GRTiQ Podcast: 39 Nena Djaja

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Nena Djaja (00:19):

Be motivated by challenges. And to me, it’s super important to see my life, growing up in these times, having this mindset that I do, as an opportunity to leave a bigger legacy than myself. So when I’m thinking of giving up on anything, I’m also thinking, “If I give up, then I might be giving up on what other people can gain from me being involved in this field.”

Nick (01:04):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Nena Djaja, product engineering lead at Edge & Node. Nena has been on the podcast before. She was a panelist during episode 18, when we hosted a special release for the launch of The Graph Explorer and Subgraph Studio, both of which Nena played a central role. As you’ll hear, Nena has been with The Graph since the early days and has made many important contributions along the way.

(01:42):

During our interview, we talk about her journey from web2 to web3, her move to the United States, how she became involved with The Graph, and what those early days were like. Nena also shares glimpses of her personal story, which is incredibly inspiring all by itself. Nena truly is a remarkable person. As always, we started the discussion talking about Nena’s educational and professional background.

Nena Djaja (02:10):

So, in terms of my college degree, I studied engineering in Austria. And I did electrical engineering, that was kind of my bachelor’s. And after that I did master’s in radio communications, which obviously has not much to do with what I’m doing right now, but that was a long time ago.

Nick (02:30):

So do you find that you use some of that education in what you do now? I mean, that’s one of the themes of this podcast is guests with these varied educational backgrounds, still apply the things they learned. It’s still applicable in web3.

Nena Djaja (02:44):

In a way, yes. And what comes to mind is that the way of thinking when you solve engineering’s problems, and just kind of in general, I am not originally from Austria. I’m coming from Southeast Europe and I started in German language, which wasn’t my native language. So I had to learn the language and learn engineering in that language. And the problems we were solving were tough, so everything was really tough for me.

(03:08):

But what they taught me, that the way of thinking about certain engineering problems and the situation I was in, and a lot of the principles and basically the foundation that I’m using now when I’m solving tough problems, I think I learned from that period of time when I was studying in Austria.

Nick (03:28):

So after your studies, you made your way into technology and web2. Was your path and what did you begin doing?

Nena Djaja (03:35):

Right. So it was a little bit of a complicated path with a lot of zigzags, versus a linear path that some people have. My last year of my studies, I did an exchange program in Spain, and there I got excited about satellite communication and satellite navigation. And back then, that was around 2008, 2009, something like that. And after finishing that, I was really excited. I was absorbing everything. Again, learning that in Spanish, which was kind of fun.

(04:05):

And then I got a job offer, it was my first job in Germany to work at the EADS. It’s aeronautic, kind of a space company. And we were working on a navigation project, which is what’s called Galileo back then. And so, here I was working on a satellite navigation system. However, shortly after I discovered that I wasn’t even supposed to be there with my citizenship.

(04:27):

So we were kind of blacklisted to work in anything that’s sensitive around satellite communication, navigation, whatsoever. So after the project was done, we also had this big crisis that kicked the whole world. 2009-10 is when it kind of came to Europe, so I couldn’t stay at the company, obviously. And I found myself back in my home country, applying for probably hundreds of different jobs. And simply it didn’t get any answer or just got “no” here and there. Which I was super grateful for, at least, “Oh, somebody’s responding.” Right?

(05:01):

So I was thinking, “Okay, what should I do?” I ended up in this career and then, the more research I did, I realized how many limitations are there just due to my citizenship, essentially. And I started looking a way out. And so then, as I was getting all these rejections and eventually started looking to leave Europe, I got to work on a project through a professor of mine in the United States.

(05:22):

And so I figured, “Oh, this is the land of opportunities, so let me just try to see what I can do there.” And as I was in Georgia, Atlanta, working on a project, I noticed this whole web is becoming really popular. Everybody’s doing some sort of web development, everybody knows how to do it. And it’s one of those things where there were no limitations. Nobody really cared about where am I from, what’s my background? As long as you keep learning and do it really well, you’ll get a job.

