Shawn Wilkinson is the creator of Storj, an open source cloud storage platform that can’t be censored, monitored, or have downtime. It is the first decentralized, end-to-end encrypted cloud storage that uses blockchain technology and cryptography to secure data. He is also the Founder, CEO and CTO of Storj Labs Inc, a corporate entity aiming to bring decentralized cloud storage to the average business and consumer.

Hi Shawn, thanks for chatting with us! How did you first become involved with blockchain?

I started getting involved with blockchain around 2012. A friend of mine was mining, and I thought hey, I’ll try it out. I mined about $50 worth of Bitcoin, and was around for the first large Bitcoin bubble. I thought “whoa, this is pretty cool,” started digging into it more and fell in love with the technology, started seeing uses for it outside of just being a currency.

Can you tell us a bit about how Storj got started?

I started Storj to provide crowdsourced p2p data storage. Most data out there is centralized, and by decentralizing it, I wanted to provide a similar service that was faster, cheaper and more secure — without forcing the users to change their habits too much. Storj was started as an open source project in 2014, and we launched with a crowdsale. The Storj tokens we released allow people to use space on the network. We raised half a million dollars through the token crowdsale, and in 2015 we started Storj Labs Inc, a company built on top of the Storj platform that provides additional support and services. You can think of Storj as being like Wordpress.org, and Storj Labs as being like Wordpress.com, providing additional services that make it easy for people to use the platform.

How have token crowdsales evolved since you started Storj?

Crowdsales, were definitely rougher in the early days! We launched our crowdsale at the same time as Ethereum — in fact, I contributed to the Ethereum crowdsale and Vitalik contributed to Storj. These days, crowdsales are more established, and there’s a better setup around them. We’re seeing crowdsales raising 5 million dollars in 30 minutes, which really hasn’t been done before.

What are your thoughts on the current state of the blockchain space? Aside from Storj, which projects are particularly exciting to you?

The blockchain space is still very experimental, but it’s a rapidly growing space. I like that there is a virtuous cycle and relationship between the growth of the ecosystem, the value of the tokens, incentives for new participants, and how the value goes right back into the ecosystem building new and exciting things. Projects such as WeTrust, Ethereum, Golem, and others are promising in the positive impact they can make.

How do you think the people working with blockchain can drive greater acceptance of cryptocurrencies among the “general public”, people who aren’t intimately familiar with blockchain technology?

We at Storj believe that blockchain and cryptocurrencies can only achieve acceptable among the “general public” though abstraction. You don’t need to know about HTTP/TCP/UDP or any of the foundational internet protocols to use Facebook or Twitter. Same thing should go for blockchain and cryptocurrencies. You should be able to use the technology to store data (what we offer), or transfer money without having to have a deep understanding of the technology.

How did you learn about WeTrust? Anything in particular that excites you about the project?

I met George at a fintech conference in Atlanta, but even before that I had stumbled across it at some point. WeTrust is an interesting concept, and it seems well polished compared to some other projects. I like that there’s already something there you can use.

Any thoughts on how the blockchain community can incentivize people to create more applications / dApps targeting social good?

I think the current ecosystem of tokens and coins already provide a method for incentives. Tokens like Zcash promote privacy, which I personal believe is a form of social good. Others, like Ethereum, provide a platform on which you can build projects more focused on your more traditional social good like WeTrust.

Thanks for chatting with us, Shawn!

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