Staying Curious in Crypto and DeFi...
PoolTogether Community Interview #6: Gabor
Welcome to Week #6 of the PoolTogether Community Substack. This is a great week as this week we are launching both the Spanish Language PT Community Substack and the Portuguese Language Substack! All run by Community Members.
So, you can now read about and contribute to the PoolTogether Community in multiple languages.
Today, we have a Community Interview with Gabor, one of the most engaged members of the PoolTogether protocol. (Thank you to @Pedro for the fantastic image specially created for Gabor!
Tell us a bit about yourself. Describe yourself in a few words/facts:
Two cats, one dog. Business & Law Degrees, 10 Years professional experience at a museum (bank). Enjoy good food (favorite dish is Langos), quality time with friends & family and meeting interesting people. Met more interesting people online since the pandemic than before ;)
How long have you been into crypto?
I've been in the financial services industry since the global financial crisis and hence have had first-hand insight into implications of the monetary policies of central banks.
When learning about bitcoin around 2014, I was immediately fascinated by the concept of programmable money with capped supply. Although I am a person who grew up in front of a desktop computer, many of the places in crypto back then felt significantly less legit than my banking app and it took me a year to educate and build confidence before I managed to buy my first coins.
Reinventing money was already quite a mission but what blew my mind really was Ethereum allowing us to re-imagine basically anything that has to do with (human) transactions and trust, removing central authorities not only in money but anywhere. I remember that I fell asleep in front of a random TED talk a mediocre top manager forced us to watch and (sleeping for hours to other videos selected by YouTube) but woke up listening to Vitalik talking about the possibilities of smart contracts. This was my red pill moment.
Do you want to tell us about the main lessons you have learned since then?
With all the innovation and novelties coming up I try to stay curious and just test products and services out. There are no "aha-moments", no "clicks" without trying new things.
Remember the first loan you took on AAVE? The first NFT purchased on Makersplace? The first time you bridged assets to Polygon? The first v4 prize you won from PoolTogether?
This sparks excitement and sharing these positive experiences with less savvy users is an important step to achieve mass adoption that will lead to substantial improvement in the quality of life of literally anyone who is not benefitting from centralised rent-seeking.
What was your best crypto moment?
Seeing the treasury diversification saga becoming a prime example for DAO governance and ending up in mainstream media incl. the Financial Times. A motivation factor to become a banker back when I was at school was to work on exciting transactions before they are published in the news and to be an active contributor to such events.
Achieving this by negotiating in underpants over a full weekend with people I have never met before was amazing, it really put a smile on my face.
And your biggest fail?
It wasnt a personal failure but felt like a huge loss. I was one of the lucky buyers of Robin Schmidts / Simon Wans / MEMEs "Rug Pull" NFTs that got rugged during Christmas last year. I was so fascinated and enthusiastic about this unique NFT project because it combined art, a social experiment and value in the form of a wrapped BTC hidden in a NFT.
Unfortunately it was exploitable and the game ended way before it got really exciting (with BTC price in millions which would have made this catching headlines in mainstream). The story got featured on rekt.news (https://rekt.news/schrodingers-stolen-nft/) for those interested to learn more about it. Felt like being a helpless kid getting the toys stolen.
How did you find out about PoolTogether?
Not sure anymore, but I think it was just the usual "surfing around randomly" and suddenly it appeared.
What made you stick around?
Definitely the community. It was a cozy place, very receptive for new joiners, focused on a game-changing product, helping each other and having a fun time together.
There was no speculation, no token, nor plans about it revealed and this actually helped to keep all "wen moon" discussions outside of the server. Although the community calls have exploded from less than 10 listeners to hundreds, the core values of the community are still the same, which is really remarkable.
How are you involved in the community? Tell us about it.
The PoolTogether server is on top of my discord list and I try to help and engage in discussions as much as possible. I'm an active governance participant/delegate with the most on-chain votes (only missed one).
Together with a handful of other very engaged community members we built the NFT pool way before NFTs were a thing. Since launch of PoolGrants I have been deeply involved there as well to push initiatives and support contributors in- and outside of the community.
Would you recommend PoolTogether to others? How would you describe it to them?
Absolutely and I am shilling it to everyone irl :) Last year I organised the PoolTogether Christmas cards which are a great tool to on-board your beloved ones to both crypto and PoolTogether. Together with a strong team we are working to repeat it this year and make it even better.
Are you involved in any other projects or communities?
Given my banking background I have dived into various lending-based communities and found a good place to apply my skillset at maple.finance where I have also entered into a collaboration with Maven11 in their capacity as pool delegate to help them build a lending pool.
We hope you have enjoyed this week’s interview. You can see just how varied and talented our Community is. Please join us today at 2.45pm EST in the PoolTogether Discord for our weekly PoolTogether Community Call.
Please watch out for the Community Newsletter on Sunday.