Interview with the Nerd: Jack — Kysenpool
Let’s explore together their universe full of stars as Cosmos Outpost and Harvest Wallet!
One of the things I love most about this series, besides the fact that it gives me the incredible opportunity and honor to talk to people I hold in high esteem and deepen my knowledge, is that it has had a completely spontaneous and independent evolution.
The first interviews, those to Node A-Team, B-Harvest, and dogemos, were simply the result of the research of a very shy girl to find an alternative method of approaching people so that my questions and curiosity could be satisfied without necessarily having to leave my comfort zone (behind-the-screen).
I was aware that just as the interviews enriched me, they could have potentially enriched other people as well.
And with time, this awareness began to change this series.
Now Interview with the Nerd aims to highlight the daily and tireless work of projects, validators, and Cosmonauts in the Cosmos Network ecosystem.
Recently I’ve had the privilege to meet wonderful people, who work silently and constantly and, in my opinion, underestimated by most.
In particular, I am referring to Cypher Core with their publications, to Forbole with the Desmos Network project and to KysenPool, today’s guest, with the portfolio of services for users that they care for and implement day by day.
The first approach I had with Kysenpool was a few months ago on twitter with Lu Chen. A very sweet person behind a very active and rich account.
Little by little I saw her adding more and more content: start writing Medium weekly recap articles about the chains which Kysenpool is validating, guides (like the one for the new Harvest wallet or the twitter thread about how to vote with Lunie HQ) and becoming a concrete presence inside the Cosmos community.
Certainly, it was her figure that attracted my attention in the first place, but seeing how Kysenpool’s service to the community had evolved, I could only admire them for their hard work and perseverance.
Their Cosmos Outpost is posted daily on Twitter in two different languages (English-Chinese), they write Medium & twitter content as recap and informative articles and they have just launched their Harvest wallet (in collaboration with Terra).
Theirs is a constant addition, brick by brick, to their proposal.
This, in my opinion, it’s really commendable, and that’s why I’m so glad to have Jack Chan as a guest today in the 9th Interview with the Nerd.
So let’s start!
Daniela: Welcome to Interview with the Nerd Jack, it’s a great honor for me to have you here representing the KysenPool team.
First, I’d like to go through the beginning of Kysenpool itself with you.
Where and when was the idea for this project|validator born and who are its founders?
Jack: KysenPool started about a year ago from a group of friends that are all interested in crypto. Some of us go way back to college days. We’ve now come full circle. A couple of us are early crypto investors. Some of us worked together on a different blockchain initiative prior but has since moved on to then officially form KysenPool. The network effect of friends makes up KysenPool today.
Our vision has evolved over this short period of time from being a Cosmos Validator with building a solid foundation to start with, which we then realized that we needed to evolve into adding services on top of Cosmos.
D: May I ask you what attracted you personally to the point to invest and work so hard to bring new value to the Cosmos ecosystem? What are the uniqueness of Cosmos Network which you would like to emphasize? Also, there are now Cosmos-based projects which are, in your opinion, opening new path and possibilities to everyone?
J: Those are really good questions. There were a few things going for Cosmos that we felt compelled to turn our attention towards.
Firstly it was the people behind the project.
The Tendermint foundation was formed and was in a position to help foster the Cosmos community very well. They not only had a deep understanding of building good software, but they also take the time to foster a community around them. Having a podcast (Epicentre.tv) that’s mostly blockchain technology-agnostic really does help!
The second thing that caught our attention is that its vision of interconnecting multiple blockchains, to become the “TCP/IP” of blockchains, was a really grand vision.
This I believe will enable people to push forth and stay focused on that vision, which in itself carries with it a network effect of bringing more people (and value) into the Cosmos initiative.
And last but not least, the consensus protocol has evolved in a way that borrows really good ideas from other blockchain initiatives such as ethereum, Ripple, Stellar, Polkadot, etc. but emphasizes ongoing with the PBFT approach using fast finality.
There are some things that we would be forgoing with this approach, but it has a good balance of trustlessness, censorship resistance and immutability in its DNA.
D: An answer focused also on the business side.
I have to say that I really appreciate when the potential of Cosmos Network is highlighted not only as code and development but also as a potential for companies and in the services it offers at a marketing-community level (podcasts, blogs, etc.) since I think they are also fundamental parts in the adoption of a technology/project.
Returning to the work that Kysenpool does so diligently every day, such as editing the daily Cosmos Outpost, its translation into Chinese, and writing a recap on what happened inside the ecosystem, is there any curiosity or feature that you would like to expose in more detail to an $ATOM holder?
Are there news and/or implementations coming soon?
J: Yes there are things planned in our roadmap to extend Cosmos Outpost. We recently polled on Twitter to see what may be of interest to folks out there and collected a good set of items to work on for our next iteration. We are just really heading down right now on our next iteration of Harvest Wallet, a self-custody wallet, with an avenue to DeFi lending, thanks to a partnership with a Tendermint-based blockchain, Terra. It’s been an amazing experience so far at KysenPool and it’s really a fine balance between maintaining our node operations for operational excellence, building out the next version of Cosmos Outpost and now Harvest Wallet.
D: What other Networks are you involved in? Are you planning to implement your portfolio soon? If so, with what projects?
J: We’ve initially explored quite a number of blockchain projects, Cosmos was definitely the one that got us going.
We also believe in Terra and their mission, of making digital payments fluid, efficient, transparent, fast and cheap.
One example is a partnership with CU (formerly Family Mart) where they rolled out digital payments in front of real-world customers, the largest convenience store chain in S. Korea.
We’re also involved with Harmony as I’ve had the privilege to run into the co-founder, Stephen Tse, in the pre-Harmony days and really gotten to know him and the people around him which then formally became his team.
