Ethereum Usability with Sean Li

Cryptocurrencies enable a large number of applications. Trustless reputation systems, decentralized identity tools, micropayments, non-fungible Internet items, borderless currencies, just to name a few. But cryptocurrencies have not yet impacted daily life, for most of us. Why is that?

One reason is that it is still very hard for developers to build within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The programming languages, such as Solidity, are not widely used by software engineers. Building and deploying smart contracts is not as easy as deploying a simple Ruby on Rails webapp. The open source tooling is immature, as are the paid developer tools.

Sean Li is the CEO of Fortmatic, a company that is building tools to improve the Ethereum developer experience. Fortmatic simplifies wallet creation, user identity management, security, and money transfer for Ethereum developers.

Before starting Fortmatic, Sean was the founder of Kitematic, a company that made the developer experience of Docker easier. Kitematic was acquired by Docker. Sean is one of the few people with significant experience in both the enterprise container ecosystem and the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Sean joins the show to discuss his time in the Docker ecosystem, his new company Fortmatic, and his perspective on how to build tools for developers. Someday there will be hundreds of thousands of developers building applications around cryptocurrencies, just like people use cloud computing today.  The road to getting there is unclear, and Sean provides useful insights and predictions for the future.

Transcript

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