(05:48):

So that project that I did in Georgia Tech was kind of a part of a PhD. Eventually, I quit and realized this is what I want to do. I got really excited. I started learning JavaScript, Ruby on Rails back then, HTML, just everything around web development I could possibly learn. And through a completely random set of circumstances, I moved to San Francisco, and this is where I started going to meetups.

(06:12):

And one of the groups that was truly helpful to me was Women Who Code. I was actually there with the founder, when we were starting in, and I ended up volunteering a lot to that group. And we created kind of a community with all of the people who are learning, changing their careers, and getting into this field. So that was very exciting and that was web2.

(06:32):

So I got my first job at a company called Constant Contact, and I was super junior there. Just imagine, I came here, now I’m again speaking a foreign language, trying to learn everything in a foreign language, trying to do my job. And I was one of those people that, if I commit to something, I’m really going to try the best I can, regardless what it takes.

(06:51):

So here I am in Constant Contact. I did good at the interview, just because I had previously had 30 interviews that I failed at all of them, but I learned how to do interviews. However, what I didn’t have was experience. So people were throwing these terms, deploying to server, pushing to this environment, doing this change.

(07:10):

And I remember, at one point, somebody wanted to make a copy change. And they’re like, “Oh, Nena can do it.” Because I was junior, like let’s just throw that at her. And I was like, “Sure, of course I’ll do it.” And then I realized, “What the heck is copy change?” I had no idea what it means. I was supposed to copy something. So I ran into the bathroom, opened up my phone, Google what this is, and figured, “Oh, you just need to change the text.”

(07:33):

Why don’t they just call it “text update”? Anyways, there were many, many moments like that where I felt like a complete loser. And I had to hide somewhere and Google it and figure out what does this even mean that I’m supposed to do?

Nick (07:47):

Well, it’s a remarkable story and start into tech. You talk about how it was so welcoming, your background didn’t matter, your language didn’t matter. Was that really the pull into tech for you?

Nena Djaja (07:59):

In a way, it was part of the pull. But the other thing was also there was a feeling we are creating something big. We are making something out there. We are connecting people. And through that, we are all connecting and growing ourselves. Also, I’m very passionate about mentoring and teaching, so the moment I was picking these things up… And I also have to say, going back to your question about my background, because of my engineering background, it wasn’t really that hard to pick up programming languages and just the whole idea of the server-client model, and all of that in web2.

(08:30):

So I started really mentoring and tutoring. And you’d notice how people change of careers can oftentimes change your life. So that was really big for me. And like I said, that was around 10 years ago and since then, I’ve basically progressed in my web2 career.

(08:49):

I was really ambitious and I still am. I worked late nights, weekends, tried really hard, and shortly after I actually got promoted to a senior engineer at Constant Contact, at my first job. And after then, as I was getting a work permit and after that a green card, I started working with startups, which was my dream. I wanted to work at small companies, solve hard problems, try to find innovative ways how to do things, and see things done quickly.

(09:17):

I love speed. I love when some iterations are happening really fast. And you launch something out there and you actually see how people are using it, and you get that feedback and you improve, and you do it really fast. That’s something that I’m really passionate about as well. And so I worked at startups for several years and through a friend I met Yaniv Tal.

Nick (09:34):

So I want to ask you a lot more questions about meeting Yaniv and making a move into web3 and The Graph. But before I do, I want to ask some follow-up questions about your story. So the first one is, how did you deal with the stress of making a career change and learning the language? I mean, a lot of people probably would’ve given up. How did you stick with it?

Nena Djaja (09:54):

I guess I am not one of those people who gives up, or at least I don’t give up easily. I love the challenge and to me it’s almost like I have to do my best. There’s a certain drive, I think, that I have. And I don’t know how I’ve gotten it, maybe through being an immigrant, maybe through my genetics. And I do get tired, in quotes. I do feel like, “Oh, this is so hard. I want to give up.” But then I rest, I take a break, and then I wake up and feel like, “All right, I’m going to do this.”

