GRTiQ Podcast: 48 Simon Emanuel Schmid

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Simon Emanuel Schmid (00:22):

Actually, more or less when I had this realization, I saw The Graph on Twitter, and I clicked on the website, and I was sold on the first page. I was like, “Okay, this is it. This is how it should be done.”

Nick (01:06):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Simon Emmanuel Schmidd, a solutions engineer at Edge & Node, a core dev team working at The Graph. There’s a good chance you’ve already met Simon either at our hackathon or through one of his many presentations. During our discussion, Simon talks about his background and entry into crypto. And as you’ll hear, Simon is another example of someone who needed a solution for a problem, came across The Graph, and then went to work full-time building the ecosystem.

(01:33):

Towards the end of the conversation, Simon also shares some great ideas on web3, and how he thinks about some important topics, including the interplay of centralized entities operating in and around web3, a topic that needs a lot more discussion. As always, I started the conversation by asking Simon about his background.

Simon Emanuel Schmid (01:55):

Yeah, I am a full stack engineer with more than 15 years of experience. Then at some point in my career, I focused on front end as soon as actually JavaScript and Node.js was a thing. So then I said, “Okay, I want to master JavaScript because it’s the only language that you can run in the front and in the back end.” Then I was going with that. Then I co-founded a startup. Then I joined Mellon Port, that’s now Enzyme, in 2017 as a head of front end. And with that team, we successfully launched V1 of the now, I think, Melon protocol, or now it’s called Enzyme protocol in 2019.

Nick (02:40):

You’re joining me from Zurich. I always like to ask guests about how people feel the attitudes and opinions of those in their home country. Do you have a sense for what the people of Zurich think about crypto?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (02:51):

Yeah. And interestingly, compared to other people, let’s say in Argentina or Nigeria, crypto in Switzerland it’s not something that people are doing to escape inflation or something like that, it’s not crucial for their lives. So those people that go into crypto here usually go for speculation. And it’s also banking town, financial services are big here, and I think that that’s a little bit of feeling I have about the scene here, it’s more about investing and money making.

(03:25):

Although also what’s good for Zurich is that we have the ETH here, it’s a world top-class technical university, so we have also a lot of very smart tech people around here that also truly care about the decentralization. It’s actually a topic that existed here before. So we had, for example, the big brother of ours here in Zurich where they kind of finger pointed on the companies from Switzerland but also worldwide about data privacy issues and that kind of stuff. Sadly, at some point people did not show up again for those events, but the spirit is here, that’s what I like also.

Nick (04:08):

So you’ve mentioned you’ve been in technology and software for 15 years, and that you started as a full stack engineer. For listeners that aren’t familiar with what is meant by full stack engineer, can you describe the nature of that work?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (04:21):

Yeah, sure. Traditional web application system architecture usually consists of a back end and a front end. The back end is the part that runs on a centralized server, usually, with databases, some business logic, this kind of stuff. And then the front end is that thing that runs in your browser, so the code that runs in your browser. Usually it’s the presentation of the data that you find on the back end in that database. And then the full stack says it’s just those engineers that can work on both sides.

Nick (04:58):

When did you first become aware of crypto then, and decide to make the move into this space?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (05:03):

Interesting question. For friends of mine I’d already played around with it, I don’t know, in the early days with Bitcoin when Ethereum was not around. And I found the idea was interesting, but also reflecting on myself, back then I was more on the idealist side, so everything with money banking and so on, I was suspicious, although they started to tell me, “Yeah, it’s actually disrupting the current system,” and then I got interested. I always played around with buying something back then, and I even have a paper wallet for Bitcoin, but when I checked what’s on it, then I realized that I never actually hit the button to buy.

(05:46):

And then fast-forward, I start to read about Ethereum late 2016, early 2017, and it sounded very great. I liked the spirit and the idea and also this crowdfunding idea that they had on their website like, “Yeah, that sounds cool.” But I guess nobody would ever invest, not big numbers maybe. Yeah, you can go to your friends and ask them to invest in crypto with you, maybe you get 1,000 or 2,000 bucks in. We also kind of evaluated it for the startup that I was with back then, but we didn’t think like that this will make it.

