Ecosystem Q&A #1: Dmitriy Gorshenin | Founder of Aergo.ru
We interviewed the founder of Aergo.ru, Dmitriy Gorshenin, who has set up the unofficial platform to channel key pieces of content and information towards the Russian community.
Background
Dmitry is 38 years old at the time of writing and graduated from the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation with a specialty in Accounting and Banking. Dmitry has been trading on the Russian Stock Exchange since 2005.
Q1. What do you do in real life and how did your blockchain journey start?
As mentioned, I have been trading stocks on the Russian Stock Exchange since 2005.
I heard about blockchain and cryptocurrency back in 2009, but everything wasn’t so developed, especially in Russia. I traded on the stock market but was always eaten from the inside by the idea that I needed to progress with new ideas, new technologies, those in real production and in IT technologies. Somewhere between 2016–2017, I began to read and watch a lot of videos about blockchain. Covering various projects while continuing to work and trade stocks in the stock market. The second half of 2018 brought popularity to blockchain technologies, things such as monetization of computer games was interesting too.
By that time I decided to try to invest in a blockchain project. My first investment in the crypto space was NEO, which was in the Spring of 2019. I bought $1000 worth of NEO. This trended and portfolio rose from $1000 to $1700, this was on Binance, the first crypto exchange I had used.
After that I wanted to find something new, but being particular it had to be
- An absolutely new blockchain project
- Post correction period for bitcoin as it was dropping heavily
- This project should have some business history and some backing to it, not just throwing around buzzwords on crypto and blockchain.
Q2. When did you first get involved with Aergo and what convinced you to become part of the Aergo ecosystem?
In the fall of 2018, I watched a Youtube on Aergo. I appealed to the information, plans, and ideas of the team. This led me to reading everything I could find about the team, technology, Blocko, and the accumulating interest between the South Korean authorities and the blockchain industry.
Initially, I planned to participate in the Rewardrop program and buy some AERGO at my own expense. While I was filling up the site with my details, I drew increasingly in love with the project. I was constantly collecting information, summarizing, and systematizing it for myself. I would keep an eye out on Aergo’s official telegram channel and noticed how many people would ask the same questions every day, every hour.
Questions like:
- On which exchanges will the next listing be on?
- What was the ICO price?
- When was the ICO?
- When will you be listing on Binance?
- What is the Circulating Supply?
Recurring and repetitive work for admins. With that I decided to create a kind of resource repository, where all the important information will be housed and will be updated regularly. Think of it like a kind of Aergo Wiki. Further, I was also impressed with the concept that Aergo will help small and medium enterprises solve their business problems and reduce costs. I do not like the fact that larger corporations such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft use their monopolized position and try to monetize every of their business.
Q3. We were absolutely amazed by the level of detail and work you put into creating Aergo.ru. How did it feel working on it, and what inspired that creativity?
I really appreciate the kind words on Aergo.ru. I did it for the community, but also for myself. It was important for me to be inside the new movement which encompassed new technologies. After all, it is interesting to write about. I’d constantly study the underlying tech to help cover incoming queries, and present it to other people which are often times newcomers in a simple, understandable form. More so to the russian community.
I’m not a developer, I don’t do programming, nor am I a journalist. Therefore every little aspect took quite some time. Now more and more people are referring to the resources I’ve put out on that site to help people get acquainted with Aergo material. There were many occasions where I’d sit alone on weekends, writing articles, translating a lot from English to Russian, working with Photoshop and i had a thought to myself if anyone else besides me really needed this? The traffic to my site and appraisals answered that question.
Further, it was really interesting for me to observe how the Aergo project was developing over time, how Phil Zamani, the team, the group administrators in the telegram carefully conveying their goals and promises, how the roadmap and milestones are being fulfilled timely, how frequently new stories relating to the AERGO ecosystem get released, especially bigger news such as the partnership and deal with Satoshipay. All of this gave me strength to carry on what I’m doing.
In general, it is interesting to observe something that really has theoretical and fundamental value, but hasn’t yet been formed. One that’s in progress of being built, and when parts are completed, it turns out to be even better than expected. Over at Coinmarketcap you can find over 2160 crypto projects listed. But i feel that most of them don’t carry much weight. Many existed to collect money from investors during their ICO and this in turn sparked many bubbles.
