adrianmcli (@adrianmcli)

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Today, I’m transitioning to a part-time role with the EF, focused on APAC Policy.

This means I now have bandwidth for advisory/consulting work.

I first ran AlethZero back in 2014, started working in Ethereum full-time at Truffle/ConsenSys about 9 years ago, and somehow I am now 3+ years into my time at the Ethereum Foundation.

My background sits across Ethereum engineering, DeFi, ZK education, Asia ecosystem work, and law. I also work across English, Chinese, Japanese, and some Korean.

If you think I can be helpful, please reach out.

Still here, still working on Ethereum, ever since AlethZero in 2014.

adrianmcli @adrianmcli Sep 22

South Korea has +11M crypto investors and tokenized securities are set to arrive in Feb 2027. Building the channel between regulators, institutions and builders is exactly what this ecosystem needs. Glad to have played a role in this.

Youbin Kang - Nonce Classic Verified account @youbin_kang Sep 22

1/ The Ethereum Foundation's public grants registry lists 1,173 funded projects. One of the ones added this quarter is called "Ethereum Korea Policy Coordination Layer." That one is ours.

Here is why it matters, even if you have never thought much about Korea.
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adrianmcli @adrianmcli Sep 15

In this age of AI and software commoditization, there are only 3 things where you can have a moat:

1. Hardware
2. Human connections and trust
3. Legal and regulatory know-how

adrianmcli @adrianmcli Aug 4

I am very sad.

isabel Verified account @izonline Aug 3

After 5+ years, we're winding down POAP.

Over the years, we:
* minted millions of collectibles across hundreds of communities.
* did incredible collaborations with world-class organizations - Coinbase, Amex, WMG, Bayer, and a long tail of others, including countless in crypto.
* ran one of the biggest activations at Devcon, minting 8000+ collectibles over the course of a week.
* built an Airport Rally to let collectors get POAPs at airports around the world.

POAP meant something to a lot of people.

Unfortunately, crypto's funding cycles and distribution dynamics made it hard to build a sustainable company without cannibalizing the ethos that made POAP mean something. Building on a fragile and quickly evolving stack, in the middle of an incredible hype cycle, only added to the challenges.

Still, there are some big lessons I am carrying from the POAP story.

First: Customer communities are the most undervalued asset a company can have. If you build something with soul, people who use it and love it will take your brand everywhere. Do not underestimate the power of customer communities.

Second: Connection is still the point. It's easy to lose that thread when the conversation is about the latest bubbly tech or price speculation, but the people using POAPs at events, in classrooms, at hackathons were getting something real out of it.

Third: Longevity and brand equity are the only moats left. With the time to building and shipping something new collapsing quickly, and distribution becoming increasingly an engineering problem, customers increasingly want to make sure they can trust that the things they are buying will grow and evolve with the market, without changing radically.

Grateful for everyone who believed in what we were building. It's too soon for me to say what's next, but for now, I'm thinking a lot about what GTM looks like in the age of AI.

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adrianmcli @adrianmcli Jun 13

A license shouldn’t be required,
A website shouldn’t be required,
Katakana for the website shouldn’t be required.

This is why Japan’s economy hasn’t grown in 30 years.

Oliver Jia (オリバー・ジア) Verified account @OliverJia1014 Jun 12

Applying for a permit to sell used goods and I'm truly in the depths of Japanese bureaucracy.

For your website section, you have to give katakana notation for every single character. My initial application was rejected because I didn't include "https://www."

Yes, I'm serious.

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adrianmcli

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