Pangolin is Launching on Hedera! CEO Justin Trollip and King Solomon - Hedera Corner (Part 2)

This interview was originally published by Genfinity.

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King Solomon interviews Pangolin as part of the Hedera Corner in the LightHouse by Genfinity! Brought to you by LightHouse Report sponsor Hedera Hashgraph and in collaboration with our partner and Hedera wallet provider HashPack.

Transcription

Pangolin - Justin Trollip – CEO
‍But you do get these economies of scale that we've learned from other chains and other places that we can then kind of expand into Hedera’s.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, so I mean it allows you guys to kind of really look at that VC funding route too, you know, based on the success within certain ecosystems. I would, uh, assume, whenever, as liquidity grows and as things grow, you know, do these sub-dial tokens that you guys have released, it allows for I guess for more options for Pangolin as a whole and within these individual communities. Is that kind of a little bit in a nutshell?

Pangolin - Justin Trollip – CEO
‍Exactly right. So, so what it does is, though, you know, that token will represent how positive people are about their general ecosystem. Eventually, I think in about a year's time, we'll probably have to migrate all these tokens into a single canonical, once the technology catches up. In terms of VCs, I mean, we have a lot of these discussions and we talk a lot with our lawyers about whether or, first of all, you know, like whether VC funding, you know, we've always bootstrapped, we've always kind of made it on our own, so whether we want that VC capital is a question. You know, what do those VCs bring besides purely capital, as we've seen with FTX’s, yeah, and Alameda, there's bad actors in the space in all spaces, so we have to be very conscious of that, um, yeah.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍And real quick, just like for, so that the community knows, because I know you guys are you know, fairly developed out and built out into multiple ecosystems right now, internally within Pemgolin, what is the team size that you guys have, how many, you know, devs like as a whole, like, what does the Pangolin ecosystem look like from a team standpoint?

Pangolin - Justin Trollip – CEO
‍Yeah, so we're very dev heavy, um, so, uh, we've got like assortment of full-time people, uh, contractors, uh, and then you know, kind of part-timers. In terms of full-time people is a mixture, but about 14 full-time, I think developer almost everyone is fairly technically competent, so like for example, um, whether you've, I mean, eight full-time engineers that that's literally just what they do, but then like even some of the BizDev guys I like more, I'd argue, solution architects, so they might not Dev as much, but they do architect solutions or they do research and stuff, um, and then we've got our moderators. We also have an intern program, uh, which we're going to expand upon significantly in 2023. So the intern program has been amazing, actually. So the guy that came up with sunshine and rainbows he came through the intern program. So all we do is we have an intern program, they do a bunch of stuff, uh, if they, you know, if they prove that they that they would like can contribute to the team, we'll then move invented full-time, and the guy that came up with sunshine rainbows came through the intern program. So very cool.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍It's a massive value proposition within web 3 too is really cultivating like cultivating talent from within your communities, like it's one of the things that we really haven't seen like anywhere else, you know, especially like recently in this space, like you know, think about how many discords people are handling right now, or that they literally have team members now that just used to be in the Discord, um, and I will say, because this is this is coming out at the beginning of January, we're going to release this, but and obviously it doesn't really matter now because it's like late December or middle of December, but I checked out Pangolin's site, and there's obviously a HashPack wallet download. So for any of you sleuths out there that are like looking into the devnet or anything like that, maybe you caught that as well, um, and you talked about a lot of the value was one of the questions that I had, a lot of the value that Pangolin is going to be bringing to the Hedera ecosystem. You talked about farming, you know, liquidity pools, staking, the sunshine rainbows aspect from a governance standpoint, um, governance contracts down the road, on-chain governance, uh, or on Hashgraph governance, I should say, um, from an education standpoint, how does Pangolin try to educate, you know, new users that are onboarding into DeFi, because I, you know, if I, if I combine two assets and I create a liquidity token and I do X, Y, and Z, and then I don't know about impermanent loss, and then I'm down the road, I'm like, oh crap, you know, like how do you educate people in a way that's like easy to understand, and I think that it is, there's no, there's no easy answer to that, but like how does Pangolin do it right now, and how do you kind of see that going moving forward from an educational standpoint?

