In this edition of Behind The Blockchain I spoke with George Hipp. George shared his career journey so far along with the skills he has learned along the way which have helped him grow and develop. George talked us through his role at 21.co and the problem the company solves as well as why he loves working in Web3. George shared his opinions on ethics in Web3 and engineering, challenges in Web3 which still need to be overcome, and future of decentralised cloud storage and compute.
So, let's get into it...
Jack "For people who don’t know who you are, could you Introduce yourself?"
George "My name is George Hipp, I am the Engineering Manager for DevOps Engineering at 21.co, parent company of the world's crypto ETP issuer 21Shares. I currently live in New Jersey with my wife, two cats and work out of 21.co’s New York City office. Prior to this, my wife and I spent about five years in Kansas City – at the time when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, so now I am a Chiefs fan. Before Missouri I spent a bunch of time in Connecticut and as an early adult, moved around the United States a bit as a member of the United States Marine Corps."
Jack "Can you talk us through your career journey so far?"
George "Way back last century I was working as a combat photographer with very new digital cameras and learning about storage, metadata, and search. Building on my middle school gw-basic, edlin skills, I started writing scripts to manipulate images, manage metadata, and batch process large amounts of files, while training others to use digital images and all of the amazing tools it unlocked. I quickly realised what I was interested in and finished up an Interactive Information Technology degree, along with an MBA, from University of Hartford and dove into content management systems and the infrastructure under them. Everything quickly moved to developer enablement and providing platforms for developers to build amazing products and I had an evolving role, currently referred to as DevOps or Platform Engineering. In 2021 I started managing the teams providing those services at 21.co."
Jack "Could you talk us through your current job and what it entails?"
George "In a startup like 21.co, everyone contributes wherever they can. In my role, I am managing shared services, like DevOps, QA, and Data. My time is spent interviewing and hiring people, managing budgets, selecting technologies and partners, reviewing architecture and code, planning quality and security, and developing people (my favourite part). All of this work enables our product engineering teams to focus on building applications and services in a safe and supportable way."
Jack "So, who are 21.Co?"
George "21.co is the world’s leader in providing access to crypto through simple and easy to use products. 21.co is the parent company of 21Shares, the world’s largest issuer of cryptocurrency exchange traded products (ETPs) – which is powered by Onyx, a proprietary technology platform used to issue and operate cryptocurrency ETPs for 21Shares and third parties. The company was founded in 2018 by Hany Rashwan and Ophelia Snyder. 21.co is registered in Zug, Switzerland with offices in Zurich and New York."
Jack "What problem does the business solve?"
George "21.co was founded to build bridges into the crypto world. Now at the forefront of the market, the company continues on this journey by providing investors with the most innovative crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) and free institutional-grade research to educate investors about the evolving industry. The company also offers proprietary technology – Onyx – to create, list and manage ETPs globally."
Jack "Could you talk us through the skills, both soft and technical, which you needed to develop to reach your current position?"
George "Looking back on my career, there are likely an infinite number of paths I could’ve taken to get to where I am, however there are some skills and traits that certainly helped.
First, is my constant curiosity and interest. I keep a constant flow of questions to help me and everyone around me get better. My personal curiosity gives me the energy to constantly dig down to the next layer of questions. I’ve also learned to build and create things whenever and wherever you can. The ability to imagine and build things not only shows expertise and passion, but also develops experience and decision-making skills you will always need. Finally, care about people. If you are good at your job you will need to scale and the only way to scale beyond yourself is to partner and lead others. If you truly care about the people around you and make everyone successful, you will soon be leading people.
As for technical skills, I recommend getting to know a language really well. I like Rust and Go, but many people swear by Python. Work to understand some infrastructure like networking, k8s, and storage, and you will be a great help when it comes time to build something beyond your desktop. Learn how to draw and explain applications or infrastructure – I prefer c4 diagramming. And importantly, become a good technical writer, if you can document processes and describe what you are trying to do in writing, you will be a sought after partner on projects."
Jack "Why did you initially take an interest in Web3 and Blockchain?"
