ETHWarsaw 2023: Panel - Hackathon success stories

um what's up I'm Matt going to be running the panel today and I think we have uh ZX kyc and a z coming up I think Adam's Adam's the 0x kyc uh yeah come on up and um who is it is it Mike that's from uh a Zer mik check yeah come on up do a little mic check make yourself at home we're going to keep this thing fun and sweet and informal and engaging so welcome everyone how does it feel to be back at uh at eth Warsaw you two man it it feels so great I mean last year was like the very first Eva in general uh but seeing what the team has pulled off for this year is like really awesome and for us it's like some kind of homecoming we have really great like memories from last year's hackerone but the over a conference and it's great seeing also other teams like originating from from this hacker front being here now on stage with us so exciting what about you Adam yeah we are super excited to be here kind of like a full circle of everything a year ago actually we still under year because it's like the hackaton onlyi started tomorrow last year so I haven't met Dylan by the time we a year ago from now Michael founder from the hackaton here with us and the rest of the team really cool stories from the way yeah so um to give you guys some context I'm Matt I do the socials here for eth Warsaw um do client work for a couple other clients and I didn't know who these guys were until around April May I think we all started talking I started talking to Adam ad first and Dylan and then about a month or two later I I found out about a z ID and I hopped out and call with Mike and your other guy uh remind me his name Dennis Dennis and and um we kind of realized that we can do these success stories um for projects that were born out of eth Warsaw this is like a it was such a pleasant surprise because I had no idea that any of this stuff's like happened and now it's like oh you know you guys have preed round you know we'll we'll get into all that stuff too but um I guess you know for everyone that's in here and anyone that's listening at home it's like you know these this is uh let these guys be your Beacon of Hope like you can you can really start and and you know come into this conference building and not actually having any plan or any idea of what you're about to put together and it can turn into a project that ends up being funded and and uh comes back to partake in the conference literally a year later so um kudos to you guys kudos to your teams and and your growth over the past year um and maybe yeah we'll pivot into I guess start start us off you know from from day Zero both of you like what was how did how did you get to eth Warsaw what was your experience what were the feelings like um being here last year being in the in a in a place where you had no idea what you were about to do and then and then uh you know take us take us from there up until like the end of the hackathon and then we can kind of dive into what you guys did afterwards got it so I'm from Oro but I actually used to live in Berlin a year ago so I had to come all the way even though I'm from here and I only came because I got the hackaton pass I was like okay it's for free I'm coming so then when I when I arrived here uh we started a group chat on in Discord and there was one more guy that I met in at antler in Berlin so we were like okay we know each other we're doing the hackaton team together the next day we already had more than five people actually come together and actually four of us still work together on this project me and Dylan ended up being the co-founders philli from cernick space was also our co-founder but coopering space is doing great so he's still there too CU that was uh you know startup life is very very hectic like our startup so far is default Dead from the beginning by uh by any metric but we're somehow alive so uh that's how it goes in this in this world we're making progress in a way that we had an idea that's very futuristic that we actually already kind of achieved by creating pre private defi swaps where you mix funds very soon also on curve with our protocol without running the risk of mixing them with sanctioned individuals and the problem is that if we capture the whole market right now we'll make probably around $300,000 which is not enough still more than we made so far but it's hopeful but we are pivoting to a different different niche of the same Tech that we built for uniqueness verification and de duplication of bots which is something came that came to us naturally from a different hackaton when we won the one user one vote partly thanks to MGR team member who I met in Bali who never lost the hakum so it was kind of certain that we're going to win yeah nice that's a super awesome story there and what about you I mean in our case it was kind of similar so in the beginning like I was like working with Dennis already my no co-founder and we were actually like traveling from like conference to conference to try things out to see what should be our next big thing and um we knew so we are building on L of zero it's like a new layer one blockchain with privacy features like super fast chain super interesting to build on and we were following their development for quite quite some time and we were like also we had a friend from from Russell and he was like guys where was like first time Eve conference in Russo and you should really come because like the organizers are well connected a lot of cool teams are coming and also lfz and we were like hey this should be our this is a great opportunity to really try something in a cool setup with maybe meeting new people trying out a team setup and just starting something or like trying a new idea and so we did it and the interesting thing is like one core developer at the heant team we just met him one day ago or one one day before we Haun and so we were three people from Berlin like me and Dennis and also another friend of us and so we set up this team of four and we were like hey um