{"id":6089,"date":"2020-08-13T09:51:31","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T13:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/?p=6089"},"modified":"2020-08-13T14:58:32","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T18:58:32","slug":"journeys-in-blockchain-robert-wiecko-dash-core-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/2020\/08\/13\/journeys-in-blockchain-robert-wiecko-dash-core-group","title":{"rendered":"Journeys in Blockchain: Robert Wiecko of DASH Core Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Wiecko is getting back into playing electric guitar.<\/strong> Armed with his brand new Fender Stratocaster, the COO of DASH Core Group is reliving his youth as a high school student living in Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an amazing feeling to restart something you loved so much and forgot for some reason.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Playing guitar gives him a sense of freedom and peace, he explains. Learning to play again is not just entertaining, but acts as a sort of meditation. Focusing on the skill, he frees his mind from the usual demands and stresses of the day.<\/span><\/p>\n

The notion of freedom is what drew him into the blockchain space in 2011. Working in software development in the financial sector for much of his career, Wiecko recognized serious flaws in the system. \u201cI realized there\u2019s something wrong with the financial system in general. Bitcoin appeared to me as a fantastic thing. Back in 2011, it was for geeks, and I was a total geek.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite this initial fascination with blockchain technology, Wiecko felt he was not up to the task of exploring it initially, due to a multi-year bout with ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel syndrome. \u201cIt\u2019s a very nasty disease, incurable for western medicine. My life was almost ruined by the disease.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But Wiecko was open to exploring alternative approaches to rid himself of the illness. He learned that western doctors only offered medicines to mitigate symptoms, but not to cure the disease. In Poland, alternative medicines were frowned upon and perceived as illegitimate. \u201cI said, \u2018Well I disagree with that, I\u2019m not going to be sick until the end of my life and consume chemical substances to maintain the status quo.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He did his own research \u2014 an oft-repeated adage in the crypto realm \u2014 and discovered a range of methods from Chinese and Tibetan medicine that, when combined with a disciplined diet and meditation, eradicated the disease.<\/span><\/p>\n

After three years of this change in mindset and healthier living, he returned to his doctor who found that Wiecko had successfully cured the illness. \u201cThe doctors were shocked,\u201d he explains. Tests found no remaining evidence of the disease.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMainly it was the mindset and lifestyle changes that helped me to recover. I\u2019m happy. I\u2019m one of many cured from this type of disease. It\u2019s an unpopular narrative in the mainstream, driven by pharma companies\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alternative medicine, alternative finance<\/h4>\n

Wiecko draws parallels between delving into alternative medicine and exploring blockchain technology. An IT expert specializing in Java and Oracle development, the concept of decentralization was a revolutionary idea to him. In its earliest days, the crypto world was filled with idealists: Libertarians, Wiecko explains, were the dominant force in the space. He was excited to join a growing movement motivated by positive ideals.<\/span><\/p>\n

He briefly tinkered with the speculative side of the industry but found that he was, unfortunately, a terrible trader. Instead, he started to get involved with technical teams. \u201cThere was no chance to join Bitcoin teams. I was not sophisticated enough.\u201d But Wiecko found a few small projects where he could contribute.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, most of these smaller projects were really in it for a quick buck, he realized. The formula was becoming familiar: create a coin, make a bunch of money, and abandon the project. \u201cIt was not what I was looking for.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wiecko expressed his frustrations with the pump-and-dump state of affairs in the crypto market on a Polish forum, where a friend recommended he look into Darkcoin, a fork of Litecoin created by Evan Duffield. The community and vision of the project stood out, and he connected with Duffield to offer his services as a project manager. Even though the team was tiny at the time, Duffield hired him for the project. The Darkcoin name was changed to DASH that same year.<\/span><\/p>\n

You have no idea\u2026 it was pure communism<\/h4>\n

Born in socialist-era Poland, Wiecko knows a thing or two about the other side of freedom. \u201cYou have no idea what life was like in Poland in the 70\u2019s. It was pure communism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica was always presented as an evil part of the world. We didn\u2019t believe it, but the media campaign was always going into your head. It was propaganda.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Orthodox Catholic family lived in the countryside of an especially poor region. Despite their struggles, his parents instilled in Wiecko a moral compass that he follows to this day, even though he is not religious like his parents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moving to a nearby city, Wiecko had the rare opportunity to experiment with computers when his school bought three and offered programming classes. People were lucky just to have a telephone in their homes at the time, he explains, so owning a personal computer was an impossibility. Gesturing that his head is exploding, he expresses his enthusiasm when first encountering computers, \u201cBOOOOOOOOM! I want to do this!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI loved computers from the very first experience. There was a magic behind programming. It was the time I knew my life would be connected to computers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The world gets bigger<\/h4>\n

As communism began its decline in Poland, the west beckoned. While his father went abroad to earn money to support the family, Wiecko attended a technical high school where he learned about robotics and automation. He picked up his guitar habit, jamming on Slayer and Metallica with friends, but dropped the instrument when he dedicated himself fully to his IT studies with a major in software engineering.<\/span><\/p>\n

