Antoni Zolciak, Aleph Zero's COO & CMO, talks about creating a public blockchain

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

Education-wise, it’s music and international relations. I’ve dabbled in journalism, content marketing, and public relations projects across Europe, helped grow a Polish-American software house as well as a SaaS scale-up awarded by Financial Times, and then co-founded Aleph Zero.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Aleph Zero is a public blockchain with enhanced privacy features. The idea is to provide a viable alternative solution to enterprises—one that allows them to use a peer-reviewed, audited public chain and save on their infrastructure cost, but at the same time still have the freedom to execute private computations and protect sensitive company data.

What is the origin story?

When we’ve started out, there was no public blockchain that solved four main challenges existing in the DLT space: scalability, security, decentralization, and privacy. We’ve had a perfect opportunity to assemble an insanely skilled team that developed scientific innovations in two of those areas.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

We combine academic excellence with business know-how. As blockchain is an area that requires constant innovation, it’s difficult to find team members with the proper expertise. We’re lucky enough to not only work with more than 10 brilliant mathematical minds on a professional level—but also to have relationships with one another outside of work.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

I’d be figuring out how to start building one. Once you understand what’s it about, there’s really no turning back.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

At this very moment, it’s mostly brand awareness—but developer adoption at the very next stage. We’ve just concluded a portion of our fundraising and have been able to grow the team. The next step is launching the first iteration of the product in September/October 2021, and start collecting feedback from the crypto community.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

I believe I’m a people person, so from my perspective, the most exciting aspect of building Aleph Zero is simply being a part of it. The team is insanely skilled and fun to work with. Project-wise, we have several highlights that we always bring up: our work getting peer-reviewed and accepted for presentation at an ACM conference, testnet launch, or closing the seed round.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

There’s this saying that my co-founder and friend, Adam, has: “I’m excited about blockchain technology but suspicious of startups implementing it.”

It’s an interesting summary—we’re building a very efficient, decentralized infrastructure that can preserve users’ privacy. Blockchain is still in its early days as far as market adoption is concerned—and it’s easy to over-hype and over-promise real-world use cases. The real shift on a mass scale will happen most likely later than most people anticipate. It definitely is a technological breakthrough—but a global adoption is yet to come.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

The freedom, quality, and diversity of articles being published. As the only non-technical member of the founding team, my main job is to find ways of bridging the gap between an average crypto enthusiast and deep tech. HackerNoon oftentimes serves as an inspiration in doing just that.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

That I’m not crazy. Or, at least, not entirely crazy.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

DM me. :)

LINK to Startup of the Year City Award Page with your company listed.