Everyone’s Trying To Figure Out The Application That’ll Be Most Valuable
Name: Brendan Sturm
Role: Blockchain Developer @ Aevolve AG
Location: Chicago, USA
Brendan is a seasoned professional with experience in the finance, software, and blockchain industry. His commitment to blockchain is illustrated by the Meetup he founded which has 1,100+ members.
1. How Did You First Encounter The Blockchain Industry?
Buying Ethereum (subsequently discovering it). I then dived into learning all about the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and decentralised technologies.
2. How Did You Become A Blockchain Developer?
After deciding I wanted to get into blockchain, I figured that doing so as a developer would allow me to go deep offering a valuable service.
I started with online tutorials, and reaching out to people LinkedIn who were already in the ecosystem for advice. It wasn’t until I got my first professional project that my development skills really began to take hold.
3. What’s A Challenge You’ve Had Implementing Blockchain?
The technology is nascent, and many parts of the development process are more challenging than in so-called traditional development.
Developing solutions that address integrations with systems, scalability, & security can be a more time consuming than with traditional apps.
In addition to supporting development teams, we help them make better product decisions. Which features to prioritise, adoption challenges etc. This can be tough, due to the misconceptions about blockchain technology.
4. What Challenges Do You Think Need To Be Overcome?
As it stands today I believe the biggest roadblocks to adoption are user experience, clear regulation, and scalability. Let explain:
- User Experience — Interacting with a decentralised application can be intimidating, and requires significant time investment from users.
- Clear Regulation — US regulatory bodies have clearly begun taking cryptocurrencies more seriously, especially since the announcement of Libra. Hopefully, clear regulation should help adoption
- Scalability — While there are alternative platforms than can handle higher through-put, ETH (currently the most prevalent platform) cannot handle sufficient through-put to support the mass adoption of its apps.
5. How Would You Describe Your Experience As A Blockchain Dev?
It has been challenging, satisfying, and exciting!
Working with a technology that is still in its early days can be stressful, especially when most of the use cases are still unproven at scale.
Everyone is trying to figure out the applications that will be the most valuable, so I’m frequently reprioritising in order to align myself with that.
What keeps me motivated is the belief that blockchain technology is going to find footing across industries, and will be apart of positive change.
Published at Mon, 17 Feb 2020 18:20:23 +0000