(10:22):

And it’s almost like a little bit of a rollercoaster cycle, which was kind of my life. And which is why I love startups, because it’s a very similar thing there. But it’s also the rewards of doing something out there, seeing how people use it, helping them, and getting positive feedback to me are really huge. And when you add mentoring and teaching and tutoring people, and bringing kind of more people into the tech field, which I love to do, that fulfills me.

Nick (10:55):

In preparing for this interview, we talked a little bit about your background and some of which you’re sharing now. But you mentioned that you got your education in Austria, you’re from Serbia, so I’m curious, how did you make your way to the United States?

Nena Djaja (11:09):

To be completely honest, kind of the feeling of desperation and being stuck. Because here I was, I spent years in Western Europe, with this mindset and lifestyle that I wanted to live. And then I lost my kind of last visa. Because visas have limited duration and got back into my home country, but I realized that that I am very, very different from the person I was when I was growing up there. And so, I wanted to leave and I was trying to find a way how to leave, and I was reaching out to people.

(11:39):

And I had a really amazing professor, which to me speaks of the power of somebody giving you an opportunity. And I reached out to my college professor and I was like, “Do you have any projects that I can work on?” And at that point, I just really cared about building a better life for myself. And I was open to work on anything. Before I got work done, I really didn’t enjoy, but I was very grateful for the opportunity. And he reached out to his colleague in Atlanta, and that’s how I got to… And they were looking for something.

(12:10):

I got an internship. It was very little money. And through this whole journey that I explained too, I had a lot of financial struggles, but I was like, “Yes.” I also think one of the things that I feel like a lot of immigrants can probably relate to is saying “yes”. I pretty much said “yes” to everything. Now I’m at the point when I’m starting to say “no”, because “yes” becomes too much. But back then, whatever job somebody offered me to do, yes, I’m going to do it.

Nick (12:38):

Well, thank you for sharing a little bit about that background. I want to go, then, to this meeting you had with Yaniv. So you mentioned that a friend of yours, was it set you up with lunch or a lunch meeting with Yaniv?

Nena Djaja (12:49):

No. It was actually, it was a friend of mine who back then was dating Yaniv. And since I was in this kind of learning mode, I had a bunch of these documents where I put JavaScript interview questions and answers to them. They were kind of explaining the tricky parts of the language. And the way this is relevant is that she asked me back then if she could share it with Yaniv, because Yaniv was in a situation that he’s interviewing. It would be really great to get this kind of 10 pages, whatever, document with different inserts for answers and questions regarding JavaScript in general web development. And I was like, “Sure.”

(13:22):

And then, I wake up the next morning and I see a bunch of comments. Pretty intense comments, “Oh, this is not true. I would rephrase this. This is how it is.” And I’m like, “Who is this guy to comment on my stuff? What the heck is happening?”

(13:40):

And we know Yaniv. Yaniv is very direct and very honest, and I appreciate him for that. I really do. So eventually, this is how I got… I didn’t even meet him then. I just met him through that shared Google document. And fast forward a few, several months afterwards, I was done with Constant Contact. I was doing something else. And then Yaniv approached me. I met him in person and he was like, “Hey, I have this really cool gig at MuleSoft. Do you want to come work here? I think you have great skills for that.”

(14:07):

And so I was like, “Oh, I was actually going to take a break.” I was in a stage of my life. I joined the yoga teacher training. I wanted to do a little bit of that, take a little bit of break of my intense life. And then, he was really persistent, which is another thing I appreciate about him, when Yaniv wants somebody. And this is how we created an amazing team, I have to say. Yaniv is a great people reader. When he wants a person, thinks they’re up for the task, he’ll get them.

(14:32):

So, of course, here I am doing the contracting gig at MuleSoft, my yoga teacher training every evening and weekends. But it was fun. It was really fun. I worked there only for three, four months, but it was a great project. And then I got to meet Yaniv, I worked with him. I met Brandon Ramirez, briefly. And they were starting their other startup and Yaniv pitched me to join the other startup. But I was again, “No, I want to do my own thing. I want to start my own startup with a friend.” I had something going on on the side.