(06:25):

And then yeah, I decided to move on from that startup and at that time a befriended recruiter actually called me and said like, “Hey, do you want to talk? I have a very good position for you.” And then I was like, “Yeah, let’s talk.” And so it was my role as a head of UX/front end at Melonport, and then like that I really fell into the rabbit hole because then we were early, we were deep in, we were trying to be fully decentralized, and that was really the rabbit hole for me.

Nick (06:59):

So you mentioned that Ethereum was a little bit of the hook for you of becoming more interested in crypto and maybe the potential of crypto. What is it about Ethereum that interested you or drew you into the space?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (07:12):

Yeah, first of all, I was just jumping into the cold water and trying to build the front end on that protocol that they were building. But then learning about Ethereum, especially [inaudible 00:07:24] space, the people, the spirit, that was when I really felt, “Okay, this is where I want to be.” Because it had this interesting mixture between people that got surprisingly rich out of early investments, but also then they were so concerned about the future of humankind, future of collaboration, the banking, the unbank, all those topics that I felt like, “Okay, this is very cool. It’s not just altruistic in a way that you have these NGO people that try to make the world a better place and start to beg for money for their mission.” But it was actually, they had an idea how you can use capitalism to make the world a better place. And this was very interesting for me and I was like, “Okay, that’s cool. This is something I can see myself helping with.”

Nick (08:17):

How would you explain that transition of being a full stack engineer in web2 and then moving into a web3 crypto environment? What early observations did you have?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (08:29):

That’s an interesting question. First of all, I think the web2 space and the technologies that you use, let’s say React and also GraphQL, they’re very battle tested. People that are creating these technologies, they work for big corporations, they have big teams, they have good documentations. It’s used in big and small companies, so this technology that works pretty well. Now, you start to play around with web3 technology, then you are moving to the bleeding edge. In the beginning I was like, “Oh my god, this is so not well documented. It’s so not predictable, it’s so complex, so complicated, why do people actually put so much money in it?”

(09:21):

But interestingly, the whole thing worked for the blockchain is censorship resistant. The data written on the blockchain is actually there forever. So these features, they really proved or they were still around back then, but to work with it, it was very challenging, and I think it’s still challenging. Now it’s four years later, and I look at the tooling how you write front ends on Ethereum, and there was not that much progress to be honest. So I don’t know what’s going on there. You have so many smart people, so much money around, but tooling is still very in the beginning.

Nick (10:05):

Do you think it’s easier now for people to move from web2 to web3 despite some of the things you just described there? Is it still something that can be done more easily now than in the past?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (10:16):

Yeah, I think so. Especially, I think the problem with learning about web3 is also that this decentralized community. When you want to learn about React, then there’s the official homepage and the official, I don’t know, maybe Discord or whatever, and then you just go there and you learn. With web3, you don’t really know where to start, and then you just dip your toe into it and there’s a lot of scan around, and it’s very complex.

(10:44):

That said, the community mature also a lot, and now you have a lot of people that produce high quality content, especially the starter stuff, it’s very good. Speaking of [inaudible 00:10:58] David, who works also at Ethereum, but also Austin Griffith, they do a very good job in educating people and providing good material to do the jump. So I think that is better. Back then, I really had the feeling that I need to invent or we had to invent everything from scratch.

Nick (12:46):

So take me back to when you first became aware of The Graph. So you had moved out of a web2 traditional role, you moved into crypto working with Enzyme and Melon protocol, and then at some point you must have become aware of The Graph, and something there piqued your interest. Take us back to that.

Simon Emanuel Schmid (13:03):

Yeah, that story is actually quite cool. Yeah, as you said, we were early, 2017. It was before The Graph existed, and me, I had a front end/user experience, for me it was very important to provide an interface to DeFi, it was one of the first DeFi applications that has the same quality as maybe a Kraken or Cryptowatch or whatever was around back then. And to do so, to actually draw a chart of historical token prices, you need to go through the blockchain and find all events where such trade happened, and then take the information out, store it somewhere in order to display that chart.

