In this new edition of Kipu Impact Notes, we interview Milton Berman, founder of Wake Up Labs. This is one of the most prominent software factories in Latin America. The company was founded in 2022, during the year of the Terra crash and other not-so-happy memories for the industry. But that didn’t stop them, and today they are positioning themselves as one of the most committed blockchain engines in the region.
Romina Sejas: - How many times has the Coinmarketcap top ten changed since you got into the crypto world?
Milton Berman: - You made me do some Googling. So many dubious coins have passed through there! Apparently, I've seen a new Top-10 on December 31st eight times, and we’re now on the 9th!
R.S.: - What was your professional journey like?
M.B.: - I’ve always really liked technology and was good at math. These are some reasons why I studied and graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering from UBA (University of Buenos Aires). Those were several years at FIUBA (Faculty of Engineering of the University of Buenos Aires), but they were worth it, and I always remember them fondly (despite the suffering in some subjects 😄). My first professional years were in large multinational companies, starting as an intern and eventually leading IT projects.
After that, I had a very rewarding stint as the CTO and first team member of a mobile video game startup, Widow Games. There, I learned a lot of things, including one of the most important: building teams and managing human groups, which continues to serve me greatly to this day. And, of course, understanding the challenge of leading a startup! (Though it’s not the same as being the first member as founding it.)
Around 2016, a coworker wouldn’t stop talking about Bitcoin and how an ETF with the Winklevoss twins was coming, which piqued my curiosity. I had no choice but to read Satoshi Nakamoto's Whitepaper. When I finished those 9 pages, my mind was blown.
Suddenly, there was a technology that could prevent many of the financial problems we Argentinians have suffered for so many years due to government and/or bank decisions (such as the bank freeze, currency controls, etc.) and solve many others. Then I found out about Ethereum and its smart contracts, and there was no turning back; I decided I was going to work in that industry for many years.
R.S.: - What were those first steps in blockchain like?
In my first foray into the industry, I joined as CTO of a Decentralized Digital Identity (or Self-Sovereign Identity - SSI) project to create financial identities privately, without relying on centralized entities. The DIDI project was promoted by the NGO Bitcoin Argentina, the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank), and Accenture, among others. It was an open-source, non-profit project that achieved great results, laying the foundation for future projects of its kind, like QuarkID today.
A few years later, I joined Rootstock (Bitcoin's EVM Sidechain) as a Product Owner, where I led the creation of various products, dApps, and open-source blockchain infrastructure (DeFi, Identity, NFTs, name services, among others).
After that, my current phase as an entrepreneur began, during which I co-founded WakeUp Labs with my two partners.
R.S.: - Why start something of your own? Why end the dependent relationship?
M.B.: - I always wanted to have my own venture, although for various reasons throughout my career until then, I hadn’t done it. Suddenly, I found an industry that spoke to me, with which I knew I could offer new solutions to people.
It was still DeFi Summer, and with already 4 years of working full-time in blockchain, it seemed like a good time to do it (if not now, when?). At that moment, I left my 9-to-5 job with the idea of founding a company.
I’ve always found it unacceptable not to be able to exercise the right to private property in digital assets. In physical form, you can have it without problems, but in digital form, you give control to a third party.
As Argentinians, we’ve suffered a lot in various situations, especially with digital money (Hello, bank freeze... hello, currency controls…). It's no wonder the average Argentinian has always saved in physical dollar bills under the mattress. The same happened to me with social networks like Facebook or Google. They own all your data, interactions, accounts, etc.
There shouldn’t be a difference between the digital and the physical, but there was. Until blockchain technology arrived.
That’s why, from the very beginning, I was passionate about technology and the possibility of contributing to an entirely new and "new" industry, which could benefit humans from being a bit freer in the digital world than before.
R.S.: - How was the genesis of WakeUp Labs? Why did you do it?
M.B.: I first got together with Max, with whom I worked at Rootstock, and we started experimenting with several small DeFi projects. Then Gonza joined, and we started WakeUp Labs with the initial goal of building non-existent infrastructure, first for non-fungible tokens and then more generally for any type of blockchain project. We launched the WakeUp Platform, a SaaS with which "web2" developers can create and deploy smart contracts without having to know Solidity or any concept other than knowing how to implement a REST API.
2022 was a very challenging year to start a tech startup, especially in crypto (remember Terra, FTX…), but that didn’t stop us. We are very motivated to contribute to the industry, help startups fulfill their dreams, and enable blockchains to provide better tools to their users and developers.
R.S.: - How did you experience decision-making as founders?
M.B.: - It was very tough. But with each hit against the wall, you survive and become more experienced and stronger. It’s a mix of applying all the experience gained before and constant learning of lessons that aren’t written anywhere. Sometimes, an experienced entrepreneur can help you, sometimes a book or a blog, but sometimes, you don’t have absolutely anyone who "knows" what to do. Not even ChatGPT can help you :).
But that's where you, along with your partners and by listening to the team, try to make the best decision in each case. With resilience and a bit of intelligence, anything is possible.
A hint: it's essential to build a good team so that those decisions are not just words but are transformed into reality.
I'm very happy to say that WakeUp has an amazing team made up of great people.
R.S.: - What do you do at WakeUp Labs?
We are a team of engineers developing infrastructure and applications for startups, DAOs, and blockchain protocols.
Our main focus is on projects that have some crypto (or web3) component, as it is what we are most passionate about and what we do best.