we can now really use this chance to create something to test something we had in mind and this is in our case a domain system something similar to ens um um which will be in the future the very first privacy preserving domain system but back then doing the hacker F the simple idea was developing this kind of domain system with rust smart contracts because L of Zer is as some of you might know not an evm chain but they're using substrate um which is enabling rust smart contracts so this was also a challenge for us because we were coming from the evm space um from us and then yeah we took this challenge it turned out pretty good and there was one interesting thing I might tell later in this in this panel but we announced the project even before knowing what we will win the hacker fun the next morning after we finished we finished it was was pretty pretty interesting yeah that's right I remember you saying that you um you guys you guys hadn't really like and that's that's the risk you know um of of doing what we're doing here it's like you might show up not having any idea they didn't even know what they were building yet but they announced you know the the project and then the next day didn't you say can remind us the number like you guys had a lot of followers that showed up yeah I think we got like 2K followers on Twitter like in a couple of hours after announcing it um so yeah I think this was a kind of cool move yeah and so um we'll get into kind of like how your guys's paths dissected and or diverged and and kind of like you know which route Zer X kyc went and which were out uh a z went um I think to kind of tie it back into what you know developers can do here is is look like they didn't know uh you know uh Mike and and uh Dennis knew other but they didn't know like their third person they only met each other very recently I mean was like less than a day you said so um same thing with Adam they all met within the Discord they weren't really like chatting to um you know directly they didn't even know each other in person so um I guess you know me being the panelist here I want to encourage people that the devs if especially if you're new and you don't know what you're doing or you know just just put yourself out there um Talk network try to meet as many people as you can jump into the Discord ask help from mentors um and inevitably you'll find someone uh we are also doing um you know uh like a team Meetup once the hackathon starts like that that'll kind of plug people in that don't necessarily have a team yet so um why don't we take it so you know hackathon happened um you guys won uh fill us in like what happened after the hackathon and then maybe like go forward six months and then we can kind of pause there and dissect a little bit um so um from zero X KC's perspective like what what what happened after the hackathon I just wanted follow up I mean if you're lost and you're looking for a team you might as well join us nice um basically I guess both of our hackaton projects got a little bit lucky so with a z obviously they have the support of the main chain Alf zero with us we have actually support of outlier Ventures that who found us it's not really often that a venture capital firm comes to you and asks you can we invest yeah I think it's really cool sorry to cut you off I just I think it's really awesome how you guys have this kind of you got reached out to or you got hit up by outlier and then they kind of gave you the stepping stones that you needed in order to be successful um you know to to kind of mirror what's been going on from the a Zer side you guys had your own little like in incubator and like uh learning lessons that were kind of handed to you instead of you know being thrown into the fire so to speak our first uh angel investor also is one of the mentors so it was kind of like it propelled us forward and we do it the same way right now when we find investors who want to invest in us and then we tell them you want to invest that's great but let's hold on we'll find more investors so they join you so you're not the first but we value your vote of trust that's what we did last time that's how we closed our preed round and how it went forward is essentially after outlier Ventures we were reincorporating in the US and we didn't even have an EIN that was like four or five months off so by then we didn't even have a bank account but there was a demo day so we already started raising the next round without a bank account yeah that's epic yeah yeah that's um and uh what crypto sorry vets crypto yeah that that's crypto for you guys so just like figure it out as you go that's like the biggest uh theme here uh what about you guys I mean in our case um the interesting thing is that lfz is like one of the like foundations or layer one blockchains which is super supportive for ecosystem projects so they just set up like an ecosystem funding program which is some kind of holistic support program for ecosystem teams this means that they are not only providing us and our case with monetary support but they are also providing us with some kind of design support business Dev development Tech development auditing Services stuff like that so it's like really holistic so if you're like a new team which is maybe building your very first big thing this is some support you actually need to increase the possibility of actually succeeding because so much or so many things can actually go wrong and yeah so many potential hiccups are on the way to become some kind of mature Venture which is also sustainable and maybe one step back to right after re hackerone right so usually you have a team maybe you have just met like a couple of days ago and then doing re hackerone it's like some kind of group dynamic everyone's contributing equally right but after we hackerone you actually recognize hey some people might have like way more experience with others some might have maybe contemporary or um yeah uh different matching skill sets but others might not so afterwards