Engineers, founders, artists, and voices to help develop Web3 and the Dogepunks community.
Since we published Influential Dogepunks Vol. 1, our community has grown by 70%! With that growth, we wanted to meet more voices and of Web3 and the Dogepunks community. Today, we’re excited to highlight a lineup that features various other communities such as: TechCrunch, Rainbow.Me, and Theta Network. We hope you enjoy reading this as much as we did meeting them and putting together their version of Dogepunks.
- Matthew (Twitter: @panzer)
Matthew needs no introduction as he has been in the tech world for decades as a news editor and current editor-in-chief at TechCrunch. We were pumped to get Matt’s thoughts on the booming world of NFTs and how this may compare to some of his previous tech trends he’s experienced before.
i) What brought you into the world of Crypto/NFTs?
I was first exposed to the concept of NFTs with Dapper’s (then known as AxiomZen) Cryptokitties project. I flagged the project for one of my writers and we covered it a couple of days after launch, when it was responsible for around 11% of transactions across the entire Ethereum network. Since then I’ve kept an eye on what’s going on in the space but obviously the past few months have been incredible for NFTs in particular.
ii) What do you do now?
I run TechCrunch. One of my jobs is to make sure that we’re covering the most interesting and potentially impactful technologies emerging out of the ether — in this case both figuratively and literally.
iii) From covering other tech trends, what do you think separates this NFT boom from other trends you’ve experienced?
For me, it’s the potential it has to link creators and makers directly with their fans and customers. There have been a lot of platform plays over the years that promised this but in the end they controlled the connection between the two. The permission-less aspects of NFTs and social tokens mean that this connection can be forged in reality for the first time without an intermediary.
iv) How would you describe this NFT boom in 3 words?
Exciting, scary, promising.
v) Where can people find you to learn more?:
On Twitter and all socials and NFT platforms as @panzer and at TechCrunch.
2. Mike (Twitter: @mikedemarais)
You may know of Mike as a $SOCKS evangelist but he also moonlights as a co-founder and engineer of the Ethereum Rainbow.me wallet. For all NFT collectors, you HAVE to check this out. Not only you get to admire your crypto GAINZ, but the collectibles section is a fun and intuitive UI that allows NFT collectors to see all of their prized possessions in one place. Here are a few Q&A we had with Mike:
i) What brought you into the world of Crypto/NFTs?
I dove into the weird world of NFTs after going to the first Rare Art Festival (http://rare.af) in NYC
ii) What do you do now?
These days I work as an engineer/designer (sorta) on Rainbow, the dopest mobile Ethereum wallet! Check it out! It’s by far the best wallet for NFT collectors.
iii) What do you love most about it?
Honestly, my favorite thing about building Rainbow is being able to build a product that *I want*. It’s so fun getting to build stuff for yourself. Besides that, it’s just super rewarding building a product that your users love.
iv) Where can people find you to learn more?
Follow me on Twitter and checkout Rainbow at http://rainbow.me and follow on Rainbow on Twitter
3. BDOG (Twitter: @1111bigdog)
I first knew of BDOG from the Theta Network AMA’s as we are huge fans of Theta and their goal of decentralized peer-to-peer networking. We were excited to see BDOG pop up on our Twitter and we had to get some of his thoughts on what got him into this space as one of the key community evanglists for Theta Network.
1. What brought you into the world of Crypto/NFTs?
Initially it was another way to escape a truly dishonest system that is rigged in favor of the established players against retail. I quickly realized the potential for innovation contributions from the crypt0 space on par with that of the internet itself. Digibyte (DGB) was my first true love and was all in that, and then I found out about Theta. I researched it and quickly knew I had to convert all my digital assets to Theta and eat, sleep, and breathe Theta.
2. What do you do now?:
I have a YouTube / http://Theta.tv channel where I upload videos / live stream about Theta updates and blockchain research. What I have come to call my “legacy job” (hopefully to retire soon) involves financial modeling / valuation / private equity / private credit / data analytics.
3. What do you love most about it?
It totally humbled me how some of the YouTube personalities I had followed for years were kind enough to give my channel a shout-out when I had just a few videos. This gave me a lot of motivation and brought what is the most amazing community of people I could imagine to my channel. The amount of kind, funny, and uplifting comments I began receiving on my videos blew my mind.
4. Where can people find you to learn more?:
https://bigdog1111.com
http://GnomeStream.com
http://thetacoin.info
Much Wow,
Dogepunks