(13:57):

And so we started to play around because we were committed to be fully decentralized, and it was a big problem, a huge task. And so we started to actually build our own Indexer in an app that you had to download on your computer so we could distribute it through IPFS. And then you started that app, and that in the beginning just start to sync, had to go through the blockchain, get all this information out, store it locally in a database in order to display those charts quickly. And it was such a pain. And also we realized that, “Yeah, this probably works if the protocol is only a couple of thousand blocks old.” But if you look at the longer the protocol was around, the longer it took that to start to sync and everything. And then I was like, “Hey, we cannot do this in a decentralized way. What can we do?”

(14:51):

And actually, more or less when I had this realization, I saw The Graph on Twitter, and I clicked on the website, and I was sold on the first page. I was like, “Okay, this is it. This is how it should be done.” Because they also used GraphQL and we also used GraphQL, it was clear that time that this is the language for data as a data API. And then the stuff that we did with indexing, they did in a way that it is actually able to be decentralized at some point. And then I reached out and said like, “Hey, let’s talk. We need to collaborate here because you are actually solving a big problem that we have.” And that’s also why probably Enzyme now is one of first protocols that integrated with The Graph and in the wave one migration partners because this relationship started back then.

Nick (15:44):

Simon, I’m always interested in stories like this because you were once a user or someone in need of the solution of The Graph, and then you’ve transitioned to working in the ecosystem. I think it’s always helpful for listeners to try to understand the nature of the problems in detail of what trying to index the blockchain data yourself was and why The Graph was just this relief or solution that you had been looking for?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (16:10):

This goes in a similar direction like one of the technical pitches that I do for The Graph, actually. The blockchain is incentivized and optimized data storage for writing. So you write transactions to the blockchain, then there is this consensus algorithm, and it is stored on the blockchain and it stays there forever. But reading from the blockchain is not something that people thought about that much. And this started to become more and more a problem as more and more data is around. The Ethereum blockchain and archive node currently to date is three terabyte of data, and that’s just too much to process in a decentralized way, namely on your own computer. So there must be a solution to that, and this is, actually, the problem that The Graph solves.

Nick (17:03):

Simon, you and I are talking then because you currently work at Edge & Node, and you’re working on the protocol now. So what do you do for Edge & Node, and what’s some of the contributions that listeners might recognize that you’ve made so far?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (17:15):

Yes. My current role at Edge & Node is I’m a solutions engineer. I think it’s by definition a quite broad role, but also this gives me the possibility to bring my strengths and skillset in a broad way in… and what I do, you see me on Discord helping people out, fresh developers or even seasoned developers that are trying to write a subgraph, deploy to the decentralized network, I’ll be there and help them and answer the questions. This is for one.

(17:48):

And for two, I’m also being at hackathons giving workshops about subgraph development, being a mentor, sit together with those teams there trying to help them to create their subgraph or troubleshoot the subgraph and do this kind of stuff. And also, now I also explore with projects that want to integrate with The Graph, what can they do, how The Graph helps them for their problems. And the best is if they approach us or me before they actually write their smart contracts because then I have the possibility to say, “Hey, if you write smart contracts, it’s very important that you emit events, and that every data that is needed from The Graph is emit in these events. And so you do not have these slow [inaudible 00:18:36] and so on.

Nick (18:37):

What are some initiatives you’re currently working on or going to work on this year that you’re excited about?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (18:43):

Yeah, definitely the main net migration, this is the big topic currently. So yeah, the hosted service ran now for more than a year successfully. A lot of big projects are relying on the hosted service, but the host service is a centralized service that Edge & Node is providing to the community, and now it’s time to start to migrate to decentralized network to really have The Graph decentralized because before it was just a centralized server that you can just use for your dapp, and as long as you are using centralized services in your dapp, you are not having a decentralized app or dapp, you’re just having an app that uses blockchain.