(14:59):

And so I said “no” to that. And a little bit lost touch with Yaniv. Fast forward a couple of years after, I was working at another startup and I was thinking, “What should I do next?” I also just had a baby and I was commuting really far to San Francisco. And one late night, I opened Twitter after not looking at it for years, and bam, Graph Protocol just launched, tweet shows was right there in my face. And I’m like, “Oh, Yaniv. Oh, I have to congratulate him. This sounds so cool.”

(15:32):

And this is how I first kind of started discovering, “Oh, crypto, this is a new field that’s emerging.” So I sent a text to Yaniv, “Congrats on everything.” And of course, Yaniv was, “Oh, let’s meet for lunch tomorrow.” So the next day or two days, I can’t remember exactly, I’m sitting at lunch with Yaniv and Brandon and they’re pitching me this brand new startup in crypto. And how everything I heard was so exciting and such a good match for me.

(16:00):

There’s this innovative field. It’s hard, I love hard things. Nobody has kind of done it, a problem that hasn’t been solved, et cetera, et cetera. And a role that could match me really well. And back then, I was focusing on front-end engineer, UI-engineer-type work, so it would be a kind of great introduction to get into more complicated blockchain stuff. And so, of course, I said “yes”.

Nick (16:23):

So take me to that lunch meeting then. What do you remember them saying about The Graph? And did you catch the vision for what this could do or the impact it could have even at that time?

Nena Djaja (16:34):

I have a really vague memory. I just remember they talked about their white paper, they talked about token economics. They talked about how hard it is to get the data from the blockchains. How companies are struggling, how they’re trying to solve this really big problem. So I didn’t get everything, we didn’t go into much detail. It was just a one-hour meeting, but I just had this intuitive feeling, almost. Or it could be a mental realization as well, whatever you call it, that there is something there that’s untapped that could be really big.

(17:03):

Another thing that was really appealing to me is being able to work from home. I’ve always felt, why am I wasting 45 minutes each direction commuting to and back from the city? When you’re coding, your code is out there, it’s visible. You commit your code, people review it, people can know what you’re doing versus what you’re not doing when you’re working at home. So that remote aspect of it, just like another opportunity, was really great to me, having just had a three-months-old baby at home.

Nick (17:36):

I can’t imagine how you balanced all of that. You’ve got a three-month-old baby, you’re starting this startup, and the industry itself is emerging. There’s a lot going on. How did you manage everything you had going on at this point in your life?

Nena Djaja (17:51):

Yeah. Well, I often felt like I was behind on things. And then there is so many things to learn, so many things to understand, so many problems to solve. And so, I had to focus and let go of some things, thinking, “Okay, eventually I’ll learn this. I catch up on this.” So I had to focus and I wanted to focus on doing my job as best as I can. And I was hired to build products and front-ends at The Graph.

(18:15):

So I started with the hosted service explorer that you see today, that we built as kind of a proof-of-concept for this whole idea of indexing and serving data, and building subgraphs. And it was fun times. It was fun, because we were thinking about should we call this a subgraph? What do we name these things? And now they’re becoming a word.

(18:29):

And so, it was a lot of juggling, but a lot of this is the right thing to do. We have the right mission, we want to build this. And I was the only one building my stuff, the front-ends on top of the other stuff that we were doing. So I just had to do it and I wanted to do it. It was really, like I said, it was exciting. At The Graph, they have launched Graph Explorer and it was crazy. I didn’t sleep for days. I was so brain fogged. And 15, 20 minutes before that Yaniv was about to demo everything on the stage, and he was like, “Oh, can we fix this little thing?”

(19:10):

We were all about improvements, even if it’s last minute. And I’m like, “Oh my God, we’re going to fix it and push the production.” So we did it. And I was sitting there in the audience almost shaking, is this going to work? And it all worked. It was a very exciting journey, where I feel like I was pushed beyond what I thought I could do.