We build from 0 to 100%, from smart contracts to the frontend, passing through the backend, APIs, and services.
We work with some of the most important blockchain networks today, like Optimism and Arbitrum. Currently, we are building open-source infrastructure and apps for both networks.
We have also collaborated with networks and protocols such as 0xProtocol, Rootstock, Scroll, and others that we can't mention yet. Our focus is to continue growing in supporting these types of protocols, blockchains, and DAOs.
In addition to continuing to build crypto products for startups, ranging from RWA (Real World Asset) tokenization to DeFi, passing through AgTech and Video Games.
R.S.: - How do you finance yourselves?
M.B.: - Mainly, through the income obtained from the services we provide to our clients. We had a very small initial investment at the beginning, but today, the team has maintained 100% thanks to the payment for our services rendered.
R.S.: - What is the public development you are most proud of?
M.B.: We have carried out many developments that we are proud of and always try to take on more complex challenges.
As for public ones, I am very proud of what we are building for Arbitrum: a dApp to bypass the Sequencer (which is a single point of failure) in cases where it malfunctions (either because the service went down or in cases of censorship). This enhances the chain’s decentralization by enabling more ways to exit from L2 to L1 without relying on centralized entities.
For this proposal, we received 99% of the votes in favor of the Arbitrum DAO, which was a double pride for WakeUp Labs.
Some very challenging open-source projects for the Optimism ecosystem are also coming up, which we will be working on for the next 10 to 12 months. You’ll hear about the progress.
R.S.: - Do you feel there is a difference between buildings from Argentina and those buildings in other regions?
I can't speak for those buildings outside of Argentina, but I'm sure we have a talent that isn’t easily found in other countries. I believe there is a blend of training, resilience, and an almost immediate understanding of the problems that blockchain technology solves.
On the other hand, in Argentina, a much greater effort is required to manage the administrative, legal, and financial aspects compared to other countries. Hopefully, that will change one day.
And just as good talent is found, it’s much harder to find funding here than in the USA, Europe, or some regions of Asia. Venture Capitals don’t venture much around here :D
That impacts our potential clients; due to low funding, few local startups have a sufficient budget to develop an MVP with blockchain technology.
R.S.: - What three issues do you see in the industry?
M.B: - In my opinion, I see the following:
-
Technical complexity: For most users (perhaps 95%?), using crypto solutions in a self-custodied way is still very complex. We need to keep pushing towards a user experience that matches using Instagram or TikTok but maintains the core values of the technology: censorship resistance, trustlessness, and decentralization. This requires giving more importance to UX design but also accelerating the development of necessary infrastructure to, for example, increase speed and reduce costs.
-
Privacy: Although this technology is based on cryptography, everything that happens on the blockchain is public. At most, pseudo-anonymity can be achieved. However, although it pains me to admit it, banks or Facebook protect your financial and social privacy more than most blockchains do. To transact freely, as this industry proposes, greater privacy must be provided.
Nowadays, there are many teams working on that, for example, Aztec, which indicates to me that it will be feasible to achieve without ending up at the extreme of what happened with Tornado Cash, where a programmer ended up in prison for pushing code to Github.
-
Too many scammers are still around. We’ve seen it on a large scale (e.g., FTX) but also on a very small scale, with local scams. This has unfortunately been happening since the birth of crypto, and it often drives away users, investors, and very capable people who could contribute much more to the industry.
I think we need to improve how information is provided so that "new" people in the ecosystem can easily discern what is a scam and what is not.
R.S.: - What are your expectations for the near future?
M.B.: - After attending EthCC in Brussels, I confirmed some things I had been seeing.
We have already moved from L1 to L2, and now we are moving to L "N," which is positive.
It is a smart way to quickly solve the UX, cost, and speed issues without compromising the core values of blockchain.
Also being able to leverage Bitcoin as a settlement layer is positive for the Ethereum ecosystem. Leveraging the strongest, most resilient, and decentralized networks is an intelligent idea.
Clearly, Zero-Knowledge Proofs will play an increasingly important role in all of this, both for scalability and privacy.
As for usage, I see the use of stablecoins becoming increasingly solid and indisputable, the growth of centralized exchange usage, which helps onboard non-technical people easily. Finally, tokenized Real World Assets (RWAs) have found the legal formats they were missing, and we will see more and more of these assets transitioning from legacy financial rails to the financial rails of the future: blockchain networks.
R.S.: - What advice would you give to a Solidity student?
M.B.: - Study! It’s worth studying. Try to work for 1 or 2 years in traditional software first. That will give you a base of understanding that is super necessary to later apply it to web3. As for web3, I think it's very important, almost mandatory, to understand the fundamentals of the first blockchains, I would say Ethereum and Bitcoin. Understanding these concepts as a foundation, the rest you will be able to extrapolate and learn faster.
Stay informed, study, read books, listen to podcasts, follow accounts you like, and learn about the industry. If a new EIP comes out, read it, study it, and understand it. Try to follow popular open-source GitHub repositories and solve issues, no matter how small; it is one of the best ways to learn.
Don’t become a fanatic, always maintain critical thinking.
And whenever you want, write to me. At WakeUp Labs, we are always looking for current or future Solidity developers to work on challenging projects and are here to support these initiatives.
Do you want to follow WakeUpLabs and its founders?
Follow the updates on their X profile
Visit their website: www.wakeuplabs.io
Co-Founders: Milton, Max, and Gonzalo
💟
Romina, Kipu Impact