(19:30):

So this is the current focus, and I think there are different initiatives. I work together closely with the projects to help them understand what are the differences from the host service to the decentralized network, what they need to do, and then actually help them to migrate over, monitor everything. But I think also after we had the first bunch of project migrate over, then I will start to work on documentation explainers, so that even more people can do it by themselves without having people from Edge & Node or the community helping them.

Nick (20:08):

Well, I want to ask a follow-up then about that transition from the hosted service to the decentralized service. You’ve taken people through that process, you’ve helped people get ready for that, how big of a jump is that? Is it really difficult to do, or is it pretty easy?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (20:25):

In theory, it’s not that complicated, but I think in practice people need to learn about decentralization again and meaning that, for example, before you were able to just deploy your subgraphs to the hosted service and it just works, and you don’t need to care about it anymore. But now with decentralized network, you need to publish your subgraph on the network, you need to signal on it, or you need to find creators to signal on it, so in order the index is starting to index your subgraph.

(21:00):

And also if you have multiple indexes to index your subgraph, there is an additional problem of, it could be that those indexes follow different soft forks, and then you need to be careful of that. So you need to be aware that the response that you received before could be from an Indexer different than you received the response now, so you need to adjust your front end a little bit to that problem. Yeah, these are the challenges that we are facing.

Nick (21:28):

In your role you’re talking to a lot of people that are using The Graph, and obviously The Graph, as part of its evolution will migrate more and more users from the hosted to the decentralized service. What’s your sense of the appetite in the crypto space of having a decentralized indexing and querying service like The Graph?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (21:47):

Yeah, I think people in the space, a lot of them, they really care for decentralization, and they’re also aware that decentralization does come at some cost. It’s always easier to use a centralized service. It’s always easier to use Twitter than to use a decentralized social network, at the moment. And this is similar with The Graph decentralized network, it is a little bit more complex than just using a centralized service. But if you care about decentralization, and if you also see that decentralization will win in the long run, and if you are in here for the long run, then migrating your dapp to the decentralized network is a no-brainer.

Nick (22:29):

Well, I want to turn that question more to you now. What makes you excited about The Graph and the future of The Graph?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (22:35):

I’m very excited about The Graph, as I said, because it solves this central problem. I think, The Graph, the technology that we are building here, this is basic infrastructure. We are now building the roads and the railways and the electricity system for the future of the internet, if not humankind. And being in that process, seeing what’s going on, who is migrating, which are the projects that are taking the step, that’s very exciting in general.

(23:07):

Also, when you see whenever projects that try to write a subgraph or that have those problems that I had back at Melonport, and then at some point they are using The Graph tech, they write the subgraph, it’s not easy, there is a learning curve. But as soon as they jumped over and actually going down into The Graph rabbit hole, and then they see like, “Okay, wow, this is it. This is very cool, this solves my problem in a decentralized way that is just exciting,” it’s cool to see, and it’s cool also to help them to go that route and see.

Nick (23:44):

Inevitably, listeners of this episode will Google you, try to figure out who you are, and they’ll quickly notice that you’ve presented at a lot of conferences, and you were in Lisbon and you’ve done other things. How has that experience been for you? Do you like getting out on the road like that and attending different conferences and presenting?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (24:02):

Especially after the corona problems that we had, it was very cool to actually touch base with all those people. And as I said, the thing that I like most about the Ethereum community are the people and their mindsets. So being at those conferences and at the hackathons talking to the people, it’s just inspiring, it’s just interesting people. And you don’t only talk about tech, you can also talk about social issues, about next holiday destination, whatever. These are amazing people.

(24:36):

And also for me, traveling and being at that places and also giving these workshops and being a mentor at hackathons, for me it’s very fulfilling because I can actually help very smart people and very cool projects to actually come to life, and yeah, that’s a privilege.