Nick (20:58):

Whenever I get the opportunity to speak with somebody who’s been with The Graph for as long as you have, I love to know what those early days were like. And you’ve shared a little of this on a personal note, but what about working with the team and some of those early projects and launching everything? What were those early days like?

Nena Djaja (21:13):

Yeah. Well the team, there was such a great vibe with the… And when I started, it was seven people, I think, or something like that. They’re very welcoming. It was just a feeling of these really smart people who are all excited about solving these problems and who are willing to do their best. And there was almost no ego, very little, no attitude. It was like, “Oh, I messed it up. I’m going to fix it. It’s my fault.”

(21:39):

So there was this really great, and everybody kind of gelled together really well. If you have a question, you’re just asking and somebody will jump in to help. And oftentimes, because throughout the years, I was doing work that nobody was actually doing. Because I was the only one hired for my role, people would jump with me on calls and be like, “Hey, I don’t know exactly how to help you, but just walk me through the problem and will come up with something.” So it was this very friendly culture, but at the same time, everybody is so freaking smart and talented.

Nick (22:12):

One part of your story that I think would be very valuable for listeners is this move you made from web2 to web3. You’re a web2 developer, and now you become a web3 developer really early in The Graph. What was that migration like from web2 to web3? And can you kind of take me through what it was about web3 that was attractive to you?

Nena Djaja (22:32):

Yes. So at the first year at The Graph, or something like that, I was actually building with web2 technologies. There was no wallet. We built a whole service explorer, they signed up through GitHub, et cetera. And that spoke to my skillset. So now we realize, okay, we did it, it’s out there, people are using it. Let’s start transitioning into web3, which essentially means using different wallets, talking to contract instead of a traditional database backend. And so, it was rocky and because the tools weren’t there yet, they weren’t ready, there was a lot…

(23:08):

MetaMask was in such a bad state, you would get these obscure errors that you try to decipher. Google for things, nothing comes out as a result, which I don’t think I’ve ever experienced. I was like, “Oh, change the query.” Nothing. So I had to dig into different code bases that I was using for different tools and trying to figure out, “Okay, what’s happening here?”

(23:29):

So back then it was, I’d say, kind of painful. But also once you figure it out, once you solve it, it was so rewarding. Like, “I did it! Party.” And we were building this little dapp that was like a proof of concept. Eventually, it was a tiny, tiny part of this essential explorer that we have now, that we’re trying to get things to work and see where the challenges are.

(23:50):

And then we’ve taken an even larger challenge. It was to build Everest using this thing called metatransactions, using all the newest things that aren’t even ready yet for production app. And trying to push the boundaries of decentralization and make it fully decentralized until the very end, where we are hosting it on IPFS, instead of using something like an nginx server or something like that. And that was the journey that Dave and I went through for months.

(24:21):

And there was a lot of learnings from there, as well. I think I created a kind of separate wallet functionality or wallet package. Learned a lot how to interact with different mobile wallets, MetaMask, with the issues out there and how things work. And that was, I think, a year and a half ago or something like that. And the tooling was still early. And I feel like, in the last year or so, things have improved a lot.

(24:50):

There is a lot of libraries and packages that you can use. It’s becoming easier and easier to transition from a web2 to a web3 developer. For example, the wallets that were super buggy in the past are not that buggy anymore. We developed certain patterns. Some of the patterns I developed in our apps. Developers we hired this year, developed even better patterns than anybody can use.

(25:11):

And so, this year I hired four amazing developers and they all transitioned from web2 to web3 with almost no prior experience, or at least no work experience. And for them, I think the transition was a little easier, which I think now is the perfect timing to use your amazing web2 skills and switch over to web3.

Nick (25:36):

Well, you mentioned Dave there. Dave Kajpust has been a guest on the podcast before, a remarkably talented guy and a really great member of The Graph ecosystem and some of the other team that you recently hired. So let’s give listeners a really good detailed understanding of some of the projects that you and your team are working on. And I’d also like to know some of the challenges and opportunities the team is facing.