It’s unfortunate to realize that the majority of general investors aren’t carefully looking at the fundamental issues and aspects of projects within the blockchain ecosystem. From their value proposition, to the problems they’re trying to solve. Many are profit driven and seek quick price appreciation of tokens. I am personally pleased when our community discuss the technical parts on the development of Aergo, rather than lower level conversations on the fluctuating price of tokens and exchange listings.
Q4. Do you see any real problems around you that can be solved using Aergo’s enterprise solution?
There are many problems that can be solved with Aergo. It’s clear that Aergo provides solutions that can be primarily useful to enterprises within the field of document management, secure storage, the transmission of information (sensitive and non), and with a massive client base. In Russia, the situation with land and property ownership registries is still very bad, many processes are not automated, the information on paper in different state organizations even contradict with each other. States could use the technology for public services such as for the counting of votes during elections.
There are also special state created “Growth Zones” where small IT companies are registered at. But they often simply do not have enough money and competence to develop applications or products. AERGO offers developers an opportunity to build new and useful products and services, more so for developers who don’t have a background in developing blockchain applications, this is a big opportunity for Russia. Aergo can offer an open-source based architecture built for customers, developers, integrators, and cloud hosting providers.
Open-source software will help increase security and reduce costs. Due to the tensions between Russian-American relations, government agencies will not buy American software, nor use programs that are not open-source. But software from Korea, Hong Kong, or China have an opportunity and can effectively substitute software of large American corporations.
In Russia, the largest buyers are still the state or state-related enterprises. What you can see is that Russia utilizes many of its own systems and applications and has a skilled tech workforce.
For instance:
- The Kaspersky anti-virus system in Russia is indeed very popular.
- Google can’t beat Yandex as the best search engine in Russian territory.
- Uber can’t beat Yandex-taxi in the taxi market.
- For the 8th year in a row, students from Russia have won the international programming competition, and all these guys are in the private sector.
These people are talented and will continue to create products, though many of them will look for ready-made architectures and platforms that are open-source to customize to meet their demands.
Aergo offers that very open-source platform with offerings such as the Aergo Hub, Aergo Marketplace, Satoshipay for payments, Lua smart contracts, the Merkle Bridge, and much more.
Q5 How else do you think you could assist Aergo and specially with the Russian community?
I like the Aergo project and would like to continue to assist Aergo in expanding the knowledge of people and organizations about the Aergo ecosystem and its benefits. I believe that sooner or later, worldwide (including Russia), regulation for the cryptocurrency market and blockchain technologies will be definite. But it will be a procedural process.
In addition to the Aergo.ru website, I am ready to participate in any events to increase Aergo’s exposure to Russia and the Russian community. From travelling to different countries where Aergo is conducting presentations, to broadcasting information from international events.
For example, I had the opportunity to visit the London Blockchain & IoT Expo 2019 to meet the team and learned more about Aergo and AergoSQL.
Furthermore, I would be happy to help prepare and aid organizing an Aergo world tour in Moscow or St. Petersburg.
Q6 Fun trivia question, do you like Vodka and Balalaika?
I was born in the city of Samara. This city is famous for the most beautiful girls in Russia and very tasty beer. I’ve lived for 6 months in Germany, and there are also many people that love beer. Therefore, I drink beer more often than vodka. I have many friends from India, so the second drink in my assortment is often Chivas Regal 12 years old. But if the guys from the Aergo community are visiting Moscow, I’d be open to grab a drink. About music, my balalaika was taken away by my bear, therefore I have to listen to music on the phone 🙂
Q7 What’s the story behind the lovely images of you and the little ones featured rocking the Aergo tees?
There are my adorable twin daughters, Juliya and Anastasia. They will be 9 years old at the end of July.
The second they saw the Aergo and Blocko stickers on thebranded T-shirts, they asked me to give it all to them.They have been studying programming in school for a year now, and are creating small games with Scratch and want to be professional programmers :)
And yeah.. As you can see, our family feline is jealous of their shirts, we may need to get some Aergo kitty swag too!
Thanks for checking out the first edition of our Aergo Ecosystem and a special thanks to Dmitriy for your efforts in growing Aergo’s Ecosystem.
Keep an eye out for more Ecosystem Partner interviews right here, as we’ve got more to showcase on the stakeholders who are shaping our community.