Nick (24:55):

Well, Simon, other guests of the podcast and certainly a lot of people in the crypto space are talking a lot about web3, but it’s an interesting thing because there seems to be a lot of divergent opinions or perspectives of what web3 is fundamentally and the impact it’ll have in the world. I’d like to ask you that, what’s your vision for web3 and its impact in the world?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (25:17):

web3, maybe a little bit overused at the moment, but actually I think web3 is inevitable, but it’ll be different than we think. I think the process is gradual, it is a long road, not only a technical-level long road, but also on an educational level. People are used to use those, quotes, “free services” like Twitter, Instagram, Google, and they have a hard time when you say to them like, “Hey, now you need to pay for the queries,” or, “Hey, now you need to pay for the transactions, and that everything has a price.” People do not understand markets. People do not understand market dynamics. It’s something that they need to learn.

(26:00):

And I also think not every problem can be solved by just throwing a token at it. People need to understand, learn and care about privacy, about ownership, about what it means to actually own your money, having the seed phrase, and if you lose the seed phrase, then also your money is gone, I think that’s a big shift. But web3 is the future, it’s where we’re going. For me, it’s a direction rather than a place that we will be.

Nick (26:30):

And if we follow that direction, how does it impact people in the world?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (26:34):

Yeah, I think what we are currently trying to build or not trying to build, we are actually building it, it is alternatives to the centralized entities and monopolies that we see today. And the more and more people start to understand this, there will be incidents like passwords are stolen, databases will be hacked, people will use services that just shut down, they invest hundreds of hours into a service that at some point the investors of that service don’t think the revenue is good enough and they will just shut it down.

(27:06):

And the more incidents like this, the more incidents that this big brother of ours, that I talked before, pointed at are starting to happen and people are seeing it and being aware, the more they will be looking for alternatives. But currently this current system also works not bad and that’s why it’s not moving so fast as some people would like to see.

Audio (27:30):

Hey, this is Stefan from The Graph Academy announcing The Academy grants program, a program that is intended to foster the growth of our community-driven platform, The Graph Academy. We are offering grants to contributors to incentivize the creation of high quality educational material. If you want to apply, simply visit thegraph.academy/grants. That is thegraph.academy/grants. You can also find more information in the show notes.

Nick (28:17):

Something else that’s come up on recent podcasts, and listeners will know this, is this idea that it’s not a zero-sum situation, meaning that web3 completely replaces web2 or vice versa, that they can actually coexist. I’m wondering if you’ve thought about the relationship between web2 and web3, and this idea that it’s not zero-sum, they can actually coexist.

Simon Emanuel Schmid (28:41):

Yeah, that’s a very good question, I like it a lot because I would say I’m not in the camp of the web3 maximalists. As I said, for me it’s a guiding principle, it’s a direction. But what web3 does or decentralized systems do is basically they’re removing trust. They’re removing trust between, let’s say, someone that wants to participate in a network and someone that is actually providing infrastructure to the network. Like in Ethereum, you have miners, in The Graph, you have Indexers, you do not need to trust the Indexers, you do not need to trust the miners.

(29:20):

But I don’t think like that you don’t want to trust anybody in the world at all. So there are still situations where trust between human beings, trust between human beings and institutions is still a very good model that we don’t need to disrupt. So you can just try to disrupt those models, but eventually only the projects will succeed that are actually kind of solving a problem that is existing, and if something like… There’s the saying, never touch a running system. So some systems are already in a very good shape and they work for themselves and they don’t need to have a decentralized aspect on it, and I don’t think that we need to disrupt them.

Nick (30:03):

Well, another thing that comes up pretty frequently when we’re talking about web3 is this interplay between centralized entities, maybe like a Coinbase, for example, that seems to be leveraging a lot of decentralized technology or products or solutions. How do you resolve that in your own mind, this interplay between centralized entities working alongside decentralized entities?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (30:24):

Yeah, this is actually very interesting, and especially the case of Coinbase. In the beginning when I started, Coinbase was a bit the bad guy. For a lot of those people, they said, “It is decentralized entity that kind of takes over, or jumps in, or even makes a lot of money out of our idea or having the ownership.” But for everybody that I talked to that wants to get involved with web3 technology, I always said, “Just download Coinbase because what they do is they make it really easy for people with a web2 mindset to get into web3.” And to be fair, they also care about web3, and they are aware of this. So there I have to say they’re doing a very great job.

