:26.1	I mean, the biggest VCs you've ever heard of. You've probably heard of them. They're big, private equity, billions
1:30.7	and billions under management. So it's an impressive waiting list. Go get on now at getlatka.com.
1:35.9	Hello, everybody. My guest today is Jay Kwan. After graduating from Cornell in 2005 with
1:41.6	a BS degree in computer science. He worked as a developer at
	...

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