Robert Zaremba Blog

Winning Blockchain Xperience Hackathon!

We did it!

I was honored to lead the winning team of the Blockchain Xperience Hackathon @ Oracle [1] [2], part of the Open Geneva Festival.

Our project, DEX Escrow, aimed to provide a solution for deferred money transfers where the funds are locked under management of financial institutions.

The DEX Escrow project was following my Escrow Protocol research for the SIX hackathon, where he was I was pitching an idea of inter-banking systems. The project was highlighted and go into the SIX finals (among 5 other teams).

Many thanks to our Blockchain Xperience team:

  • Guillaume Goutaudier
  • Raphaël Vieira
  • Pierre Guiol
  • Myself ;)

I’m honored (and thankful) for Guillaume testimony he provided to Oracle:

“When Robert suggested to build up a team for the Oracle Hackaton, I immediately accepted the challenge. I had previous experiences working on public blockchains (mainly Ethereum), but wanted to explore use cases where having a “permissioned” Blockchain would make more sense. From this perspective, the DEX escrow protocol was a nice opportunity to work on a solution where there is a limited number of participants, and where the reliance on a 3d party could be replaced by a Blockchain.”

Please read the Aires Marques post detailing the hackathon experience [3].

Read more...

Hollywood style crypto-specialists

2017 was the year of ICO. It created a bunch of new professions:

  • ICO Specialists
  • Blockchain Specialists
  • Crypto Adviser

This was followed by an outbreak of so called advisory crypto-specialists. On LinkedIn I witness thousands of specialist level profiles without any track of records! The demand is huge, so people naturally fill the gaps to catch appreciable market occasion and obtain visibility. Don’t get me wrong. We need profiles who understand the Distributed Ledger Technology (aka. Blockchain). However, at the same time we need more education and awareness to correctly assess and utilize “specialists”. Especially the advisory-level who are going to provide valuable business and technology input into your new projects.

Read more...

Word of the day: Praxeology

Why do we do the things we do? Why do some people like tea while others prefer coffee? Why do act as we act (communicating, learning, driving, working...)? This and many more questions are important part of any business and artificial intelligence.

Praxeology is the science of human action, which is purposeful behavior.

It’s one of the greatest AI challenges to learn the human behavior. It’s necessary for all kind of artificial assistants which we will see more often in our households and offices in the next decade.

Read more...

Doers, Coachers and Product Managers

What do you think about the following statement?

We Need Fewer Product Managers.

John Cutler recently published an article with same title.

Later, the author clarifies:

This post has been brewing as I interact with more and more companies struggling to define (and scale) product “management” in increasingly complex organizations.

Personally I can’t agree more. We need more clearly defined roles and more doers.

Read more...