(31:13):

Another example is, but that’s a bit more complex, let’s say OpenSea. So OpenSea, especially recently, got a lot of critiques that they are planning to do an IPO, or that they really go to this traditional startup path and people are like, “Hey, why don’t you just do a token? Why don’t you do that? And why are you so centralized?” And yes, that’s a critique that you can say about OpenSea. But on the other hand side, the main question is why was OpenSea so successful when they were not fully decentralized? In the end, ultimately people didn’t care enough about it. The problems with OpenSea and decentralization of OpenSea, they were around for one year, but there was no competitor able to overcome them or being even of quite some relevance.

(32:06):

But again, we should also as a community say, “Hey, let’s make it better.” And when we say make it better, then it should be in a way that people not only driven by idealism actually join the cause, but also because it is actually better. But I have also the feeling that especially if NFTs, at some point there will be these incidents where you are losing the JPEG because it’s just stored on a centralized server and that people start to realize even those that just are onboarded right now, that decentralization is important, and in the long run you want to have it decentralized.

Nick (32:44):

It sounds like to me you’re kind of saying what Yaniv Tal recently said on Twitter when he said that he also appreciates these web2 on and offramps, and that they’re really important to the future of decentralization.

Simon Emanuel Schmid (32:55):

Yeah, I agree there fully.

Nick (32:57):

Well then how would you then address these situations where you might have hybrid centralized entities, maybe something like a Binance or a Polygon, again, with this dichotomy between hybrid or centralized entities working alongside decentralized entities?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (33:11):

Yeah, I have to admit in the beginning I was very anti-Binance because for me it looked like just [inaudible 00:33:21], tweak some of those parameters, then create this fast chain, have a centralized set of validators that pushing it through. And then also the headache that we have with supporting the subgraphs because Binance is just not stable because of that. But to be fair, when you look at Ethereum, minting an NFT on OpenSea costs you 200, 300 bucks just gas fees. When you are an artist from an emerging country, you would never mint your NFT by yourself, for some people 200 bucks or 300 bucks, they live a year out of it in the streets.

(33:59):

And so the decentralization that we have with Ethereum, that comes at a cost. It is fully decentralized, it is fully censorship resistant, but it costs a lot of gas to interact with it. Now, if you look at those newer chains or those other chains like Binance and Polygon, they actually solve a big problem, very good, namely they just reduce gas fees, but they also sacrifice the decentralization for it, it’s a trade-off, and I think it’s a fair trade-off.

(34:26):

And also if you look at Binance, what they do with education amongst emerging countries, how they go in these countries with having programs of people onboarding into the space, learning them how to develop smart contracts, how to develop dapps on top of the smart contracts using The Graph to connect the smart contracts to the dapps, they onboarded thousands and thousands of developers into the space. And in the end because, and that’s a funny thing, because Binance is just a clone of Ethereum, they just copied to take over. You have a lot of copycats of Ethereum projects directly cloned to Binance, cloned to Polygon, but the new people that they onboard into the space, they learn the same tech.

(35:12):

So when you come now and go to Binance and you start to bring your earnings, if you’re living in a country with high inflation and you start to bring your earnings into crypto, you want to have it decentralized, then you go to Binance. And then at some point your savings compound, and then you have enough money, and at some point then you can bring it over to Ethereum. So this is onboarding, and in that regard, I think I’m very happy to have them around, and they’re doing a very important job for the community.

