What I learned from 30 Blockchain CEOs

These pioneers are — perhaps not surprisingly — open-minded and willing to share their experiences and ideas. I heard ideas that made me think. They were refreshingly clear words that cut through the fog of the opium-like exuberance that we saw earlier this year. These are just a few insights from people who are changing the world, offering a glimpse (and perhaps a head start) of what’s to come.
Here’s what I learned.

1. Where are we?

"The epic 2017 bull runaway and 2018 crash have gone (we hope!), trust is getting back, serious blockchain projects are moving forward. We are moving to a new phase of adoption while worldwide experimentation and local regulations are accelerating. Main finance and banking players are entering the market, as well as prestigious institutions (Yale, MIT), and VC funds like the Silicon Valley leader Andreessen Horowitz. We are no longer in the excitement phase but, as the Gartner Hype Cycle would define, getting out of the peak of inflated expectations and entering the disillusionment phase."
— Pierre-Alexandre Picard, Co-founder at Predicoin, a cryptocurrency data analytics startup.

"Blockchain is in the "1,000 flowers blooming phase" of its development. Like the adoption of cloud computing or the early move to the Internet, the initial tectonic shifts in the market (and in attitudes) is met with a lot of resistance and some really loud naysayers. The economist Nouriel Roubini recently devoted 37 pages on a rant decrying cryptocurrencies and blockchain as overhyped and criminal. The fact that establishment thinkers are so moved, means the cultural shift for a high-trust, low-friction age is coming about."
— Dante Disparte, Founder, Risk Cooperative_

Hurdles

"Industry leaders, innovators and regulators must come together to establish a standard that everyone can agree with and adhere to. We cannot operate outside our economic and political systems. The blockchain is indeed here to stay. But it won’t be able to survive if tech innovators refuse to understand or educate themselves about the economy and the policy. They will simply be dead in the water before they get anywhere."
— Yassine Anadam, Co founder, Credits

Steady progress

"In Bitcoin we have both segwit and the lightning network’s growing adoption, which will decrease transaction fees; In Ethereum we have sharding, plasma and side-chains that basically enable infinite scalability. From an economics perspective what still lacks are proper incentives. What excites me the most is the development of better incentives and reward mechanics for crypto-users."
— Pedro Febrero, Founder @ Bityond (blockchain for recruitment)

2. What does success look like? (hint: it’s not just about the money)

It’s easy to read a news article and make a quick judgement on the state of blockchain without understanding a thing about it. It’s easy to be a cynic. But we don’t see what’s going on behind the curtains. There are thousands of people pouring blood and sweat into a new industry that will shape our future. Don’t let one negative news article skew your opinion — these pioneers are in it for the long haul.

"I would consider my projects successful if I managed to convince someone out there that it is time to change our monetary system. The tools are finally here for us to change the world and help create a better future for everyone." 
— Graeme Conradie , CEO, DNX Community

"Success for me is when I look around and see that a positive change has been made in the world due to the efforts of our team, our partners, and our community."
— Chris Butler, CEO, URallowance

"Focus on the long-term impact, instead of near-term price fluctuation and speculation."
— Simon Zhu, CEO and Co-founder at BitMovio

"Don’t rush things. Reputation takes hard work and time to be achieved. Your track record will precede you always. Focus on delivering. The world needs Do-ers. If you do that, success will be the natural consequence."
— Paulo Rodrigues, CEO, Stealth Mode Blockchain Startup

"The road to success, consists of a combination of joined efforts. The following are the success recipe ingredients; Desire, Faith, Specialised Knowledge, Imagination, Organised Planning and of course Persistence." 
— Bogdan Maslesa, Founder & CEO at UniversalCrypto.org

"The blockchain space is a huge enabler for the financial services industry. It provides the ability to help micro enterprise as well as large multinational businesses. It is non discriminatory and helps the wider population to participate at the same level as the large financial institutions. Naturally we are most excited about tokenizing securities and bringing a new future and opportunity to businesses both locally and internationally."
— Michael Kessler, CEO, Tokenise.io

"At the end of the day, we consider ourselves successful if we managed to make life easier for our users."
— Mickaël Fourgeaud, CEO at Primablock_

3. It’s business, stupid!

Most startups fail. Building a company is hard. Hardly anybody I spoke to exclusively mentioned financial success (although it’s important), but instead emphasized steady progress over the long term and all the various factors required to run a successful business. Grinding it out. There are no overnight successes, and despite the ridiculous valuations and ICO’s we saw in the past couple of years, the dust is settling, and only a few will remain. It’s important to keep in mind that while blockchain is disruptive, it’s bound by the same rules as most businesses. They need to find good talent, build strong cultures, get their hands dirty in real work, and add actual value.

