Blockchain Start-ups: Meet the founder of Blockmason
This week, as part of our series on the people hard at work pushing blockchain start-ups forward, we would like to introduce you to Michael Chin.
Michael is the CEO of Blockmason, a company committed to building new protocols on the blockchain that will impact industries as wide-ranging as finance and healthcare to retail and entertainment. Blockmason’s Credit Protocol is set to democratize the creation of credit by using blockchain technology.
1. How did you first get involved with the blockchain century?
I’ve always been interested in cutting-edge technology, so five years ago when I first heard the term ‘Bitcoin’ it immediately caught my attention. At the time, all of my programmer and techie friends already knew about it, so they started telling me about Ethereum and smart contracts. That must have been three or four years ago now, and that was the moment when I kind of fell down the rabbit hole.
2. What inspired the idea of your ICO? Was it spontaneous or an idea you had for a long time?
The idea first came to us because of frustrations with settling expenses, actually. At the time, I was travelling a lot with my fellow co-founders and we were frequently settling travel expenses, including hotels, flights and meals, among one another. Like everyone else, we maintained a Google Sheet and we were constantly inputting expenses and settling up. During this time, some interesting blockchain projects started to emerge and one day, we asked ourselves how we could use blockchain to simplify our tedious daily task of figuring out who owes what to whom and how best to settle these expenses. Given my background in the credit industry and the expertise of my other co-founders, the Credit Protocol emerged.
3. What did you do before starting Blockmason? Did you demonstrate prior expertise in blockchain?
Before Blockmason, I spent my entire career in the credit industry. I started off at J.P. Morgan, which is a leader in the credit space, in their investment banking division. In this position, I leveraged finance and principal credit investment groups. There, I learned how to underwrite credit commitments of banks, to invest in credit instruments on behalf of the bank, and I got to see how the bank managed its credit portfolio and risk. I’ve brought all my credit knowledge with me to Blockmason, but in terms of blockchain knowledge, a great deal of that comes from one of my co-founders, Tim. He has a strong computer science background and was involved in blockchain from early on.
4. Who is the team behind Blockmason and why are they awesome?
Let’s start with my co-founders Tim and Jared. Both of them are avid techies who have really brought with them the expertise about blockchain. They are both very passionate people who love to travel and learn about cultures in addition to tech, so it always keeps things interesting on the team. We also have a great team of developers that work day-in-day-out to make sure they produce the best possible iteration of the project. Luckily, we’ve been able to surround ourselves with a group of experts who have a wide array of experience from entrepreneurs to marketing gurus. We’re very proud of what we have built here at Blockmason and that’s all to the credit of our team.
5. What problem does your blockchain start-up plan to solve?
The Credit Protocol is a standardized, reliable way to store debt and credit obligations on blockchain. We were tired of complex processes, so we decided to create a streamlined system of management for credit processes. Unlike our peers in the credit blockchain space who are addressing accessibility and cost of the credit industry, we are focusing on developing a platform on which developers can build to create a new ecosystem for the industry.
6. Please walk us through the user experience of someone who would use Blockmason’s Credit Protocol.
The Credit Protocol (CP) is a protocol for developers who want a standardized, reliable way to record debt and credit obligations on their existing products. Therefore, users would interact with the Credit Protocol through applications developed by Blockmason and other developers.
As a proof of concept, Blockmason created the first distributed mobile application that interacts directly with the CP (available for Android and iOS). Users will be able to access these applications directly from their phone. Our recently released Lndr is a bill-splitting and expense sharing app on which users will be able to use the platform to track and settle casual IOUs between friends and family. It’s even possible to settle in ETH now!
7. How big is the market you are addressing?
The market we’re addressing is about $4 trillion USD. It’s a space that hasn’t seen much innovation in the past years, so the opportunities for improvement are endless.
8. Where is your blockchain startup registered? Which country?
We’re registered in the Cayman Islands, but I split my time between the US, Asia, and the Cayman Islands.
9. What is your favourite blockchain that was created and why? Do you use it yourself?
When I first learned about blockchain, I was enchanted by Ethereum so I continue to have a soft-spot for it. We are currently using Ethereum for our project, but we’re also open to swapping to other chains if they solve some of the Ethereum’s shortcomings. We are looking forward to the Casper and Plasma updates for Ethereum, though.
To learn more about Blockmason, read their whitepaper and follow them on your favourite social media channels!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockmason-inc/?originalSubdomain=ca
Telegram: https://t.me/blockmason