it's about finding the right setup to create a team which can push this into Adventure in our case we really had great luck with our team so all of them wanted to stick with us and and and keep building this project um some had like full-time jobs already some were like Freelancers working for different things me and Dennis we were like hey we were looking for something full time where we can push like the founder lifestyle and then over the next couple of months working together we realized what we best set up for the long term should be so for example the person who was like supporting us a lot but had a full-time job at gitcoin at the same time he was like Hey guys it was an awesome time but for now for for me it's the right like decision to stick with gitcoin go full-time so it wouldn't be fair for the team to try to keep handle two things right so in the end it's really about open communication that if you form this team and you really want something which is sustainable expectations have to be communicated and everyone has to be honest in terms of how you plan ahead for the future yeah I totally agree with that um communication is key in this industry as as we all know like and expectations I mean that that is massive too like make sure you guys align before you do engagements and also like check-ins are super important too so I I I also love how you guys um at a Zer or izer is one of the sponsors here um for anyone that doesn't know in the audience like they're I I think your guys' uh approach your lane is so unique and awesome because you you kind of have um the support like we we were just mentioning of the main chain that will is kind of offering like a One-Stop shop so I mean that is a super sweet kind of um you know angle that you guys have there locked in and and um and Adam also at at zerx kyc I I know that you guys you know you you don't have someone like a zero but you have outlier and I believe you did something with uh with buff aorn at some point um eth Denver also has a a pitching SL Venture uh side uh arm uh part of the conference so maybe you could kind of talk about that and how they've helped you um and any support that they've you know brought to kind of like La Propel you forward yeah I mean in our case the marketing obviously pushing it out the first time either you do something uh viral like a giveaway campaign or you have some support of some big players in our case we were super lucky and actually even Loki surprised when onfido the one of the biggest International identity verification Services decided that we are the future and they're going forward with the web pre section betting on us essentially writing a PR about our success in the hackaton with with Aragon and with born obviously they invested in us so far and most importantly I think next year at Eve Denver everyone um will be able to verify themselves with zerx kyc to receive Priority Access to the conference and some other perks so it's definitely a cool thing for activation for their Discord for implementation of our system within mantels ecosystem um interoperable social Community layer that we're also working on I won't disclose the name yet but the big benefit of our solution is that it's infinitely reusable and interoperable and we already think serendipitous things happening to us magically from like a higher power where literally we ask our clients did you implement us and they're like yes where we think like the the lead is cold but no they already did it because it's so easy um so just keep showing up I think the theme is here like here for both teams um zerx kyc I I've I didn't know that you guys are going to be implemented in in Denver next year in such like an awesome capacity I mean I only see monthly user acquisition going up and all the you know stats will just keep scaling from there on out um and then I'm sure after the conference you'll get more opportunity from that as well so um that's super awesome um congrats on on that and and congrats to azero uh let me just do a time check we got we got 10 minutes I I I guess I'll I'll start asking some kind of like closing questions um what what are you guys planning on um achieving at the conference this year you guys are one year old let's say at this point or just about to be um what are your teams focused on this year um are you looking to expand after you know how is uh I I'll stop there and then we'll talk about like new hires and stuff like that afterwards so in in our case is actually like getting the the word out right because we have just launched on the main net on Val of Zer main net so for all of you you will be now able to like register your very first azer ID um it's like a basic do so we start with a basic domain system similar to ens and all this fancy privacy stuff will be introduced at a later stage um and our case we prepared some kind of like free domain giveaway with like a super easy checkout process so for all of you guys who don't have a substrate wallet yet right you can just register with your email and then you have this kind of complexity of onboarding to a new chain abstracted array so really hit me up afterwards I will give you some QR codes and then you can feel an experience with like blockchain LF zero and also our domain service for the first time so we really want to make sure that you guys have a smooth onboarding to the ecosystem a great good first experience and yeah so also like after this panel just hit me up if you have more questions like why we are building on LF Zer why we are not on the evm side of things right now um yeah that's it basically cool thanks Mike and what about you Adam in our case we are hacking again because it's one of the rare occasions when we're all together physically uh we're mostly working remotely at some points even seba was in the middle of a jungle in Brazil um g in Korea I was in Bali theyan co- alician and waro Lindsay is now just survived the hurricane in Florida so it's pretty hectic but like now we're in person we can work together