"Many blockchain professionals in this space lack the business fundamentals such as valuation models, people management skills and Agile project management best practices which then hinders them into being commercially successful." 
— Daniel Santos Co-founder, DARA

"I think that in today’s world everyone expects instant results — especially where new technology is concerned. The reality is that even if the technology is lightning fast and appears to offer new solutions (as blockchain does for example) we can’t forget some of the fundamental basics which have served the business community for centuries. In other words, success does not always come overnight. From our point of view, success comes from building a long term sustainable business that is not dependent on hype or feeds solely off a speculative bubble. It’s better to try and work with the financial/business establishment rather than against it. There will be some ‘crypto anarchists’ out there who will disagree with me, but once you adopt any fixed point of view about anything, you will generally limit your opportunities rather than increase them.
— David Honeyman,CEO at Lendo

"Remember that blockchain is not the be all and end all, it is an enabler, but there are other things out there that need to be considered and you must look at concepts holistically rather than through blinkered vision."
— Michael Kessler, CEO,Tokenise.io

"Make sure that your use case is real before throwing yourself at the opportunity. I think that once the dust settles, we will not talk any longer about ‘blockchain development’, but rather just development. When this happens, you want to be on the sustainable side of this argument." 
— Mike Scott, CEO and founder of NONA

"As with all the technologies, there are pros and cons. Internet was a boon and bane. So, use internet and blockchain technologies wisely. Look at serviceable products rather than piggy backing. Do not reinvent the wheel. Look at the landscape of what is being done and their success rate. Use it with conjunction of new technologies like Internet of things and Artificial Intelligence. That’s what will make blockchain potent. As simple as integration of RFID based tags to sensor driven devices, blockchain can become the carrier of data bits which is genuine and fast." 
— Dr. Ojas Kikani, Founder of Yogin

4. What’s on the horizon?

There’s a lot of doom and gloom in the industry— ETH will never scale, the BTC price is too volatile for it to be useful, governments are slowing progress, etc. But there are a lot of smart people working to solve these problems. I asked everyone what they were most excited about and heard some of the same things popping up: Atomic swaps, greater scalability, more institutional support, better infrastructure, stable coins, user adoption, the tokenization of assets (STOs) and more.

"Non-fungible tokens and tokenization of assets is currently the most exciting. We are at very early stages but everyday there are new developments. For example, the project of ERC1155 is fascinating. Developers involved aim to solve the problem of scalability while merging fungible with non-fungible tokens functions. A clear advantage of the work done is the exchange of multiple non-fungible (ERC721) tokens in one transaction." 
— Marc Couzic, CEO @ Fieldcoin

"The most exciting thing for us in the blockchain space is the gradual acceptance and adoption of blockchain in the world of financial services. We are actually seeing the UK regulatory authority (the FCA) testing various new financial products such as ‘smart bonds’ in a welcoming ‘sandbox’ environment, rather than being hostile towards the new technology." 
— David Honeyman ,CEO at Lendo

"Stable coins. Also knowing that there is so many talented people in this space, makes me super excited about what’s going to be released in production over the next 5 years." 
— Paulo Rodrigues, CEO, Stealth Mode Blockchain Startup

"I expect universal acceptance of cryptocurrencies worldwide, and their use accordingly. Blockchain technology has already been recognized, now it’s turn for cryptocurrencies."
— Rashid Yussup, CEO of Taklimakan Network_

"I’m excited about infrastructure layer developments which will improve speed and scalability so that blockchains can cope with large scale network usage. I’m also really excited to see innovative applications of the technology which solve real-world issues. Mostly though I think it’s amazing how many brilliant minds are working in this space which leaves me inspired every single day!"

— Jess Houlgrave, Co-founder of Codex Protocol

"I am most excited about asset tokenization, especially in the intellectual property space. By tokenizing IP and enabling efficient trading of these tokens, a couple of things can happen: 1) Access is broadened to everyone through fractional ownership and opening up a global market with 24/7 trading. 2) Value is unlocked by unbundling and tokenizing ownership and utility rights separately. For example, in the entertainment space, owners of movie and music intellectual properties do not have any way to easily tokenize the se rights. Smart contracts makes ownership, usage, and distribution of value programmable through tokenization."

— Jeffrey Huang, CEO, Mithril (creator of Machi X, a social crypto exchange that tokenizes IP and enables trading)

There’s no turning back

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are on the upswing and here to stay. Mainstream businesses across industries from finance to supply chain to manufacturing to healthcare and beyond have all begun to understand the business advantages. Of course the future is by no means fixed. Neither is the speed at which technological advancement progresses. But the consensus is that we’ve hit a point of no return. User and business adoption are coming.

"We have advanced to the point that the movement cannot be stopped. The fire is lit, it’s up to us now to shape that future"
— Graeme Conradie , CEO, DNX Community_