TEAM FEATURE SERIES
Introducing Daniel Hwang — Head of Ecosystem Development
“What stands out with Terra is that it has the opportunity to emphasize exposure to non-crypto natives. It has successfully reached almost 2 million users who will now have the opportunity to be exposed to the powerful existing products and platforms as we continue to break down barriers for the rest of the world.”
We are excited to introduce our Team Feature Series to provide our community members with a glimpse into the individuals that make up the Terra team in conjunction with our forthcoming weekly Terra Community Calls! This is an opportunity for us at Terra to provide our community with greater transparency and get to know our community members better, and you, us.
Terra Open Community Call
Time:
Aug. 28 (Fri), 2020 09:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Aug. 29 (Sat), 2020 3:30 AM CEST (Germany)
Aug. 29 (Sat), 2020 4:30 AM MST (Moscow)
Aug. 29 (Sat), 2020 9:30 AM SST (Singapore)
Aug. 29 (Sat), 2020 10:30 AM KST (Korea)Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 974 2860 9923
Passcode: 395781
Find your local number
Background
Bridging the gap between CeFi and DeFi and masterminding products designed to be adopted by the masses from their very inception are ambitious goals that necessitate the help of a community of developers, validators, partners, and supporters. Building bridges across organizations, regions, and audiences to scale in accordance with Terra’s vision requires extraordinary coordination, a deep knowledge of the industry, and remarkable communication abilities.
We’ve had the fortune to find these qualities in Daniel Hwang, Terra’s Head of Ecosystem Development, who brings an unmatched passion for uniting like-minded individuals and demonstrating how blockchain technology can be applied across a variety of domains to create positive impact. His diverse experiences in computer science research, and the legal, pharmaceutical, and education fields have been an asset, enabling him to connect the dots across multiple domains.
Building Ecosystems at Terra
Daniel got his start tinkering around with cryptocurrencies in 2013 by mining Dogecoin and since then, has worked with the general adoption of cryptocurrency in endeavors ranging from working with crypto natives to finding solutions for remittances in Filipino fishing villages. His efforts towards adoption led him to the building of hyper-localized decentralized exchanges funded by a grant from 0x protocol and eventually educational on-boarding platforms as he found that the value proposition of blockchain and cryptocurrency needed to be communicated more effectively. He has also led efforts in permissioned blockchain usage in pharmaceutical supply chain applications from within pharmaceutical companies as well as led working groups on appropriate health data applicability on blockchain with the IEEE.
Prior to joining Terra, he focused on cryptography and health technology applications during his Computer Science graduate program at John Hopkins University. The breadth of his experiences has exposed him to the problems that developer communities have been working on, namely, on making the benefits of crypto available to the masses.
Though a crypto-native himself, he is passionate about making crypto accessible to non-crypto natives. He brings empathy and a knack for genuine connection to ecosystem-building, enabling us to build a strong community of Terrans, which is rapidly expanding across both Asia and the West.
What is your vision for Terra’s community?
“I’m excited with the growth the Terra ecosystems have had. The overlaps between the community, developer, validator, and research communities have been coalescing to form really interesting narratives. Specifically, I think that the validator ecosystem has a key role to play in Terra (and even all of PoS) for how continued growth, governance, and development can happen by cultivating the community and 3rd party developer ecosystems. We’ve seen the starts of these sorts of distributed and regional hubs for digital and on-the-ground communities that I am excited to see play a major role in the growth and adoption of Terra’s network, applications, and users.”
Moving Towards Mass Adoption
Drawn to Terra’s initial emphasis on exposure to non-crypto natives, Daniel has been dedicated to helping Terra build out the bridges for the traditional non-crypto-native world to the blockchain world. Mass adoption is being achieved with the successes of the Chai payments app with nearly 2 million users and the upcoming launch of Anchor, which will transform the interchain DeFi space. Terra is building the bridges for CeFi to DeFi with applications like Chai and Anchor exposing the benefits of blockchain for everyone — not just crypto-natives.
What is the driving force behind your work?
“Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to see how radically the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystems have changed and improved, as well as how some have stayed the same. As basic as public key cryptography might be for someone studying cryptography, the fundamental keys towards adoption for many cryptocurrencies have remained static. Imagine trying to win over a family in a fishing village expecting money from a family member abroad when Dogecoin prices were wildly fluctuating and the methods of securing their wallets and banking withdrawals took much explaining and hours of travel to the nearest bank. These barriers to adoption have even plagued tech-savvy users. In times of low aggregate marketcaps, stability has more often than not been at the whims of amorphous entities — often as indefinite cartels.
The stablecoin approaches have been backed by fiat, commodities, and other cryptocurrencies. Algorithmic approaches have been the most decentralized. Finally, the user segments that almost all cryptocurrencies have wooed have been comprised of crypto-natives like me. Those users remain in that tiny segment and are frequently fought over by other networks. However, there have been projects like Terra’s that have expanded its reach beyond and have seen adoption and use 10 to 100 times more than existing networks.
The barriers to entry for any new technology have always existed. I used to see cryptocurrency’s barriers as rights of passage. Yet, the banking system did not collapse overnight and get replaced when Bitcoin was introduced to the world. Price stability was not achieved from natural market forces and everyone did not suddenly become experts in cryptography fundamentals. Projects like Terra tackled these barriers both directly and indirectly. Barriers do not come crashing down overnight. Easing the rest of the world into this ecosystem is as important as the technology itself — after all, what use is it if no one uses it?
As the rest of the world adopts familiar e-commerce platforms and the payment gateways associated with them, we can begin to bring down barriers slowly but surely. Maybe not all will understand the value of public keys or self-sovereignty, but I believe these barriers can and will come down surely. Terra’s approach and adoption has been something that I’ve seen tackling many of the issues of the cryptocurrency space and a large part of the reason I am so excited to push it forward!”