on the Core Concepts of what it is to be zerx kyc what it is to be creating sunscreen which is our antibot product for Discord and um we're also looking to hire somebody we're looking for a product designer backand engineer to join our team cool that's good to know um let me get you a link I have um some links I can share where you can set up a a job posting on crypto crypto jobs list let's talk about that after the uh after the panel um so I'm I'm you know azero ID Alf zero is uh uh a sponsor of the event so you know super great opportunity to meet meet them that way um you guys are also partaking in the why don't go ahead say yeah so maybe one thing to add so I mean we started at last year's hackerone and this year we will be actually sponsoring the hackerone with small bounties so for everyone of you guys who think about hey maybe I will try something out on LF zero if you integrate our domain system we have some cool small bounties for you and this is like really easy to get so if you have a working integration and we have a cool resolver Library so this means it's just a couple of lines of code you can integrate even only on the front end level if you want to do and then you're good to go super awesome and yeah zerox kyc is getting the inperson time that is invaluable um so it's super great that you guys are all together in one conference right now and that's I mean you know the ideology of conference hopping also comes into play here where teams can get in person time and really hammer out details that they can't do in remote settings um those are kind of the I guess challenges with what what you do in crypto but um we have like five minutes do you guys have are you guys open to maybe taking questions from the audience is there anyone that has questions that's that's here right now and I I always say don't don't all get up at once you know but um yeah sure let me go over here I'll give you the mic so it catches in the recording any plans to go multi-chain yeah I think that's a good one for both teams that's a great question and our case definitely so I mean we are building currently on the substrate technology which all of zero is utilizing and in our case it makes makes so much sense to go for other substrate change as well and interestingly on substrate you have this kind of multi this kind of messaging protocol called xcm and this enables us in the future to develop one single domain system which can be resolved and be utilized on all substrate chains which are connected this means even managing your domain the metadata trading it on a cross chain Marketplace on substrate in the substrate ecosystem if we are going into the evm space in the future this will highly depend on some technical things such as bridging systems between both ecosystems uh but someday in the future we should definitely look into some kind of meter aggregators of domain systems so that at some point in time you have just one identity and you can use it all around crypto and rip free this should be the future y sweet super awesome what about you we are starting by going offchain right now to Target a bigger audience to eventually take them onchain again with our seamless user experience our main goal is to become invisible to make the chain obsolete from user perspective well there words like account obstruction but there's also like progress in terms of user experience so obviously we want to offer a web free native solution for web free natives we want to offer a solution to problems which is Bots and duplicate accounts airdrop Farmers we say we we are destroying the farming industry except for yield farming uh that's hype uh I think you know frictionless and seamless integration and and kind of taking your your claws and digging into web 2 and getting folks on boarded that we've you know we all know that uh Mass adoption is the ultimate game here and I think you know not knowing that you're using crypto but you're using web 3 rather is is the is the move so I that's a super awesome play man I'm glad glad to hear that um I also uh we haven't spoken about this at all but I think you guys are co-hosting the uh the closing party right I think so DJ Matt K why uh why why don't what's the story behind that like where is it at maybe we can we can plug that as we close out here so uh I used to be a DJ um way back like over 10 years ago DJing like all over the world I even had a private tour manager in Mongolia at some point okay okay that's cool and now we're hosting co-hosting the E wara closing party so you'll be opening the set there's a Jerry M from splot playing in the middle and I'm closing with the party I'm excited to DJ with you buddy this is going to be cool let's go little Shameless plug there but yeah yeah we we were DJ friends and we didn't even realize this beforehand um so yeah if you guys are going to be sticking around for the entire conference uh you know zerx kyc is uh co-hosting it and I'll be opening the evening and and uh setting the uh the uh the stage for for these two uh lovely gentlemen to close us out um any any final thoughts uh Mike maybe to add like also today we have a super cool opening party for the conference hey Flex on flexon and I also see the main organizer on the back so it's like organized by L of zero and the whole ecosystem so if you really want to meet the people building this really cool ecosystem system just come by it's a super cool place with a lot of fun stuff to do I think seven eight or even nine like ecosystem projects will also showcase what we are building right now and yeah it's the official opening party so you all should join us tonight woo no we party harder no you party harder and it will be awesome but I think you will also join right so we'll party together and have a really good time we're all we're all going so I'm I'm pumped um thanks everyone thanks for showing up everyone in the crowd this is an awesome opener appreciate you guys coming up here give them a round of applause everyone thank you thank you thank you guys