His first job as a Java developer in Warsaw was short-lived. He worked with a friend in a startup that failed in its first year, collapsing during the imploding dot.com bubble. Wiecko was in dire straits \u2014 he had money for nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was literally standing on the street with one bag in my hand. All of my clothes and possessions were in this bag. And I had in my pocket around ten dollars. It was all my money. I could buy a ticket and return home to my parents, or I could start doing something by myself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wiecko called up a few friends who gave him a place to stay until he found a new job with a consulting company. \u201cI\u2019m really grateful to them,\u201d he says, \u201cIf you build good relationships, your friends will help you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon, he was working \u201cfrom the inside\u201d as a technical consultant in finance for entities such as the National Bank of Poland. As a developer, he was obliged to learn about the inner workings of the financial system in order to develop for the needs of his clients. He began to see that the system was broken. \u201cBeing an insider, I started to realize \u2014 uh-uh \u2014 it\u2019s not so perfect.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After joining Hewlett-Packard, Wiecko shifted the focus of his work toward less technical elements, working more closely with people as a project manager. He spent more of his time dealing with clients and facilitating cooperation between departments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite his career success, Wiecko was frustrated with his health issues and decided to move out of Poland to Switzerland, where alternative medicines were perceived more positively and the standard of living was much better. As his health improved, he began spending more of his time in the blockchain space, working on a range of projects before landing with the DASH Core team in 2015 as project manager.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Working in the traditional finance industry for UBS by day and then fighting the system in his crypto work during evenings and weekends, Wiecko felt a sense of schizophrenia. He decided to leave his traditional bank job to dedicate himself fully to crypto. \u201cI loved crypto. I loved the libertarian ideas. At that time, everyone was talking about freedom, about privacy, about the necessity of changing finance, about giving back financial freedom to people. I really believed in that and I still believe in such ideas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Wiecko is involved with DASH, he explains. He sees a genuine vision behind the project, one whose goals are not just about making fast money. The creator of DASH, Evan Duffield, had proposed ideas for innovating on Bitcoin, but was not heard, he says. So, he started DASH, forking off Litecoin as Darkcoin. This enabled improved speed, privacy, and governance, making the technology useful \u2014 not just for trading, Wiecko insists, but for everyday applications.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I heard this for the first time, I realized okay, this is the project and place for me. They have clear business goals and a vision on how to get there.\u201d In 2015, he says, Bitcoin had a clear vision, but most other coins were merely about speculation. \u201cI could say, at that time, 95% of them were trash.\u201d DASH stood out to him as one of the few exceptions. Even to this day, Wiecko admits, \u201cThe ratio has improved, but not by much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Master nodes and Bitcoin tickets<\/h4>\n

A major innovation of DASH is the concept of master nodes, Wiecko explains. At the time of its inception, projects were mostly similar to Bitcoin, having only a single layer of nodes. The DASH team realized that a second layer of master nodes could enable enhanced privacy with low-cost, instant transactions and a range of more sophisticated features. The layer could be incentivized to make it self-sufficient and decentralized. While standard nodes would provide hash power and a layer of security, the master node layer could provide a much greater range of software services.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the course of time, DASH master nodes have evolved to become a decentralized protector of the network, with 5,000 master nodes distributed around the world ensuring security. ChainLock technology prevents any possibility of a 51% attack on the DASH network. An upcoming new release will allow developers to create applications on the master node layer. He expects it will be released to testnet by the end of this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now the COO of DASH Core Group, Wiecko works less directly with projects, but maintains a substantial list of responsibilities including managing procedures, QA and infrastructure, communicating with teams, complying with regulatory requirements, and even managing a service desk. Uniquely, DASH users can submit tickets to the service desk and receive support for technical problems. With Bitcoin, he says, \u201cif you have a technical problem, where do you submit your ticket?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wiecko explains the company\u2019s goals focus on the user, eschewing the usual hype and subsequent price speculation. \u201cMost of the time it\u2019s about the price. We want to change this narrative and present crypto as user-friendly. It\u2019s actually an alternative for a person. The greatest example of this is Venezuela.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

DASH successfully provided a fast and cheap alternative for users to transact value in the hyper-inflated economy, Wiecko says. \u201cFor these poor people who earn five dollars a week, or even a month, this was something really great. They could not rely on their own currency. The dollar was not really available. Bitcoin transactions were expensive as hell…\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor you and me,\u201d he says, \u201cif a Bitcoin transaction costs a dollar, it\u2019s a cost we can afford.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut for those people who live from one dollar a day for an entire family, this is one day of their life. When the transaction costs five dollars, that\u2019s a disaster.\u201d In such situations, Bitcoin is not useful, he says. It can successfully store value, but it can not be used for quick and affordable transactions. Venezuelans needed an alternative and, he says, they found it with DASH.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n