Web3 Leader Spotlight: Michael
This week, we had the opportunity to chat with Michael, X Influencer & Co-Founder at Cosmoverse, the largest conference dedicated to the Cosmos ecosystem, interoperability, and other topics.
With over 75K followers on X (@Cryptocito), Michael has built Cosmoverse to bring together key thought leaders from within the Cosmos ecosystem. The conference strives to educate and inform the community about the most recent advances, implementations, and creative concepts through entertaining keynotes and informative panel discussions.
What's your Web3 story? How did you get into the industry?
Crypto hooked me after reading the Bitcoin whitepaper in Feb 2017. At that time, I had zero clue on how money and central banks work so I wanted to change that. I then spent the following months absorbing as much information as possible about crypto and started going to events to meet other crypto people.
In 2018, I then moved to Shanghai (China) for an exchange year. My major was Mandarin & Economics. During that time, I attended every single Crypto Meetup I could find. This eventually led me to co-found CryptoMondays Shanghai which evolved into the largest expat crypto community in China in 2018.
I also got to work with a crypto startup in Shanghai late 2018 which helped me understand the industry from a project's perspective and all the challenges that come with it - especially in a bear market. After that, I decided to double down on events and community which led me to co-found La Conexion - a crypto event we held in Medellín (Colombia) and Buenos Aires (Argentina) during 2019.
In early 2020 I then moved back to my home country Germany to finish my Studies which I had paused for a year so I could focus on crypto. When Covid started, I then decided to start a Youtube channel to share some of my experience, mistakes and views on the industry. In late 2020, I then truly discovered Cosmos.
What attracted you to Cosmos and led you to become a co-founder of Cosmoverse?
I always believed in a multi-chain future and not that one winner will take it all. In 2019/20, the philosophy of “toxic“ Bitcoin Maximalism became really big and I wasn’t really a fan of that. That’s also part of the reason why I created a Youtube channel - to share my views.
I randomly stumbled upon Cosmos because I had some ATOM in my wallet that I didn’t recall when nor why I bought them. I then put out a Tweet asking for guidance to understand Cosmos. Jack Zampolin then responded and walked me through the Internet of Blockchains and how IBC works. He then said one thing that really got me hooked: “With the completion of IBC, the original Cosmos whitepaper is essentially fully shipped“.
After meeting Jack, I then got to know many other builders in Cosmos which I started interviewing on my channel. I was very lucky with the timing because after IBC went live, I was essentially the first mover to cover the creation of the Cosmos ecosystem in real-time, until this date.
Cosmoverse was then the result of my experience in doing events, the network I managed to build in Cosmos during 2021 as well the immediate support from Juri, Fabi & Basil who became my co-founders. Cosmoverse was only possible in the Cosmos ecosystem because it is very bottom-up and super inclusive - which means that community members can step up and find ecosystem-support for their contribution.
How do you see the future of Cosmos evolving in the broader blockchain landscape?
Cosmos pioneered interoperability with the innovation of its flagship protocol: IBC. IBC is now in production for 2.5 years on over 70 sovereign layer one blockchains and routed over $30 billion in value - with zero exploits. It's proven to be a reliable and resilient; survived extreme scenarios such as the Luna/UST collapse and got stress tested with the more recent TIA launch.
What most people forget is besides leading the interoperability space, is that Cosmos also pioneered proof-of-stake - long before it was a big thing. Origins date back as early as 2014 as Jae Kwon invented the first version of Tendermint.
Where do I see Cosmos going from here? I believe that IBC will start to gain adoption outside of native Cosmos SDK based chains. In fact, it is already live today between Polkadot/Kusama and might be shipped to enable compatibility between Ethereum and Solana still this year. That would allow liquidity to flow freely and across multiple chains and ecosystems - which is one of the bottlenecks of Crypto today.
I believe the Cosmos Hub will strengthen the Atom Economic Zone and stay relevant in the shared security space. New chains such as Celestia, Sei Network or dYdX will onboard more developer mindshare and strong user bases.
Thanks to Noble and Kava, we also have native Circle USDC + Tether USDT which opens the liquidity gates while mitigating bridge risk.
What advice would you give to upcoming content creators who aim to contribute and educate within the blockchain space?
Just start. The basis of creation requires consistency, passion and authenticity.
On top of that, it’s important to define an audience and find a niche. As crypto grows, it will get to a point where it’s impossible to keep track of all the developments in-depth. This is actually already the case today. So finding a niche that you are passionate about (gaming, DeFi, NFTs...) or an ecosystem and then decide on a format (interviews, tutorials, reviews, content length) etc is all things that come with time, as an audience grows and the channel matures.
One big challenge however (that every single content creator struggles with) is to be able to sustainably monetise. Content creation is time-consuming and eventually requires a team of editors, researchers and writers. I personally believe that this is a big gap in our industry and it needs to be filled.
