Academics who have an interest in crypto often end up building their own blockchains. Within the crypto space, academics and entrepreneurs are overlapping in their work and aims, and it is a bright sign. There are various examples we can take to see how this development is unfolding. Emin Gün Sirer is a professor at Cornell University and also the developer of Avalanche.
Avalanche is a base blockchain seeking to cooperate and compare with Ethereum. Dawn Song from the University of California is also one of the founders of Oasis, a privacy-focused blockchain. David Mazieres from Stanford is a key figure behind Ripple and Stellar. These stories show us time and again how theoretical knowledge combines with practical experiences within the crypto space.
The cryptocurrency community is an interesting place in terms of how it works and who it welcomes. As Dawn Song put it, your credentials do not matter in crypto as long as you have something to offer. In this context, anyone from a University faculty to a college dropout can make their way to crypto.
From another perspective, these educator-entrepreneurs of crypto are slowly but steadily breaking away from institutional shackles. In another way, the four giants of the tech world work as the institutional figures in the tech world. Anything that is not done by Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft becomes anti-establishment.
We are living in interesting times when definitions and meanings of establishment and institutions are changing. In this context, the educator-entrepreneurs have so much to offer to the crypto space.