Nena Djaja (25:57):

Yes. So the projects we and our team are working on are Explorer and Studio. We are primarily focused on those two projects. And Explorer is a decentralized app that’s built on top of our protocol and lets people interact with the protocol through the UI. So essentially it’s staking, delegating, curating is enabled through this dapp. And then setting your delegation parameters, operators, setting your name and metadata around your profile. So that’s all that you can do through the Explorer right now. And of course, we’re always improving things, we’re adding more features, so there’s more coming.

(26:39):

In terms of Studio, it’s built as developer playground where developers can develop subgraphs and play around with them without interacting with the chain. And when the moment when they’re ready to publish it on the decentralized network, that’s where they will interact with the chain and publish their subgraph that will then show in Explorer.

Nick (26:59):

Subgroup Studio is something we’ve talked about before. You joined a panel on the podcast when that launched. That really is a bridge, right? A bridge for developers to begin using and understanding The Graph.

Nena Djaja (27:11):

Yes, I would say so. At least, that’s our goal. It’s kind of similar to the Hosted Service where we have our own Indexer. Except that the Hosted Service, when you deploy a subgraph there, it’s public. Here, it’s only private to you. And you can deploy several versions and play around with it and what it feels like, run the queries in the playground, and things like that. So that’s literally meant as a developer tooling or developer playground, before you publish a subgraph and it becomes public.

(27:38):

And of course, there is fees related. There’s gas fees that users will need to pay when they publish the subgraph. They might want to signal on it right away, so then there’s also some GRT involved there. But we really wanted to give people a studio to play around with our code first. Also, the building features are in Studio, where people can deposit GRT that will then, so their invoices of querying the subgraphs in their dapps will be paid monthly.

(28:03):

And, like I said, we’re also improving and gathering user feedback with all these things and trying to make the experience better for users. But for right now, it’s a very kind of small app that can achieve a few goals.

Nick (28:16):

Well, Subgraph Studios has come up many times on this podcast with other guests. A lot of great feedback in the way that allows people to use The Graph and get more involved on developing subgraphs and deploying them. So congratulations to you and your team on all that great work. I have to imagine some of the challenge of what you’re doing, and these product design and builds, has to do with decentralization. How do you approach the build, the design, and then this component of making sure it’s decentralized?

Nena Djaja (28:45):

In terms of front-ends and apps in general, some of the challenges with decentralizations are, for example, serving your app as static assets. And instead of using a server, kind of like a GMX or something like that, you would put it on IPFS. But what if your app updates frequently and then you add your files frequently? Then you need to have to wait for the IPFS to propagate to be available on all the nodes, so people can actually see the new pages that got added recently. So that’s the problem we were kind of solving with Everest by, I think we’re using Pinata and then we update Cloud for DNS link. But for the few minutes or several minutes, the project that a person just added on Everest might not be available if they refreshed the page or something like that.

(29:28):

We went with that compromise because it wasn’t one of our core projects. It was a more of a side project, so we were trying to prove the concept of this internalization and see how far we can get. So that’s kind of one of the things we’re exploring. And there’s always IPNS that we can use. Another thing is, for example, decentralized storage. There are certain things that we don’t want to use the browser, local storage, or cookies to store it because it just doesn’t belong there or it’s too big, or it can’t get big over time. But we would like to use decentralized storage. And an example could be notifications.

(29:56):

For example, you do a transactional chain, you move away, it takes a little bit of time. You move away from the screen, I mean, it takes a little bit of time and you want to see it somewhere, you want to get a notification that, okay, now these pending transactions actually succeeded or failed. There is something for you to do there.

(30:15):

So those are kind of examples that we’re still trying to figure out what’s the best tool out there to use. And I know a lot of companies have made progress on decentralized storage, such as Ceramic, Arweave, and some others. So we are looking into that. And there’s plenty of challenges like this, which I found really exciting and I think they will be solved in the near future

Nick (31:06):

When I have the opportunity to talk to somebody like you, who’s actually building in the web3 space, who has background and experience in this emerging technology, I’d like to get their understanding or vision for how web3 will impact the world. Because I think this is a gap, I think it’s an incredibly cool concept, and a lot of people are excited about this. But in the day-to-day practical nature of things, how does web3 impact the world?

