Nischal Shetty | Founder of Shardeum — Building in Web3 and Why Community Matters

In this episode of BeaconLayer Podcast, Kenzi Morikawa and Diksha Wells speak with Nischal Shetty (Founder of WazirX and Shardeum) about decentralization done right, what real community-building looks like beyond hype, and how to survive long enough in Web3 to actually ship.Before WazirX and Shardeum, Nischal began his entrepreneurial path in 2010 by building a social media product that started as JustUnfollow and later evolved into Crowdfire. At the time, he was still working a day job — coding nights, weekends, and any spare minutes — driven by a simple insight: creators and small teams needed one place to manage accounts across Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms. The product scaled to tens of millions of users.But in 2017, major social networks began shifting platform rules and access, disrupting whole businesses that depended on them. That inflection point pushed Nischal toward a different foundation: building on decentralized rails where the platform can’t unilaterally change the rules. From there, the conversation connects the dots — from lessons learned in Web2 distribution to what it takes to design resilient networks, earn trust, and build communities that don’t vanish the moment incentives change.