Team Concordium brings together outstanding researchers, software engineers and business leaders from all over the world and we are proud to introduce them to the rest of our community. Today we would like you to meet Mario Rogic.

Mario Rogic

Who are you?

I’m Croatian-born, Australian raised, living in London. I’ve been working with web tech since I was a kid and have done a bit of everything from running a startup to a global corporate role. I love to travel, especially to snowboard! I also enjoy cycling, bouldering, cooking and coffee!

How did you get into the blockchain?

I really enjoy the idea of decentralized trust and all the curious human problems that come with trying to solve that! My first run-in with Bitcoin was in 2010 where it seemed the perfect fit for payments in this particular project, but it turned out too hard to get anyone non-tech to use it, so I stepped away from it. Bitcoin went crazy since then, but I still think usability is an ongoing issue.

How can the world benefit from Blockchain?

Long-term, the notion of what I’ve been referring to as “trust as a service” is really valuable I think. There are lots of businesses today that exist because of a trust function that’s missing in a particular industry or service, and a lot of things governments and banks need to do in a “too big to fail” way in order for society to function. That means more people involved, more communication boundaries, more chances for cost, more chances for errors.

I think the ubiquity of the internet and global connectivity presents an opportunity for some compelling new approaches to trust that are powered by blockchain, and we’re already seeing lots of interesting explorations and research on decentralised concepts that weren’t possible before.

What would you like to see blockchain doing in the future?

I personally would love to see better connectivity and accessibility between core blockchain tech and user interfaces. Today there still seems to be a lot of glue code required to interface with a chain, which inevitably becomes a bunch of additional software users have to trust. I’m interested in the idea of more direct interfaces to the blockchain, and how the blockchain smart contract language itself can play a part in facilitating that.

Why are you interested in Concordium?

I got involved in Concordium through Elm. I run the Elm London meetups and was working on some personal projects that had some commonalities with what Concordium was thinking about in the Smart Contracts realm. After a number of back and forths that progressively piqued my interest, I started consulting and then eventually decided to jump in full time at the end of 2018.

Why should everyone follow Concordium’s journey closely

I think what we’re doing with the identity side of things at Concordium is really interesting and compelling in terms of bringing the possibility for corporate and institutional use cases that can still comply with regulatory requirements, without sacrificing the privacy of users.

I’m also really excited about our Smart Contract language. We have a chance to learn from the history of other web and programming languages and leap-frog some of the early iterations. Plus it’s an absolute joy to write and seems to consistently result in fewer bugs — so I’m looking forward to solving problems with it!