Behind The Blockchain: an interview with Daniel Gretzke, Tech Lead for Smart Contracts at Polygon.

Our Founder, Jack Goodridge, spoke to Daniel Gretzke, Tech Lead for Smart Contracts at Polygon (pictured right), on his career journey so far and where he thinks Web3 is heading. Daniel was very kind to explain his thoughts on Web3, the skills he learned along the way which enabled him to reach his current career point - hopefully this post is inspiring and helpful to anyone looking to make a career for themselves in Web3.

So, let's get into it...

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Jack "For people who don’t know who you are, could you Introduce yourself?"

Daniel "Hi, I'm Daniel. I started out as a Blockchain developer in 2016 and have been working in Crypto ever since!"

Jack "Talk us through your career journey so far?"

Daniel "I stumbled into this industry by accident. I was studying electrical engineering back in 2016. I took an interest in Web3 and participated in my first hackathon. Here I found out that Solidity developers were very scarce and I started working on projects. This quickly became a full time job for me. Being a completely self taught programmer and working on all these projects alone, in 2019 I decided to join a tokenisation company to learn how to build software professionally and learn how to code in a team. During that time I continued working on my Solidity skills but also learned a lot of traditional programming (Frontend, Backend, Databases). Ultimately I wanted to work at the cutting edge of crypto, so I left the enterprise world to go work at the frontier and that's how I ended up where I am today."

Jack "Talk us through your current job and what it entails?"

Daniel "I'm currently the Smart Contracts tech lead at Polygon. My daily duties are what I love doing most, building smart contracts, designing their architecture, optimising gas fees and more."

Jack "What were the main skills, technical and soft, you needed to develop in order to achieve what you have achieved?"

Daniel "Many clients only have a vague understanding of how the blockchain or crypto actually works. That's why I think a very important soft skill to have is to be able to communicate whether their idea makes sense. You are the expert and a client has to rely on you to make the best technical decisions. This soft skill needs to be combined with the technical skill of problem solving and being able to break down a complex systems. Tell a client why their idea doesn't work and propose a more elegant solution. Building a smart contract is often about abstracting complexity as much as possible!"

Jack "What are the steps someone could take in their career if they wanted to follow in your footsteps?"

Daniel "Gather as much experience as possible. Work for projects and deploy contracts to mainnet. Unfortunately this also means working for projects that pay very poorly or in tokens only in the beginning. But this will give you references when negotiating with new projects and build your network so if you do a good job you will be recommended to others. Over time and with experiences you will be able to raise your hourly rate as well of course."

Jack "Why did you initially take an interest in Web3?"

Daniel "The idea of programmable money is really fascinating to me. The fact that anyone can build an application to control the flow of assets was mind blowing to me at that time. One quote from Vitalik Buterin stood out to me in particular: "Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the centre. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.""

Jack "In your opinion, what is the biggest impact Web3 will have on the world?"

Daniel "I think Web3 will have a similar impact to the Internet and I think we haven't even imagined what the biggest use cases will be."

Jack "Web3 encompasses a lot of areas - from blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi, Gaming, NFTs, the Metaverse and more. Do you think all of these areas will be adopted by the masses or do you think there will be a specific area which will come out on top?"

Daniel "It's hard to predict right now. In my opinion there won't be one area that will come on top but a variety of different use cases will reach mass adoption."

Jack "What do you think the future holds for Web3?"

Daniel "People are afraid of industry workers losing their jobs due to automation but I think web3 poses the same risk to many office jobs like accounting. Crypto suits the payment needs in a highly globalised and automated economy. So I think that in a century from now there won't be a banking system like we know it today, rather payments will be facilitated by ledgers. Whether these ledgers will be centralised or decentralised remains to be seen."

Jack "What does the future hold for you personally?"

Daniel "I will continue working at the frontier of crypto because this is what I enjoy doing the most right now!"

Jack "What is once piece of advice you would give to someone looking to make a career in Web3?"

Daniel "Never stop building, never stop learning. New things are happening in this industry every day. Build, connect with other developers and make projects. Don’t forget to publish them to your Github for the world to see!"

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I really enjoyed understanding Daniel's journey, hopefully from this interview you gained some inspiration or insight to help you with your own career in the

Web3 space.

If you have any thoughts or questions on Daniel's journey, if you are looking for a new position or hiring talent into your team - we'd love to hear from you. Reach out to Jack@unveilrecruitment.com