The team is amazingly hardworking, and they figured out a LOT of solutions around blockchain, such as fast finality, chain pruning, automatic upgrades and heading towards open staking now, just to name a few
As mentioned earlier, Akash Network shows a great amount of potential. We had the privilege to meet with the founder, Greg Osuri, as he explains the vision. We then tried out (and were tested hard!) on going through a simulation of what it would take to build out a Cloud infrastructure using a Docker/Kubernetes-like setup but powered by the blockchain, where the transparent accounting and payment structures were all built-in, including agnostic cloud vendor selection. A true dream for anyone that needs a truly decentralized Cloud infrastructure.
We’re in the early stages of looking at Cardano and spent a good amount of time in it to see it go through as we have a stake in it. It will be an interesting ride as they go through the next upgrade of the TestNet.
I can’t wait to see what Charles Hoskinson team at IOHK has to show the world once it’s rolled out!
D: So many things ongoing!
Your involvement within the blockchain universe really seems to be growing exponentially, given the very large number of networks that see you participating.
Has all this been in your plans since the beginning of this adventure of yours or have the goals changed over time?
J: As for our team’s goal now, it’s really ever-changing especially in these pandemic times. The entire world, not just folks in the blockchain space, is hunkered down, to get ready for really uncertain times.
We’d not only want to survive but to thrive through these tough times by having the crypto community support the efforts of KysenPool by delegating at our Validator, whether it’s in Cosmos ATOMs and/or Terra LUNAs, and the upcoming Harmony, Akash and Cardano networks.
We are self-funded and we hope that the blockchain community that we’re involved in will see that we can bring a lot of service-oriented value, with the Outpost, and cross-border financial solutions such as the Harvest Wallet.
D: I can tell all the team is working really hard to achieve such goals and I’m sure the community will reward your engagement very soon!
Seeing your strong commitment to projects which potentially have more than one use chases in the “real world”, I would like to ask your opinion about a larger way to intend blockchain itself:
Is there any problem that the blockchain, and in particular the PoS as Cosmos Network is, should try to solve in order to lead to a more global adoption?
What about the adoption of the blockchain as an active part in everyday life? Are there any projects that you think have the possibility to aspire to be the bridge between that technology and end-users?
J: I don’t know whether I’d be right or wrong here. I think that blockchain would solve only a certain set of problems, and certain blockchains would be meant better for certain solutions. For example, Ripple and Stellar are really focused on cross-border payments, with speed and some other sets of financial-related functionality in its core protocol. Most validators also don’t have terabytes of disk space to hold blockchain history but can still confirm transactions with a long-enough chain to validate transactions.
There would be IoT use cases that could use a decentralized approach to pass small payloads quickly while relaying to just a few nodes (with a low bar on the number of nodes to reach consensus) of how well a farm is fertilized, while carrying financial-related transactions paid by grocers, to help pay for the devices deployed to the fields.
For now, money is a huge motivator in our mostly capitalistic society around the world. And solving problems in the digital-only space makes sense.
That’s why we’re seeing a lot of hype around (Decentralized) Finance and payments, especially in smaller amounts like micropayments, or cross-border payments in third world countries where wages are low but there’s huge friction, in fees and reachability, to those rural and developing communities.
As for solving problems in the physical space such as supply chain, once you cross from the digital world to the physical world, I think you’d run into problems around the “trust” part of the transaction, whether if it’s using blockchain or not, it’ll be a highly difficult problem to resolve.
D: I think a lot of people should find really inspiring your answer and be pushed from it to going more deeper in their knowledge about the project you’ve mentioned.
I really love how what seems a simple question sometimes can open a new world to the readers.
So thank you, Jack, to being such detailed in every one of your answers, we will all get benefits from reading it!
This question just popped in my mind:
in a historical moment like the one we are living, where all social interactions are limited to those possible through the screen of our laptop, do you think we will see some change in the crypto community too?
Usually, exhibitions and conferences are always crowded with enthusiasts, insiders and investors: what could be done in your opinion to create new opportunities for these people to meet?
J: I think a lot of people might agree with me on the fact that there’s really no replacement for meeting people face to face. Hence exhibitions and conferences are a great way to continue the online conversations in real life. That’s why people really value meetups and conferences. I’ve had the privilege in the recent SF Blockchain Week to have met some folks that are what I now consider friends.
Honestly, it will be a rough few months of social distancing.
As we norm into accepting this later on, hopefully by the same time next year, we’ll be able to be more respectful of distancing when meeting in conferences, self-quarantine when we’re unwell, and everyone will need to ensure that they’re healthy (or be checked at the entrances using newfound healthcare devices) so that we can proceed with life as we once knew of.
D: It seems that we all agree on this: nothing can ever replace what a live meeting can convey. But I also believe that, as you say, from this experience we should all be able to learn a lesson of humanity and respect.
One last question:
May I ask you if your team currently has open applications?
J: We’re constantly looking for good people. Best is to visit our website at KysenPool.io and look for links there. We are a fairly distributed team and have opened up an AngelList page describing Kysen Technologies, the company behind KysenPool, and the roles that we’re looking for.
D:That is amazing!
Thank you so much, Jack for your time and your kindness, and thank you Lu for planning all this.
I’m really honored to have the opportunity to show to the Cosmonauts a deeper look at Kysenpool. I always thought you’re one of the hardest worker teams of the entire ecosystem if I consider contribution & tools you’re constantly developing, so I really hope you will receive even more returns in gratification and delegations soon ❤
J: The pleasure is ours. Really honored for you to take the time to reach out to us for this really rare opportunity.
We believe in being as transparent as possible as well as sharing what we know to help cross-pollinate the community to be stronger together.
INSERT COIN(S) TO CONTINUE…
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