George "I was leading DevOps in a digital marketing agency and there was a very distinct divide between how engineering felt about all things blockchain and how CX/product/creatives felt. In my experience, when people feel very strongly about topics or products, when there is a real passion and energy involved, then there is probably something worth paying attention to. AI had a similar energy about it a few years back. I reached out to the leaders on the creative side and heard about NFT’s, rug pulls, hot/cold wallets, and financial products/terms I had never heard of before and I was interested, so I dug in.
About six months after really exploring the space, my new role here at 21.co was available and I decided to take a jump and work in it full time. I still speak with all of my engineering contacts who questioned my sanity; it is important to have dissenting voices and good arguments for me to avoid a personal echo chamber of how amazing everything is."
Jack "Now you’ve been involved in Web3 for the last 10 months, what is it you like about Web3 and why?"
George "There is a sense of safety in iterating on known solutions and supporting large established organisations, which is amazing and they are important. However, there is excitement in the risk of working at a startup and building the future of finance. Free climbing without ropes on a new line will always be more terrifying and exciting than hiking a known trail to a peak millions have seen. This feeling is very similar and I am surprised at how much I enjoy it."
Jack "In your eyes, what is the biggest impact blockchain and Web3 will have on the world and why?"
George "Predicting the future is impossible! I really have no idea and my time in technology has been littered with hubris and predictions that turned out to be totally wrong. Blockchain and Web3 are creating fundamental shifts in how value is held and exchanged, and there is a push to decentralise so many things. Any changes to such entrenched systems will have a myriad of rippling unintended consequences and changes. I have seen some cool ideas around real world assets on-chain, which seems to have a huge potential, and the chance to rethink ownership and privacy on the web is exciting."
Jack "Talk us through some of your predictions for how the landscape of Web3 will change over the next few years?"
George "Everything needs to get easier. My wife had an invite to use the NFT/Web3 experience Starbucks Odyssey and has no idea what any of it means or what it does. The linguistics need to standardise so people can talk about these things without more confusion. I believe all of this is coming in the next few years, and it needs to for general adoption. The tools and product offerings will continue to improve, making it easier for everyone. Eventually my TradFi bank and DeFi bank will be integrated and I’ll be able to use whatever I like – for example, my real world assets can be put on chain to track and exchange ownership, and my wife can sell her Starbucks loyalty points in an exchange with others (I actually have no idea what the plan is here)."
Jack "In your opinion, what are some of the potential problems which need to be overcome before blockchain becomes mainstream?"
George "There are technical problems, which can likely be solved through engineering, such as cross chain communication, pushing/pulling off chain data, scaling, and security across all of it. There are regulatory issues, if a user wants to remove or delete data, how is that done on chain, not to mention all of the DeFi unregulated grey areas and uneven global adoption. One of the biggest blockers to general adoption is obfuscation through dense cryptic language, both on the tech and financial side. If people can not have an open conversation, no matter how “transparent” the implementation of the technology tries to be it will lack actual transparency because most people will not understand it and will just communicate through memes and piling on to popular tweets. Organisations providing clear information, training, and research will continue to push clarity in communication and adoption will follow."
Jack "Ethics related to blockchain and Web3 is a big conversation topic right now. What part does ethics play in engineering?"
George "Most engineers love to solve problems– the more complicated and difficult, the better. When deciding what to work on and how to design then implement solutions, there needs to be an ethical consideration in those decision trees. This should be enforced from top down and bottom up through the culture, goals, and policies, such as whistleblowing. If a highly positioned person in any company asks an engineer to create a way to manipulate a production database anonymously, leaving no logs, and wiping all tracks without letting anyone know, they should be empowered and protected to ask why. Hopefully that one is easy to agree with, seems pretty basic, but this stuff can happen in a lot of organisations. Even more prolific are accessibility decisions, terms of service agreements, UIs to accept cookies, and the list could go on and on. All of these provide chances for people to make good ethical decisions, if they are supported and encouraged to do so."
Jack "How do we ensure that being ethical stays top of mind?"
