Blockchain industry, what’s wrong with you?

Today, I am an active part of the blockchain scene for almost 6 years. I have seen various applications and went through the whole process of starting a blockchain startup myself. That is engaging with the community, developing long-term business strategies, growing a network of blockchain supporters and tech investors, giving blockchain related talks and interviews as much that I lost count of it. My main focus is to show the technology potential to decision-makers around the world. That is why I am so active in talking to potential partners and politicians. Now I want to tell you my story and thoughts about the development of the blockchain industry.

It was 2013 when blockchain caught my attention and I met the few other blockchain enthusiasts in town. Namely Eugen Salkutzan, Yan Schreier and Max Kordek. Together we founded the Bitcoin Aachen Meetup next to a student group at RWTH Aachen University. We spend a lot of our free time to educate people about blockchain technology and highlight its importance. For many, it was quite hard to realize the great potential of decentralization and dApps. At that time we had not much support for what we did. Most of the people smiled at us and thought that we were crazy students with no clue about life.

At the end of 2015, one of our co-founders, Max Kordek, started preparing a huge crowdfunding campaign to raise money for our common vision: Scale Blockchain technology and enable dApps for future software. The idea was easy, give us your precious Bitcoin and get a bigger amount of our cryptocurrency Lisk to build a Blockchain for JavaScript developers. The whole Bitcoin Aachen team supported Max with his campaign. Shortly after, Lisk was the crowdfunding campaign with the 25th highest contribution value on the planet. It was one of the first ICOs of the world and we all were part of it.

Today we are all together again and build up MADANA — Market for Data Analysis as the first Sidechain project and ICO on the Lisk Blockchain. We even do it under German law with BaFin approval. This was not possible for Lisk because no lawyer was able to help us back in the days. We fought for the past two years to achieve this huge milestone. In unclear legal processes, there is no way to not burn a lot of money. So did we with incorrect legal consultancies. All for the purpose of building a long-term business on a legal foundation in Germany. Moreover, we paid and will pay more taxes than in most other jurisdictions. We want to build a long-term business in Germany, and not avoid taxes in tax heavens. MADANA is pioneering German blockchain startups and is setting an example with the ICO in Germany — ICOs are also possible under German law!

Why am I telling this story? Because we were visionaries, taking big risks and spending all our private money and free time on these projects. When I think about Blockchain technology in the past six years, I see the market changing rapidly, unfortunately not for the better! Today we see a wild west from wild vultures and further creatures which look for their next victim to enrich themselves. As the title of this blog post says: There are a lot of things wrong with the current state of the blockchain industry! And today it’s time to say some words about it:

• Nobody is taking risks to build big projects for the social good!
• Nobody is responsible for the risks which may occur through their token creation or business models!
• Nobody is thinking about collaboration and combining power for future technology!
• And the worst: Only a few have an idea what blockchain technology really can do! Further education is needed to bring blockchain technology to the masses.

Dear Blockchain industry, please think about the following statements:

• Why do you think overselling oneself is healthy for the industry?
• Your project will go to the moon? Never, when you treat all other projects as competitors! Share & partner up.
• Why do you think you are an expert and could rate projects? What makes you an expert? I am laughing out loud if you think you can give me advice when you have less experience than me! Since 2017 there are many so-called ICO & crypto advisors, who don’t really know what they are talking about.
• Yes, Marketing is one of the most important things to make an ICO successful. But come on, you are almost all overselling yourselves! It’s just Marketing guys so keep calm and rethink your prices!
• And yes, lawyers and accountants are important but keep in mind that your clients are startups and no giants! You should also come down and reduce hourly rates.

The crypto market is currently completely down and it’s, of course, the worst phase to raise money with an ICO! So please tell me why are the prices for all the Blockchain and ICO related services high as f***!!?? That makes no sense.

“IoT is over. We are now doing Blockchain!”

Thats what a c-level representative of a german DAX company said to me at CEBIT 2018. I told him the following: “IoT never really happened, and by the way, IoT and Blockchain technology is the perfect fit for future applications.“ This lack of knowledge from people who should know better frustrates me.

In sum: We have the same problem as in 2013 when we started with Bitcoin Aachen to educate people about the technology and decentralization but with the exception that people can make money easier as ever before! I really hope that there are smart people out there, who see the difference between projects that potentially change the future to the better and shitty scams! But to be honest, it got quite hard to decide between good and bad projects if you don’t spend a lot of time in it and get to the details of each project. Let’s work together to make the blockchain industry healthy again!