Pangolin - Justin Trollip – CEO
‍Yeah, so it's a great question. So I mean, I think a lot of, yeah, so, so really, the way we educate, obviously, with documentation, so we've got to make sure that documentation, but again, that also relies on people self-educating, and unfortunately, most people, um, you know, there's a reason an ape is a meme in crypto because a lot of people put their money in first and research only once they've lost money, um, we've all done it, I don't think any of us are immune to that, um, so it's definitely an educational piece, um, the way we see education, uh, internally, ss there's a there's a separate piece that that I'm busy spinning off in a new year which will actually develop educational content. So we actually spoken to a bunch of teachers from saw chain community because we love the saw chain guys and girls. You know and they've got like some educators and we're working on some course content that all goes through like an online course which will be completely open source. And then whoever completes that course, well then and also then I have an opportunity to enter the intern program. But you're right, I mean we talked about an academy for a long time and that's kind of with us you know this educational piece developed from. But again it's through multiple channels you know Twitter threads, what is impermanent loss, what are your risks? It's a technical space so you know we can provide the content but it's that whole you know you can meet a horse toward a do, you can't make a drink, so you've got to hope that you inculculate a culture where it's like look we'll give you whatever information you need but you are, that's the beauty of crypto, you're responsible for your own decisions.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yep, I know, I agree. I mean we started with a report aspect at the very beginning it was very slow rolling because it was like if we're providing free report a free report in an agnostic way across multiple different value sectors of this ecosystem and it's like man how do we drive more traffic into this? Like we have so many content creators and researchers trying to provide education and it's like how do we get more people to actually want to want to learn about this space? But it's I mean it's continuity really is what it is. It's just building continuity and it's just continuing to do it. I'm curious because I know we're kind of wrapping this up here but two last questions. The first one that I really do think is an interesting question to ask to somebody that is actually like building out real decentralized and DeFi ways for people to like potentially succeed in web three. What do you think that the future of DeFi represents? I mean we heard JP Morgan saying that they're essentially going to be and I don't necessarily trust Jamie Dimon or JP Morgan or any of those guys but wanting to flow trillions through DeFi. So this, I think we all know that this stuff is coming. Where do you think we're at as far as where is DeFi at now? How early are we and what do you think you know the next cycle is really going to bring us? We had 2020 with DeFi, 2021 with NFTs, even though NFT started all the way back in 2015 with colored coins on Bitcoin, why do you think DeFi is going to go out, you know, into the near future with this next cycle?

Pangolin - Justin Trollip – CEO
‍Yeah, so I think, I think we've proven that the technology works, you know. There's been all these failures and you look at FTX and you look at all of them, who did they pay back first? They paid back the DeFi protocols because they couldn't convince the code that you're honest. You literally so like when Three Arrows Capital all of them collapsed, they paid back the lending protocols first because they had to. So we proved that the technology works, you know. So that, that, that's a very important stage. I think NFTs are what brings retail in. It brings in, you know, a lot more users. I think NFTs are here to stay. I think, you know, they're grate for bringing in more people to our space. More people into our space means better adoption, which is great. I think we're going to see a lot more regulation. You can see it now with the FTX hearings and all of that stuff going on. I think they're gonna, there's gonna be forced KYC on most these protocols if they want to comply with U.S law. What that's going to look like is going to be interesting. Zero knowledge provides a very good alternative to, you know, the web 2 way of story, prudential officials, where if their servers get hacked, you're just out of luck. Whereas, at least with zero knowledge, we can provide a safe good alternatives to taking people's credentials from them.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, how are you guys integrated, uh, and you've you said zero knowledge a couple times during this, so obviously zero knowledge proofs. Uh, which, in my basic lack of understanding about everything in this space, zero knowledge proofs were basically just the minimum amount of information that I have to give to you so that you know that I'm me so that I can participate in whatever I want to participate in. And obviously there's, there's levels of that. But yeah, hang on integrating that right now as far as like zero knowledge proofs are concerned. And, and what is your thought, like, I'm just curious because I know you brought it up a couple of things and I don't hear many, yeah, a lot.

