Illia Polosukhin at the 4th Ethereum Community Conference: Enemies and Friends in The World of Crypto

The Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) is the largest annual European Ethereum event focused on technology and community. The conference consists of three intense days on conferences, networking and learning and features the most innovative minds of the sector.

On July 21st, co-founder of NEAR Illia Polosukhin featured on a panel called All Cross Chain Everything: Ethereum & Friends to talk about the relationship between Ethereum and other blockchains and the future of crypto.

Enemies and Friends in the World of Crypto

We often hear about the fights and disagreements between the different crypto communities. And, in particular, we hear talks about a possible Ethereum killer. According to Illia, however, this is an erroneous view of the ecosystem:

“I have always been involved with the Ethereum community since I entered the blockchain space and there has always been fruitful communication between communities. It is true that there is not always acceptance among other layer ones in some communities of Ethereum but I think that a lot of people of Ethereum want to work together because at the end we are all pushing toward the same direction, we want to achieve a free Open Web”. -Illia Polosukhin

The main goal that all protocols want to achieve is a free Open Web for which cooperation more than competition is going to be crucial:

“We should move from the idea of competition and the idea of an Ethereum killer concept and think more of ways to build bridges to bring more value to the ecosystem. Nobody wants to get rid of Ethereum, what we want to do is to give people more options to realise different experiences. Now, the current Ethereum tech is not designed for a lot of use cases that people have envisioned and continued imagining and there are a lot of things that people want to do on blockchain now. New ideas pop up all the time. What we want to do is to focus on experience on end users etc..to bring this all real in application that actually will transform how markets work, how people are treated etc.. and will allow them to be global. That’s I’m sure where most of us wanna be. So, it’s not about killing, it’s about bringing more value to the ecosystem, bringing bridges, bringing value across the world of crypto and making sure that people can use it”. -Illia Polosukhin

How to Prepare for Mass Adoption

Crypto is becoming more usable and with it the gates to masses will open, for this to be sustainable though, the ecosystem needs to be prepared to maintain its efficiency. This will require more interoperability on the technical side, but also a good working structure. For Illia maintaining a balance between economics and human needs will be essential:

“I worked at Google before and this whole situation of being one out of 100.000 people and having Google stock that you are rewarded but you have no idea how your contribution at the end kind of rolls up shaped my vision of work. In the blockchain space you are free from this structure and you can have smaller groups, clear incentives, clear communication on the work they do as well as clear ways to capture the value they create. This will be essential to maintain high standards and efficiency in the long term”. -Illia Polosukhin

Having smaller teams does not only keep people motivated but it also allows for a proliferation of use cases:

“What we are doing right now is splitting out parts of our team to be their own projects, with their own incentives, with their own token, equity, etc.. so instead of growing the pie we are just creating more pies. We have great opportunities ahead of us, we have great teams that can work independently that all contribute back to the protocol, to the space. The space is growing, we have more use cases, we have bridges, the economies are flowing across. I do not have a clear answer of how it will end up but with more experiments, more projects, more protocols will be essential for the thriving of crypto”. -Illia Polosukhin

Things to Be Excited For

At the end of the panel Illia was asked what are according to him the most exciting developments in the ecosystem:

“I’m excited about DAOs in a general sense, this is a way to empower communities, to give them tools. It’s shifting away from this idea that you need to create a company to do something and then you need to have a corporate hierarchy and all that stuff. Instead, you have a group of friends that want to create value and start a DAO and work together, invest together, contribute and then you have a structure to enable the organisation to work efficiently without stripping anyone of their power and ownership of the project. At NEAR we are now working on establishing a Treasury DAO that will be a kind of centerpiece for future governance. This will further empower communities and facilitate the creation of amazing projects”. -Illia Polosukhin