Nena Djaja (31:30):

Yeah, this is a very broad question. This is a question that can have very broad answers to it, depending on what you specifically focus on. So to me, in terms of the whole idea of the web is peer-to-peer, being connected to your peers, having access information easily, sharing things with other people easily, et cetera, et cetera. And then what web2 became in the last years, I’d say, is it became something like a data economy.

(32:03):

Where even though through social networks and other publishing media, people got a lot of power in terms of you can create your content, you can get it out there, you can get paid for it. So a lot of people became creators of content, versus in Web1 where there’s not that many. However, the data of these people is owned by big companies, Google, Facebook, Amazon, et cetera.

(32:34):

And what they’re doing is selling the data and making money off of it. And of course, when you join these tools, you sign whatever terms of service and nobody reads the super small print, but you actually sign that it’s okay to sell your data. And there’s no other way, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to use these platforms.

(32:48):

So this now turns into this big centralized world where just a few companies own the data, sell it, do whatever they want to do. And another concern there is there’s so many data breaches. Just the other day, I put my email address and I noticed that my data was hacked. Email, password, address, everything in so many places, thousands of times. Crazy, because those central servers are so prone and hackers are, I mean pretty much now, thousands of hackers are trying to hack into their data centers. And that’s the vulnerability of web2.

(33:18):

And so in this specific area, what we are trying to achieve with web3 is decentralize where the data is being stored. So many people around the world can have nodes and they have own chunks of data, so there’s no more incentive for them to sell their data, because they don’t have all the data. The big things have been done in terms of cryptography and security of their data. And now people can participate in web3, there’s another incentive to participate in web3 by having these tokens.

(33:50):

And there’s many ways to earn tokens, but now the earning tokens and participating in web3 becomes way more direct. I can send you tokens, I can interact with you. I don’t need to go through third party, PayPal, et cetera, service who’s going to gather my data and do whatever they want with me. I can just interact with you. To me, this is huge. There is more ways for people to get involved in building the web. There’s less centralized points of failure, I know a lot of people talk about it.

(34:20):

But to me it also it created a lot of job opportunities across countries and continents. There’s a whole other aspect, and I think this more affects the finances of people living… And I’ve read a lot about this. For example, in countries in Africa, just sending money to somebody includes gigantic amount of fees. Their currencies are unstable, there’s huge inflation. So they’re starting to use crypto as a way of sending money directly to another person, versus going through layers of fees to whatever institutions are, and things like that. I can’t talk much about finance, I’m just reading about it. It’s not in my expertise.

(34:56):

And then, of course, there’s NFTs that are coming up now that we are still trying to figure out, “Oh, what’s the use and benefit of it?” Does it have to do with ownership of your own art there? What does it exactly have to do with? And a lot of people have a lot to say for that, but that could be an interesting application how web3 plays along. And also, to mention now, I think web3 is expanding into music and video and gaming, and also people can run their own notes and earn tokens that way.

(35:26):

I just think it’s the catchphrase would be kind of giving more power to people and decentralizing power. And I think that’s happening in many ways. And we are still early enough, but not too early. Now, I think the majority of people can start to see, oh, this is a real thing. And we are kind of crossing the chasm, that’s how I feel, into a bigger, more of a mass adoption. So I feel it is just super exciting. And I know use the word exciting, in terms of crypto so many times, but it is to be a part of this.

Nick (36:02):

That’s a fantastic answer on how web3 will impact and change the world. In the spirit of that question then, what is your long-term vision for The Graph?

Nena Djaja (36:11):

My long-term vision for The Graph? I almost feel like there is several different visions. Well, first, to become this place that provides many opportunities to other people to become Indexers, to join in whatever roles they try to, they want to fit in, to index as much as possible the data that’s out there. And to essentially set standards. Particularly for development, dapp development, for how we in the new world develop applications without, again, tracking user data, collecting them and focusing on that, versus focusing on this great user experience. That’s kind of one part of it.

