Jan 25
Meet Pendulum Advisor and 0xAmber Co-Founder: Aaron Lindner
The Pendulum team is fortunate to have the opportunity to work closely with Aaron Lindner. Dr Aaron Lindner, who has a Ph.D. in Physics, is the former Chief Strategy Officer at Pendulum. Aaron now serves in a key advisory role for Pendulum and has dedicated his primary efforts to co-founding and building 0xAmber, the Forex-optimized AMM (Automated Market Maker), on top of the Pendulum blockchain.
In order to provide the Pendulum community with an opportunity to learn from Aaron’s extensive experience in the Web3 space, we conducted an interview and asked him seven questions. The following are the questions and Aaron’s answers.
- Origin Story — Can you tell us a bit about how you first became interested in the blockchain space?
Back in 2011, an acquaintance of mine was producing the well-known “What is Bitcoin” video. I liked the video and thought that this Bitcoin sounded like a cool concept. Yet it still took me another year (and another friend) to take the leap to install my first wallet and buy my first coins. And only the emergence of the first DeFi protocols another 5 years later really convinced me of the transformative potential of blockchain tech.
2. Favorite Projects — Pendulum aside, which Web3 project are you most excited about? No financial advice ;)
I’m, of course, biased here, as I am myself working on an exciting AMM project. 0xAmber has the potential to revolutionize real world asset trading, namely Forex. It avoids impermanent loss and allows for the highest possible capital efficiency.
3. Values — People are driven by different values in the crypto world; such as privacy, freedom, economic inclusion, ‘in it for tek’ etc. Which values drive you the most?
For me, it’s openness and inclusivity. In TradFi (traditional finance) you always need to pass gatekeepers for everything. Thus, a big part of the world population has no access to financial services. And it slows innovation down so much. It takes ages, and often costs a fortune, to launch a new product that builds on top of existing financial services. Crypto and DeFi is the opposite: open source is the standard, and protocols are accessible to everyone. This frees up so much creative potential and has the ability to 10x the speed of innovation.
4. Pendulum Journey — Now you are working with Pendulum, how did your Web3 journey bring you to Pendulum today?
In 2018 I was finally ready to dedicate my professional life to the blockchain industry. I was looking for an interesting PM role and stumbled over this awesome team at SatoshiPay. They shared my vision of what blockchain tech could and should bring to people.
Back then we were building cross-border payment products based on the Stellar blockchain due to its abundance of fiat stable tokens. Yet we always struggled with sourcing enough liquidity to make forex swaps scalable.
During DeFi summer, the solution became obvious: We need a forex AMM! Such Automated Market Makers provide swap liquidity 24/7 at defined conditions. AMMs allow for the crowdsourcing of liquidity. However, the forex space has special requirements which are hard to meet with general-purpose blockchains such as Ethereum. So we set out to build our own Forex ecosystem chain — Pendulum.
5. Learning — What’s your biggest learning in blockchain so far? It can be investment related or any silly, crazy Web3 story.
That’s an easy one: Not your keys, not your crypto. Take it seriously and keep your tokens on chain! Since I bought my very first Bitcoins, I’ve lost money a staggering 5 times due to centralized exchanges imploding. After the recent FTX collapse, I’m now finally cured and have reduced my remaining CEX exposure to zero.
6. Vision — Where do you think Web3 and the crypto industry will be in 10 years time? What kind of impact will blockchain have had on the world?
For me, it’s a no-brainer that our future global financial system will run on blockchain tech. There are just too many advantages to having a trustless, neutral, and standardized global settlement layer. But there is one important open question: Will this settlement layer will be an open blockchain — or a gated top-down system provided by state actors? We all should work towards making the former a reality.
7. Alpha — This is the last question, so can you please share some alpha or advice for the audience? A tip or learning from your experience in crypto that can help them grow.
My answer is not exactly alpha, as it should be common sense, but I fear that this is still only followed by a minority. Only invest in things you understand. And for crypto, this means you need to get your hands dirty and use dApps on-chain yourself.
We want to thank Aaron for taking time away from building 0xAmber to answer these questions. His insights and experience as an established and visionary builder in the cryptocurrency industry are greatly valued and informative. To learn more about how 0xAmber plans to put Forex onchain, check out the detailed Whitepaper or read this article summary below:
If you would like to ask Aaron or the Pendulum team any questions, connect with us on our socials!
About 0xAmber
Automated Market Making without Impermanent Loss. For real.
Follow 0xAmber
Whitepaper | Website | Twitter
About Pendulum
Building the missing link between fiat and DeFi through a fiat-optimized smart contract blockchain based on Polkadot’s Substrate. Allowing traditional finance fiat services to integrate with DeFi applications such as specialized forex AMMs, lending protocols, or yield farming opportunities. Developed by SatoshiPay.
Keep your eyes on the Pendulum!
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