EthCC Voices: Lukas Schor, Product Manager of Gnosis Safe
During his interview, Lukas explains why DAOs, layer 2 solutions and privacy tech are the next big trends in Ethereum.
Welcome to EthCC Voices, the Medium Series for the EthCC community. Taking place in Paris from 20–22 July 2021, the conference organised by Ethereum France is regarded as Europe’s leading Ethereum conference for the community by the community!
For this instalment of EthCC Voices, we spoke to Lukas Schor. Lucas has been working in product-related roles in the blockchain industry for the past four years with the goal of empowering users and fostering web3 innovation. He joined Gnosis in early 2019 to take over the role of Product Manager for the Gnosis Safe projectt], which now manages more than $40 billion in digital assets. Lukas is speaking at EthCC [4] about how Gnosis Safe will operate in a multichain future.
In his interview, Lukas discusses his introduction to Ethereum and why the ecosystem remained strong in 2020.
Lukas, How has being a part of EthCC impacted you thus far?
EthCC was actually my personal introduction to the Ethereum ecosystem. Participating in EthCC[2] in 2019, just 3 months after joining Gnosis, was my very first major community event. It was in fact these days in Paris where I really got hooked on the dynamism and diversity of the community. It’s where I built up my initial network and was introduced to some of the smartest people I have ever met, which has been fundamental in the years that followed. So since then I look forward to attending each year to be inspired, meet old and new friends and enjoy the beautiful city of Paris.
What did you achieve in previous years at EthCC?
I had the pleasure of coming back to EthCC[3] in 2020 as a speaker and used this opportunity to announce a completely new direction for Gnosis Safe: Safe Apps. Those are dApps that can be accessed right through the Gnosis Safe interface. Naturally it was essential to rally the community of dApp developers behind the vision of Safe Apps, so presenting this initiative at EthCC was an obvious choice. It was at the conference where we connected with teams such as the Request Network, which ended up being the first projects building on our platform bootstrapping the Safe Apps ecosystem.
2020 was a crazy year, what was an industry highlight for you?
While I personally prefer the quieter bear market years, it was definitely exciting seeing a whole new generation of users get onboarded to Ethereum and contribute to the advancements in DeFi.
My personal highlight was observing how little the Ethereum ecosystem was impacted by the disruptions and restrictions caused by the pandemic. As our industry is very remote-work friendly, we were able to progress smoothly where other industries stagnated.
In other ways the community even thrived because of this changing paradigm. We have seen, for example, ETHGlobal quickly filling the gap left behind by cancelled in-person conferences and perfecting the online conference/hackathon experience. All of these initiatives allowed the Ethereum Community to become even more inclusive and global.
What blockchain trends do you think will be big in 2022?
There are a couple of trends that I am personally looking forward to. The first is Layer 2 solutions & sidechains; Recent gas price spikes were the perfect justification for many new Layer 2 and sidechain networks emerging and opening their platforms to developers and users. I think this will become a very dynamic part of the ecosystem, where some networks might eventually be outcompeted and die off, but others finding network-market-fit and building up thriving ecosystems. This will likely be accompanied by more sophisticated tooling such as cross-chain bridges, wallets and other infrastructure embracing the multichain future.
Secondly, I anticipate lots of advancements in overall DAO tooling and governance to follow this year’s renewed excitement around decentralized autonomous organizations. We are really just at the beginning of leveraging this new initiative for coordinating people and I’m positive that 2022 will prove that there is substance behind the current hype.
Lastly, there has been steady progress in privacy tech this year with projects such as Aztec and Tornado Cash leading the way. I hope 2022 will be the year where privacy-preserving transactions will finally become the norm rather than the exception. This will be crucial as crypto forensics tools will become more sophisticated and make it easier to trace back blockchain activity to an individual.
Anything else you want to add?
I’d love to shill our hiring efforts! We are currently building a first-class team that will bring Gnosis Safe to the next level and closer to our vision of building the “operating system for Ethereum”. If you’re smart, motivated and keen to join our team, make sure to get in touch. We are hiring in engineering, product, design and others. Just hit me up at the conference, or get in touch with Tania, our HR Manager, at tania@gnosis.io