Nick (35:42):

That’s a great answer. And so if you forecast out web3, and you’ve referenced that web3 is more directional to you than any kind of real specific defined structural thing that sometimes gets the headlines in the press, how does The Graph, from your perspective, fit in this directional definition of web3?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (36:00):

Yeah, sure. What we’re currently building is web3, is the technical foundation level, the infrastructure for web3 that’s currently built. And The Graph is just a crucial part of that infrastructure, as I said, it solves the data reading problem. Somehow you can say data is the gold or the oil of 21st century, and these commodities or this value should not be in centralized hands. So The Graph decentralizes data in a way, and that is on a very high level, very important

Nick (36:40):

Simon, a question I always like to ask guests, especially guests like you who made the journey from a web2 software environment to working on problems that exist in web3, if you could go back in time and give advice to your younger self that didn’t quite make the jump yet, what advice would you give to yourself?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (36:59):

Yeah, it might be my Swiss personality, which is always a little bit standing on the side and first observing and also touching before engaging, maybe. And for technology, especially technology like blockchain, crypto, or web3 technology, in general, I think that’s the wrong attitude. I think when something new comes out, then you should just play around with it, having a playful approach to it and say like, “Hey, this is cool.” Yeah, it is complicated. Yeah, it makes stuff worse, and maybe it does not solve a problem that you see right now, but it’s still worth to play around with it and think about the new technologies and trying to integrate and having a playful approach.

(37:48):

I was too much, in my opinion, dismissive. Let’s say for example, NFTs. I was not the first one buying NFTs. I bought some, but in the beginning I was like, “What is this? Why are people now buying JPEGs?” And having this standpoint of seeing what’s going on and being a little bit thinking, “Hey, I don’t need to engage with it. I’m too good for it, or this does not make sense. Why are people doing it?” I think that is wrong. I think it is good to engage, it is good to play around. Even if you don’t think that that makes sense, it is good to understand people are doing it and because people are doing it, it is a thing, and that’s reason enough for me actually now to try it out for me and think like, “Hey, do I also see value in this or not?”

(38:40):

It could be after I tried it out that I don’t see any value in something. So for example, blockchain gaming, which is a very cool topic that’s coming up right now. And I tried some of those games out and I tried to engage, and it was fun for some time, but at some point I realized it’s not for me, and then I went out. But I was in, I tried it out, I gave it a try.

Nick (39:05):

Well, I appreciate the way you answered that. And so as you said, you kind of moved from hesitancy about NFTs and then got involved, what did you learn in that process of owning NFTs, and what was that experience like once you decided to do it?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (39:18):

Yeah, in the beginning, the NFTs that I was looking at were these PFPs, these profile pictures where you have thousand of whatever cat [inaudible 00:39:28] mask, whatever, that in the end you put on your profile picture and show off to the world that either you have a ton of money or very good taste in the next big thing. And this somehow was like, “Yeah, okay, cool. I still have a hash mask as my Twitter profile picture.” But this is not actually the energy or not what NFTs are actually enable, and this thing I just learned later.

(39:54):

First I was always about these PFPs, I was also about generative art in NFTs because that makes sense using the technology, being playful with technology, and bring it with art together. But recently also I learned about the difference that it makes when you are just collecting an artist’s art, give the artist money, give them money, and invest in them. And when you think about it, and that’s so crazy, I can now buy a JPEG or whatever digital artwork that these people are creating, creative minds, that should earn a lot of money for what they do. And I can buy it. I can buy one or two or three of these NFTs.

(40:41):

With traditional art, I would never do it. I would never spend 2,000 bucks on some pieces. Maybe I will buy two or three as long as I can hang them in my room or in my flat. But at some point the space is over. And despite I want to support those artists, I wouldn’t buy their art because I cannot put it somewhere. Now enter the NFT space. Now I can support artists, I can buy their art digitally. I can have millions of NFTs on my wallets if I want to, and it’s not like a space issue.

(41:16):

But the cool thing is I’m not only buying art, I’m also supporting them, I invest in them. And by investing in artist, I first enabled them to create more art, to be more creative, to make the world a better place with art. Art makes the world a better place. But also not only that, I can get rich with it also. When I buy three NFTs from upcoming artists, and then at some point they really do great community management, they are probably motivated by the fact that I just bought their NFTs that someone buys, someone gives them money. So they keep going and keep going, make themselves a name. And at some point maybe I can flip one of those NFTs with some profit and invest in more artists. So this is actually a very, very nice kind of self-sustaining circle [inaudible 00:42:04] that appreciate art and creativity.

