#42: Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO @ Gnosis | The OG team, which created Safe & CowSwap and has been building on Ethereum since 2014, working on the #2 most decentralized chain in the space
Description
Stefan George is one of the most OG builders in the space. How was it building on Ethereum in 2014? Why they pivoted from their initial idea? How an ICO inspired them to build Safe? Why it later transformed into a DAO? How Gnosis Chain became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space? And why you used it without even knowing it?
This and more in our conversation with Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO of Gnosis.
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TIMESTAMPS
0:38 What’s Gnosis and how Stefan started working on it
3:28 Why it was hard to build on Ethereum in 2014 and how sharing the office with Ethereum Foundation helped them to keep up with the chain's development
5:18 Why they pivoted from building prediction markets and how multi-sig got designed to help with managing funds from ICOs
9:40 What was Safe’s MVP, and how have they been taking care of the UX to make it usable for as many people as possible
12:55 First users who haven’t even contacted the Gnosis team before they started their product
14:25 Why have they spun off such a popular product as Safe to a SafeDAO and how did it look
19:51 Why have they decided to bet on their own chain, and how does Gnosis Chain work
25:08 How Gnosis Chain got to 140k validators and became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space
28:00 What’s the geographical mix of the Gnosis Chain ecosystem
29:04 Three great apps DeFi that have been built on Gnosis Chain
36:00 Which of these apps can you use today
40:01 What are the most important metrics for the Gnosis Chain project
42:38 What zk & privacy capabilities they’re working on
47:06 What surprised Stefan the most during these 10+ years of building in crypto?
50:33 What would Stefan George build if the wasn’t building Gnosis
53:20 What would Stefan fix with his web3 magic wand?
57:48 What are Stefan’s favorite web3 projects?
1:00:00 Where can you learn more about Gnosis?
1:01:38 Stefan’s guests' ideas