CasperLabs Mrinal Manohar Tech-Focused at KBW2019

This week Seoul was host to Korea Blockchain Week which saw a generous group of some of the biggest names you can think of in the blockchain industry these days. The business cards traded hands like a coveted currency and those transactions were sealed with handshakes almost every time. Promises of a follow up, some inevitably unfulfilled, were met with smiles or apathy depending on how well you could introduce yourself.

Then you saw the same expectant smiles at an afterparty, made a stronger acquaintanceship, then, maybe, possibly, a new partner or client. The next day you had to shake off the dust from the past evening and sift through the social currencies you collected in search of the most valuable ones.

There was, of course, far more business to attend to that will ultimately keep the industry chugging along as those social currencies are exchanged for real ones to help fuel the fires of technological development.

One of the more recent beneficiaries of that real currency and one of the main sponsors for KBW2019 is CasperLabs. This has so far been one of the more exciting projects to emerge in 2019 due to its under-the-radar approach to gathering an impressive team of developers and securing an ample purse, all without the bombastic marketing common among blockchain startups.

We sat down with Mrinal Manohar from CasperLabs to discuss their apparent good fortune and what they plan to do with it.

BN: How does a blockchain startup that does no marketing and has no finished product land a partnership with HDAC for consultation and development?

MM: What we’re trying to build just resonated with HDAC. It’s the same reason we could hire such talented developers. We aren’t compromising decentralization or developer tools. We are trying to build something real.

BN: With your developers being spread around the world, are there language barrier issues you deal with?

MM: No, actually we benefit from them being so widely spread out because we can have someone ‘on-deck’ at all times. In 10 months of operation we’ve had 3 developer off-sites. This keeps everyone up to date about what them is responsible for.

BN: That is apparent, but CasperLabs is ultimately a company in the business of making money. If you’re in competition with Ethereum, how do you plan on making a profit?

MM: I think you have to worry about building excellent technology first, then the rewards come. Long term we will be a consulting and services business to build on the platform. Vision and building an excellent technology product is what leads to profitability… I don’t feel that anyone in the space is competitive because we’re all iterating as an industry.

BN: What is the end product that you would be most satisfied with? That is, what is the goal of CasperLabs?

MM: Our goal is to make the most developer-friendly and entrepreneur-friendly blockchain that is completely permission-less and completely decentralized; really our main goal is mass adoption. Blockchain is crazily under-penetrated. Blockchain adoption is around 1%. If you take any other asset class the adoption rate is much higher.

BN: How do you create a decentralized blockchain for a company like HDAC, focused on IoT applications that will undoubtedly launch their own proprietary ‘things’ to be used on that blockchain, which essence would necessitate a centralized structure?

MM: Applications built on top of our blockchain can decide to be centralized. Also, our partnership with HDAC is on a research basis. We have our own principles for the blockchain, but the way other people use our product is up to them. That’s why it’s open source.

Big thanks to Mrinal for answering these questions. To hear the entire unabridged interview, click here.