Fighting Back Against Techno Monopoly with Michael Sena

Today we’re talking to Michael Sena, founder of 3Box Labs. Michael's crypto story started in early 2016 when he was working as a product management consultant in California. He started thinking about what applications could really help us fight back against the techno monopoly of Google, Apple, and Facebook. That’s when he came across Ethereum, and all the ideas he had just clicked into place. Michael couldn’t shake the itch, and so he moved to New York, where he joined the company ConsenSys. There he found a place in the identity working group, which would go on to create uPort, the first platform for decentralized identity and self-sovereign data. They delivered decentralized identity solutions to various governments and institutions around the world using the Ethereum blockchain. This is when Michael saw an emerging need for Web3 developers. 3Box Labs was the original inventors of the Ceramic Network, which is a decentralized protocol for mutable real-time data. In other words, they give database-like capabilities in a completely decentralized way. Michael says a lot goes into designing a system like that. The 3Box Labs team is only 13 people, but they’re in the process of scaling up dramatically. Michael says they have a bunch of teams building on the Ceramic Network. Ceramic can be used on all applications built of real, live data. They’re seeing the most traction in core Web3 decentralized apps such as DeFi, NFT’s, and DAO’s. A few months back, Ceramic went live with an early version of Main Net, and they’ve started to onboard projects that developed on Test Net and want to be on Main Net. Eventually, Main Net will be fully open to everyone. One main focus of 3Box Labs is to continue building out the features and functionality to drive more use and adoption. They hope to continue optimizing to make Ceramic more broadly usable. Another focus is shoring up some of the peer to peer architecture of the system under the hood, potentially introducing some crypto economic incentives. If you would like to learn more about 3Box Labs, they can be found at www.3boxlabs.com. They are very active on Discord, which can be found at www.chat.ceramic.network. For anyone interested in working for 3Box Labs, Michael says they’re currently scaling the team and to please visit www.jobs.level.co/3box. -- Divi is creating the world's first closed-loop, vertically-integrated cryptocurrency ecosystem. Much like Apple's ecosystem is anchored by iCloud, the Divi Project blockchain serves as the core of the Divi network of technologies. Thanks to a keen understanding of the divide that separates the mainstream from the crypto world, the Divi team is able to create solutions to the industry's biggest problem: adoption by non-technical users. Divi's user-friendly, one-click solutions aim to bring blockchain-based payments into modernity with great UX. In this podcast, we will cover all aspects of cryptocurrency, hot topics, and technology as worldwide adoption grows.