Market Distractions — Product First

Many reflect on 2018 as the year that the ICO died. In a realm where technology is often coupled directly with a token that inherently has extremely volatile price fluctuations, it was easy for many to become completely obsessed with market status.

I believe that the type of deeply focused work that is required to make truly remarkable products cannot abide these types of incessant distractions. I will bet that Jeff Bezos wasn’t checking his stock price every 5 minutes in the early stages of Amazon’s rise to power.

This obsession with token evaluation can form a problematic distraction on many more directly apparent levels though. I observed this obsession permeate companies’ core set of values. It was fascinating to see this trend of projects spending millions of dollars on little more than pure hype for their token and brand. There was this massive, never-ending funnel of effort to raise the price of their token and keep investors happy.

As project after project died in the wake of the bear market’s destruction, it became all too apparent that any team that emphasized hype over real product was dead in the water.

I hope the hype-first product-second trend doesn’t pull a Jon Snow (spoilers), and is truly dead going into 2019.

Developing With Pragmatic Optimism

Creating value in a rapidly growing area of technology requires adopting a unique perspective. Especially in the open-sourced environment that characterizes much of the blockchain realm.

I find that we must consistently balance the following extremely carefully:

Being confident yet humble

Providing ingenuity with simplicity

Balancing vision and realism

In all of these things, I think the concept of pragmatic optimism is the general philosophy that should ultimately drive decisions. The ability to be confident yet realistic on your vision of the future while meticulously analyzing and iterating your current and future products.

Be able to take a step back and view your current product and future vision with a realistic and clear view. What things need to be improved? Where are the low hanging fruit? Yet, after hundreds of product iterations, dwelling on this for too long can yield a pessimistic environment. Upon deep analysis there are SO many problems, how could this possibly work? How significant of a problem merits an actual change in large scale product vision?

As a blockchain developer, I find that adopting this broad perspective is imperative to pushing forward. The ability to subjectively narrow your focus, isolate problems, and create solutions without getting bogged down by problems you cannot solve is an undervalued asset.

Focus and Collaboration — Going Forward

When talking about the decentralized exchange smart contracts I work on, I’m often asked about a whole wealth of related topics.

Are you working on cross-chain solutions?

Are you working on Ethereum network scalability?

Are you working on incorporating fiat trades into your platform?

While all of these are extremely valuable and important topics, it highlights a key point that blockchain developers must understand: you cannot do it all yourself.

I work with a team of less than 50 people altogether. Many of my coworkers are some of the most bright and talented people I have ever met. Yet, I do not think that our little team is going to be able to tackle all of the blockchain world’s problems simultaneously. There are thousands of other developers focusing on these massive issues — and when they arrive at these solutions we will happily incorporate them into our products.

One of the beautiful things about the blockchain space is the decentralized and open-source nature that characterizes it. Much more so than other realms, focus is absolutely imperative in this realm.

I do not see other teams in this space as competition as much as I see them as fellow contributors. We all are working on advancing the decentralized ecosystem. If we can do three things extremely well, it will provide much more value to the entire ecosystem than doing thirty things poorly.

As 2019 approaches, I find myself optimistic towards the future. Much of the noise is gone now. I’m excited to see the teams that arise from the ashes of this market to come up with real, powerful blockchain based solutions to problems. And hopefully, I’ll be right there on the front lines :)