George "Commitment and discipline are not revolutionary answers, but they are proven. Commitment from everyone in the organisation to be ethical, enforced by the culture being built. Culture is what people do everyday, so meet them there and enforce it. Hotlines and whistleblower policies do not work if people are scared or don’t know about them. Ideally, anonymous tools should only be a last resort, in a good organisation there should be no fear of standing up in a meeting and letting people know you believe something may not be ethical or good for customers and users. Tactically, make ethics a talking point in all-hands, 1:1’s, stand-ups, and all meetings, put up signs in high traffic areas asking people to consider ethics in decisions, communicate ethical successes and failures, encourage and reward ethical people. None of this is new, it just requires commitment and discipline."
Jack "What are your opinions on how new technologies such as blockchain, quantum, AI and ML can remain ethical?"
George "Anyone who works in these spaces needs to understand bias and balance data sets, validation, and decisions against possible biases. ML models understanding males better than females and doors opening for people with lighter colour skinned are easy examples, but there are many less obvious – such as resume filtering, facial recognition, and even decisions around what we work on.
Designing models and bots to sell and lie to humans, like many marketing tools and newer work in games like diplomacy, is an interesting area for ethics to get involved. A good example of a difficult ethical decision is around using these tools for life extension or life improvement. Most people want to live longer, but there is a huge disparity in the quality of life people have around the world. These are not easy decisions, but they should be conversations and the voices that raise the concerns should not be silenced or marginalised."
Jack "As a DevOps and Infrastructure leader, how do you see the relationship between Blockchain, DevOps and Cloud evolving over the next few years?"
George "Anyone who has built, managed, or integrated with a blockchain, doing things such as proof of work or stake, queried for information, supported the infrastructure under it, or enabled developers to work on it knows there is a ton of room for growth and improvement. DevOps has a long way to go to help build local development environments and deployment; smart contract development, testing, and deployment is a good example. The blockchain layers will continue to improve and consolidate, working to some standards making all of this easier, hopefully. Cloud providers are already building and providing infrastructure and platforms specific to particular blockchain implementations, while many organisations have built and used their own. I would guess it will follow the similar pattern as most other infrastructure where startups and individuals lacking capabilities will use the cloud, then move to a hybrid solution with on-prem and cloud both providing capacity, once scaling and cost become a factor."
Jack "What is your opinion on decentralised storage and compute?"
George "I think it is great! Compute and storage capacity should be universally accessible. If my whole family has home devices and overpowered cell phones, why not use the excess capacity to run my personal website, instead of hosting in a cloud provider. If the cloud is just someone else's server, why does it need to be one of a couple cloud providers, when it can really be anyone else’s."
Jack "Is there a future in which we move away from centralised cloud providers?"
George "The future is now for this move. Larger organisations gain the most cost, performance, and resilience benefits from hybrid solutions. Datacenter software and hardware is always improving, and this trend will continue. There will be more and more space for people to own a bit of their cloud on prem. Every person and organisation will have options, likely leading to more and more hybrid adoption."
Jack "Could you share some insight into how this might happen and what the implications might be?"
George "If energy cost comes down and network speed and resilience continues to improve, decentralised compute and storage will be inevitable. Working to support these systems, and the applications running on them, will become more complex as all of the resources become distributed, but I have confidence the tools and skills of the industry will keep up. There have been projects allowing people to donate compute power from home computers for a long time, this could grow and continue. More information and ML models could be pushed closer to people, helping them make better informed decisions at the edge of the networks quicker. Decentralisation does make the attack surface for security larger, which will continue to be challenging."
Jack "As an engineering leader in Web3, what advice would you give to people looking to follow in your footsteps?"
George "The best time to start is yesterday, the next best time is now! Try building something and see if you enjoy it. Read some code and try to explain it. There is a ton of information online and I have seen some very successful people come out of the new bootcamps. Find a person in a role you think you want and talk to them – it is amazing how helpful and friendly most people are. It is simple to say these things and it may sound broad, but all of the benefit and growth comes from being disciplined. I can’t tell you any of this is easy, there are no shortcuts, but truly enjoying what you are doing and staying curious can provide the engagement and energy to make it feel easy."
We really enjoyed understanding George's career journey and why he loves working in Web3. George shared some interesting thoughts on ethics, the future of DevOps and decentralised cloud and shared some brilliant advice on skills to learn and develop to build your career.
We'll be keeping a close eye on George's journey for years to come!
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