In our latest instalment of ‘travelling around the world with a blockchain expert’ series, we are delighted to hear from Dragos Dunica, co-founder of DappRadar. DappRadar provides information and insights about all the existing dapps and collates all the information a person could possibly need about the dapp market in one place so they can make informed decisions.
At the tap of your finger, you can find out about the most successful and used decentralized games, NFTs, casinos, exchanges and marketplaces, among many others.
Established in 2018, DappRadar has rapidly become the go-to, trusted industry source providing high quality, accurate insights on decentralized applications to a global audience. The platform filters through dapp data and removes fake and irrelevant activity to provide actionable market intelligence. Dapps are tracked in terms of their active users, token volume and transaction activity to provide insight into the trends in the dapp ecosystem.
As we speak, DappRadar hosts a phenomenal 6778 dapps from more than 20 protocols and offers comprehensive NFT valuation and portfolio management. With over 500,000 visits by users each month, it’s clear to see why they are the number one global authority for NFT/DeFi portfolio management.
So, without further delay, read on for a fascinating insight into the thoughts of DappRadar co-founder Dragos Dunica.
What is your next travel destination post-pandemic? Do you have a place where you feel particularly inspired?
I’m planning to travel to Asia, somewhere between Vietnam, the Philippines or Indonesia. I love street food, and I like to travel for food, so Asia is always a nice place to go whenever you want to enjoy tasty (and spicy) food. The friendly people, weather and scenery, are definitely a plus.
How & why did you enter the blockchain space?
A friend of mine introduced me to Bitcoin in 2013, but it didn’t click at first. After a while, when Bitcoin hit $400, I started to investigate and learn more about the blockchain and mining, which later resulted in me acquiring some bitcoin (plus some mining). Then, on and off for the next few years, I’ve learned more about Ethereum as well and got intrigued by smart contracts. Since then, I haven’t stopped learning and being amazed by the power of the blockchain and how it can be used to change the world.
Why did you partner with Oasis? What plans do you have with Oasis in the future?
At DappRadar, we aim to offer the widest selection of dapps in a chain agnostic setting — partnering with Oasis provides an opportunity to showcase the latest and greatest projects built on The Oasis Network for our audience to explore and enjoy.
If you could invite a living, dead or fictional person to travel with you, who would it be and why?
I would invite someone really good at picking the best places for travelling, and that would be Captain Jack Sparrow. I’d like to have him around while travelling and I’m sure the journey would be fun, adventurous and eventually we might even discover the Fountain of Youth.
When humans eventually establish a colony on Mars, what cryptocurrency do you think they will use? Do you think there will be a standardized cryptocurrency, or will we see great diversity like we presently do?
There are a few options, I guess, and one of them is obviously Doge, as we all know Elon Musk’s plans for making Dogecoin the best cryptocurrency in the entire universe and combined with his desire to be on Mars, probably it has the highest chances to be the official currency of Mars. But there could be other potential candidates like SafeMars, as it could potentially compete with SafeMoon.
On a more serious note, I believe the world (incl. Mars) as we know it will change, and there will be tons of smaller economies with their specific currencies.
Looking at the state of the crypto space today, if you could go back in time, what advice would you give to yourself about engaging with the blockchain space?
Learn to develop smart contracts, buy more Bitcoin and get into CryptoPunks. But, seriously speaking, I’d tell myself to start exploring the blockchain space sooner because I had the chance to do it, but I lacked the vision and took no action towards learning more about it.
Due to the pandemic, many businesses adopted a remote working model. What do you think of this and can you combine it with travelling?
I believe the pandemic accelerated a process that was already in progress. Still, many companies have trust issues and don’t fully embrace the idea of fully remote positions. I had the chance to work remotely almost my entire career, and I think this offers a lot of flexibility. For example, when we started DappRadar, I relocated to Lithuania to be close to the team in the office, but when COVID arrived, we were forced to switch to a remote working model, and fortunately, everything worked smoothly for us.
I have many friends who are now working remotely, and they are enjoying this by being able to travel, an opportunity that not many employees have had so far, especially in non-IT sectors.
How would you explain your project to a 10-year-old or an 80-year-old?
10-year-old: Imagine Fortnite, where you buy a few skins and have some V-Bucks or Gold bars in your inventory. On DappRadar, you’d be able to see how much your skins are worth, explore other skins and other players’ inventories. You’d also be able to see how many players are in the game and discover other popular games similar to Fortnite. We’re similar to an app store built for decentralized applications (games, finance, social media, etc.) running on the blockchain.
80-year-old: DappRadar is a platform that lists and ranks popular decentralized applications (dapps) running on the blockchain. Dapps are applications that do not need a middleman (like a bank) to accept payments or to allow people to exchange value in a trusted and safe manner. On DappRadar, you can also see all your activity and assets you own on the blockchain, similar to a bank statement.
What’s your motto or favorite quote?
One of my favorite quotes is, “Vision without action is just a daydream”. I believe it’s actually a proverb and is very similar to what Guy Kawasaki said: “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.”
Vision is super important, and you need to believe in it and define it, but without acting upon that vision and taking the required steps to achieve it, it remains just a desire.