(36:54):

Another part of it that what I would love us is to appeal to people like me, web2 people, to teach them, educate them, bring them on, have them share their ideas, contribute to our community. That’s a big part that I care about. And personally, I care about bringing more diversity, specifically women, into the field. And as I said many times, I think this is a perfect opportunity to join and become a part of our ecosystem. As things are becoming more mainstream, the tooling is becoming better, it’s becoming easier to understand things, and the whole crypto field is becoming ready for mainstream adoption.

Nick (37:30):

I want to go back to something you said there, which is this topic of women leadership in the crypto and web3 space. I’d love to get your opinion on this topic and your experience.

Nena Djaja (37:41):

Yes. So as I mentioned in the past, I’ve done mentoring and teaching and helping women transition into web2 back then. And I’ve done it with Women Who Code, Girl Develop It, and a couple of other organizations. I taught my own workshops as well. And I think that, in my mind, there is two groups of women that I would like to appeal to. One would be junior women who are just starting their journey in web development. And a lot of what I was teaching back then can be applied to this group, because essentially it comes down to coding. Understanding what problems are you solving, what are you trying to achieve, learning code and programming languages, and things like that. And I think we can make it very exciting and engaging.

(38:32):

And the second group is the kind of more experienced women who have been developers in web2 for a while, which is kind of like me, and who are senior developers. They might also have families and other commitments, and they don’t have much time to spend on learning this whole new field.

(38:48):

So women who have experience in web2, who have been coding for a little bit, the good news is that you don’t need to learn this whole new field, understand everything in crypto to transition to a web3 developer, specifically a front-end developer. I think that you can use all your existing skills and pick up the knowledge as you are doing it, which is basically what I did.

Nick (39:11):

In preparation for this interview. Nena, you and I met a couple times. We met when we recorded the panel discussion about the Subgraph deployment and the updates to Graph Explorer. And then in preparation for this interview, we talked a little bit. And we didn’t get to talk about all of your background in history, but we did get a sense for some of the obstacles and some of the things that you had to overcome and work through as you made your way to America.

(39:33):

As you made your way into tech and into the web3 space, I just want to maybe make my final question something about that perseverance and persistence. It’s something I admire in you. What keeps you motivated? What keeps you persisting when it seems like, to me, you’ve met a lot of points of friction where most people probably would’ve given up?

Nena Djaja (39:53):

Oh, thank you. First, thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I think I might’ve kind of briefly mentioned in my previous answers. To me, the things that I’m doing, they’re not about my myself, they’re bigger than myself. And I’ve been given these opportunities through trying to do better, trying too through accepting challenges, and really being motivated by challenges. And to me, it’s super important to see my life growing up in these times, having this mindset that I do, as an opportunity to leave a bigger legacy than myself.

(40:33):

So when I’m thinking of giving up on anything, I’m also thinking if I give up, then I might be giving up on what other people can gain from me being involved in this field. So it has a bigger connotation, to say it that way. And like I said, I also just think, what’s the point if you keep giving up? Life is full of challenges. Life is full of unknown things that can happen to a person.

(41:03):

But as long as you live, you need to keep trying. And one of my personal philosophies is I live by this quote, basically, from Rilke that says, “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror, just keep going. No feeling is final.” And coming back to that had kept me going for a very long time, and it still does.

Nick (41:25):

Well, Nena, I want to congratulate you on all the great work and projects you’ve completed for The Graph and The Graph community. It was a real pleasure, again, to get to interview you for this podcast. In the meantime, if listeners want to learn more about you or follow some of your work, what’s the best way to do it?

Nena Djaja (41:40):

You can find me on Twitter. My handle is @NenaNerdetta. I’m also pretty active on Discord. I think I’m Nena there, part of the team. And any other ways to contact me, I’ll leave in the show notes.