Muneeb Ali: Abuse Of Power Through Centralization
This is part of a larger recap of the 38 episodes from the first season of Off The Chain with Anthony Pompliano.
Muneeb Ali is the Co-Founder of Blockstack, a new internet for decentralized apps. In this conversation, Pomp and Muneeb discuss
- The problems with today’s internet giants
- Why you should care about decentralization
- What scares him about the future built on a blockchain
What are you most excited about going into 2019
I’m excited about decentralized apps starting to bring real utility to end users. It’s possible that 2019 is the year where privacy/security becomes a key requirement for users when selecting apps to use. As of Dec 2018, there are decentralized alternatives to Google Docs, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Twitter, DocuSign, 1Password and others available on Blockstack — I’m excited to see a subset of these apps potentially get real usage in 2019.
What is the biggest thing you learned in 2018
The importance of focus. We had Milestone-based triggers in our token offering raise meaning that the bulk of the capital was locked until we could build and successfully deploy the Stacks blockchain (Milestone 1). Most of 2018 we focused on this goal and got it done. Investor protection was the original reason for this approach (investors get up to 80% of their money back if we don’t deliver) but focus ended up being another benefit. Blockstack is one of the handful projects that raised a token offering in 2017 and delivered on the technology in 2018 — thanks to focus.
What is your most unpopular opinion going into 2019
For crypto to reach mass adoption, the crypto projects will need to figure out how to be compliant with regulators. You can only exist in weird corners of the world as crypto anarchists; compliance is necessary (and even beneficial) for reaching mass market. As Gemini recently put it “even revolutions need rules”.
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