Nick (42:42):

How has your role as a solution engineer been impacted by all these new core devs that are being added? Obviously Edge & Node, the team that you work on is a core dev working on The Graph, but they’ve also recently added StreamingFast, Figment, Semiotic, and now The Guild. Has that made your job as a core dev team and as a solution engineer any easier?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (43:03):

I think for the ones that are actually in the engineering and research, for them, all the core dev teams are on one side, a cool new addition of brain power, inspiration, and ideas, but also I think the coordination efforts are remarkable. But for me as a solutions engineer who more or less starts to play around with the stuff as soon as they have something, it is actually exciting, especially, I want to say it here, The Guild because The guild, I use their tech like GraphQL Stitching and GraphQL Tools. And even I looked at GraphQL Modules, how you can modularize your system, your graphical setup, everything is very cool and they’re very talented and very good Graph [inaudible 00:43:54] people.

(43:55):

And they know what’s going on, they are also very good in front end. The track record of the other core dev teams is not focused on front end, but we are actually building solutions for frontend people like Crypto Graph is especially important for front ends. And now having The Guild as a core dev team, I think it’s very good to have better tooling for front end people that integrating with The Graph is much more seamless for them.

Nick (44:24):

You obviously know quite a bit about the Guild, and from a lot of listeners, this is just something they probably saw on social media or in the news that The Guild joined The Graph as a core dev team, would you mind setting the context for what an important addition The Guild was, and a little bit of the history of who they are?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (44:40):

Yes, I can put it in context about the other core dev team. So as you know is the initial team behind The Graph who had the vision of The Graph and then build the first MVP. And I think The Graph is really… now with decentralized network, there is kind of all pieces are get together, it’s decentralized, you can index blockchain data and you can query it, so that’s very cool, but it is really an MVP, so there’s much more to be done.

(45:09):

Now, the first problems that we looked at is indexing speed. So that’s why StreamingFast and Figment came on board to help with indexing speed. Then another problem is like, okay, we have very complex network, there are complex market dynamics going on, so that’s why probably Semiotic joined because they have their expertise in this field. But now when it comes about tooling for front-end developers, that’s where The Guild is actually very, very good.

(45:38):

And their history also, what I like about them is they were formed not as a company, as I understand, but more as a loose collective of brilliant minds that joined together to produce open source, so they were committed to open source from the beginning. The Guild took over some of the very important open source projects that are used by thousands of projects and companies, but had been abandoned by their original authors, and The Guild jumped in and took it over and is still maintaining it. So they’re providing a very, very important work for the broader Graphical community already. And now bringing this talent and skill and mindset into The Graph ecosystem, for me, this is just amazing.

Nick (46:26):

Simon, thank you so much for your time, it’s been a really remarkable conversation. I want to ask one final question about you on a more personal level, what do you love most about the type of work you do and the opportunity of working in this space?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (46:40):

Yeah, now, especially as a solutions engineer at Edge & Node, what I really like is to collaborate with people all over the world for this common cause, for web3, to talk to them, to hear their pitches, hear their ideas, see what they are up to, how they are thinking, and then together kind of building it, doing it actually making it happen. I like the collaborative nature. All those peoples are partners. We go together, we go towards the same goal.

(47:12):

Even we are teams, we are teams in different projects, communities, whatever, in the end, we come together and we build something. And also that’s so exciting about the blockchain base in general, that when you talk to other projects, there is always opportunity to integrate, to use their technology or they can use our technology and to go forward together. And as solutions engineer, I’m always at this intersection with those projects, and this is very exciting.

Nick (47:42):

Simon, thank you so much. If listeners want to learn more about you and some of the work you’re doing, what’s the best way to stay in touch?

Simon Emanuel Schmid (47:48):

Yeah, I’m on Twitter, although my Twitter is not like I’m not a Twitter celebrity, but still you can follow me and I follow you back. On Twitter, I am Schmidd_si, that’s S-C-H-M-I-D_S-I. And then also you can just come to our Discord and ask a silly question, and eventually if the question is complex enough, I will jump in and try to help.