Pangolin - Justin Trollip – CEO
‍So it's super early. Like, for me, the thing is zero knowledge is the future. It's gonna be the most, what it's going to change the world fundamentally, um, to me. Like, I'm a fan, obviously, um, but, but the thing is, it's very, like, like all technologies, it's very, like, you know, it goes on a wave and we're in an early wave. So zero knowledge iss like it's basically, you know, let's say, for example, you want to know that, I'm a South African Australian, right? So, so now, you like, if I go on to your DeFi protocol, you need like I can access certain things as a South African and certain things as an Aussie. So then it's like, okay, so now normally in a six you would say, oh yeah, now on both your passports, I'm going to give you copies of my passport, you're gonna store that in the centralized database. Well, when that database gets hacked, it's going to be distributed everywhere and I'm going to get scammers phone in before, yeah, okay. In zero knowledge it says, oh yeah, and you don't have to give me your passport to prove that you're South African and Aussie. So with that, with zero knowledge, you know, so I can cryptographically prove that I'm a South African and an Aussie without ever having to give you a copy of my passport. Therefore, my identity and my data is safe. I'm not, you're not farming it like a Facebook or any of those people. It's just you can prove things without giving things up.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yep, no, and I love it because I agree with you. I really do think that you know, I'm really interested to see where like the work around zero knowledge proofs goes in the very near future because I think when we start tying in, which is coming, no matter what anybody else thinks, like digital identity and all, you know, there's going to be a convergence of all of these technologies within, I mean, with probably within this decade, a lot of this stuff is going to come to light or at least we'll see where this is going from the regulatory standpoint about how this looks. Um, no, I love it, and you're like one of the first people I've interviewed that I actually brought up uh zero knowledge proofs um. So kind of the last question that I have, being that you are um gonna be coming to the Hedera community or by the time that this launches, it'll literally be like impending um any day um. If you had you know a chance to speak to the Hedera community about what Pangolin represents, kind of just in a in 30 seconds like what is Pangolin bringing, and I know we touched on it this entire thing, but it's great for like just a short snippet clip um. So Pangolin is coming to the you know Hedera Hashgraph and uh we have an opportunity for you to kind of talk to the community, be like what is Pangolin actually going to bring in, just kind of a short elevator pitch, like not pitch but you know what I'm saying.

Pangolin - Justin Trollip – CEO
‍Yeah, yeah. So, so I think that you know we want to be good community members, like first and foremost right, so like, yeah, we bring in a DEX and stuff, but we also, we're part of the community, so we want to contribute to that community. We also want to bring our learnings. So currently, you, you know, there's a lot of innovation that we see on other chains that we think that would do really well on Hedera. So we want to take all of these learnings we get from being a multi-chained DEX and you use that in order for you, you know, the community to get access to the latest versions of this technology. Right, so, um, and within that, we want to contribute back. You know, we want to make sure that, like, you know, it's a safe community. You know, one of the key things is like, for example, within smart contracts, you know, you want to make sure that smart contracts are verified on, uh, you know, the Hashgraph, so that people can see what they're interacting with. We want to make sure that, you know, rags don't occur, or that there's good actors, and you know that if there's bad actors entering the space, you know, we have tools as a community to combat them. So it's a community, it really is that's, so you know, we want to bring this technology, we want to use it, we want to make sure that you love our technology because we want to build great products that our users love, um, but it's more than that, you know, it's, we want to be good community members.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍No, I, I really appreciate it, again, everybody, um, well for you Justin, I mean, I, I know how early it is right, uh, I know how early it is where you're at right now, I know how busy you certainly are on a daily basis. Again, we had Justin Trollip, CEO and PM, or if you would like to refer him to the self-imposed title, uh, as Chief Herder within, uh, Pangolin, uh, there, you guys heard it, you know, the Pangolin DEX is coming to Hedera, and by the time that this launches, it's probably going to be literally any day, uh, thank you so much Justin for your time, I'm sure that we're going to be doing another one of these, uh, interviews in probably early 2023 as well, uh, and if you're listening to this and watching this, it is early 2023 for you, so I will talk to you guys when I talk to you, and Justin, thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.

Pangolin - Justin Trollip – CEO
‍Yeah, thanks, honor, real pleasure.