Dmitry Bespalov, technical lead for Gnosis Safe

Dmitry works on iOS and blockchain. An interesting combination if you ask me. He works as the tech lead on Gnosis Safe for iOS and also contributes to WalletConnect, an important bit functionality enabling mobile Web3 wallet interactions.

You can learn more about Dmitry on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter: @_dmitrybespalov
• Github

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:47

Hi, and welcome to another special edition of my podcast. I'm sitting here with Dmitry, best Paulo. And he is a lead at Gnosis a company that actually builds Gnosis safe, which is the most trusted multi signature wallets on Aetherium. That's quite a mouthful, Dimitri. So let's just pick that apart first, because otherwise people listening to a podcast have no clue what we're talking about. Can you tell a little bit about what product you are working on?

Dmitry Bespalov: 1:17

Hi, it's Ron. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so if you want to jump right in. What we are working on is we're building a platform. That is that is based on the multi signature wallet solution that we already built. So multi signature wallets for those who are not into crypto at all. It's like a shared vacant bank account or shared money pool that maybe people used with PayPal, but it is a shared wallet, for groups that want they want to manage their funds together.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:59

So am I correct that with a multi signature wallets, that you need multiple people or parties to actually approve on a transfer of Aetherium? For example, before it can actually proceed? Yes, that is right. That is exactly what it is. Okay, and what is your role in all of this? Because you are the technique, and you're the tech lead at diagnosis.

Dmitry Bespalov: 2:25

Right. So I'm, I'm leading the mobile team here, hypnosis safe. We are building and supporting and enhancing our two mobile apps, Android and iOS. And I'm leading, I'm leading both platforms.

Jeroen Leenarts: 2:44

So are you mostly focused on day to day development on iOS or on Android? Or do you hardly get to code? Anything at all nowadays?

Dmitry Bespalov: 2:55

Well, for me, I do I do get time to code. Well, maybe not. Not in the last month, but before that I could manage also to contribute something and also do other things that are related to requirements definitions and, and other administrative tasks. So it's a bit of both

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:16

so and and what did you do? Before you started working at Gnosis? Let's spell that name. So that's g n. O S is correct.

Dmitry Bespalov: 3:25

Correct. But it pronounced with the dampened G at the beginnings of Gnosis. Gnosis.

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:33

Okay, so, um, so what did you do before you got involved with Gnosis safe?

Dmitry Bespalov: 3:40

Um, well, if I, if I would tell my story, in short, I was, I was, I was always, I was always interested in computers since since since I was a kid. And from my university time, so I knew that I want to do something with software. And so I studied, studied informatics back back in khazana, that's where I'm from. Cuz I'm Russia. And at some point, I wanted to get level up in this field and get lucky and got grants to go for education abroad in the US. Then I studied, studied or at Rochester, in computer science, and then came back to Russia worked a little bit there, and then moved to Germany.

Jeroen Leenarts: 4:36

And Germany is where you are at right now. Right? Right.

Dmitry Bespalov: 4:40

This Berlin is where we're in based. Okay. So, coming coming up to notice is that here in Germany, I was working together with was a great team of engineers on this alando iOS app. And this is where I met my colleague country who work who is a contributor on the iOS was my colleague on the iOS team, and the contributor to Wallet connect library. And, yeah, so three years ago, I joined Gnosis as an iOS developer. And then as the time went, and we did, we did our job. I got I got a chance to, to lead I esteem and then later lead, both mobile mobile team systems is

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:31

so good. You say that you you did a lot of coding at solando as a as an individual contributor on their code base. Yeah, I would say so. So and how many years that you work at some Oh, no.

Dmitry Bespalov: 5:47

I've worked there for four years. And here working for three years.

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:53

What is it that solando actually does as a as a platform or as a service?

Dmitry Bespalov: 5:59

For those who might might not know it Zalando is the fashion retailer here in Germany and in Europe. It provides fashion like fashion items to customers across the Europe. And it's quite popular here in Germany. And they have, they have one of the best I would say mobile experiences in, in this in this area. So yeah,

Jeroen Leenarts: 6:28

yeah. So and then you got started at at Gnosis three years back. How did this all happen? Because, of course, you're, you're an iOS developer at Solano. And then obviously, Gnosis was looking for an iOS developer as well. So were you looking? Were you trying to get into this specific area? Meaning crypto, or what was the what was the way for you there?

Dmitry Bespalov: 6:58

No, I think I think it was, it was a happy coincidence, coincidence for me. Since after, after four years, I was I was already thinking that, like, I tried myself in many areas in the in the iOS app, and also in the iOS team. And so it was, it was somewhere in the thoughts that maybe something something comes up that that might be interested. And that's, that was the time when there was a lot of hype in the, in the crypto in the crypto industry. And my colleague, Andre, was actually actually by coincidence, met Mehta, co founder of Gnosis. And from from from there, we learned that there is an opportunity to join Psygnosis team. And we took a chance,

Jeroen Leenarts: 7:55

okay, and Gnosis as a company. How many people work there?

Dmitry Bespalov: 8:00

We have right now, Around 5050 people,

Jeroen Leenarts: 8:05

and are in the states that are continuously looking for people for new talent to to add to the team, or is it more a stable number of people that are working on their products.

Dmitry Bespalov: 8:15

So over time that we work there, the company stayed roughly the same size. However, we were in the company, there were there were multiple projects that were running through the years, some of them were successful, some of them had to be closed. But roughly there were always this, this number of people. Right now, we do actually hire and then specifically in as a safety, we are looking for product managers, we're looking for front end developers, and we're looking for marketing, marketing people and potentially community managers. So there are some quite some positions open in our, our team,

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:05

so And why would somebody want to work on a mobile product that is related to crypto? So what's the challenge there? What is the what is the fun aspect of this field?

Dmitry Bespalov: 9:20

Um, well, I think I think specifically, if you want to take the mobile perspective, it is it is on the cutting, I would say it is on the cutting edge of the technology in a way that crypto itself is a new area, even though it has been around for more than seven years, I think it is still in the face of the early adopters. And it gets some cycle cycles of hype and then disillusionment. But still there is quite some, I would say revolutionary technologies and really innovations that are being developed. And right now most of it is happening on the webs web area in the web apps. But it slowly starts to become happening in mobile to. And from the mobile perspective, it is it is just that there was no not many things that it was not many apps that were built for crypto, there are there are quite some but comparing compared to the web and the spread of the weapons. It's a different story.

Jeroen Leenarts: 10:35

So what is the role of the mobile app then in this entire field because you mentioned already that there's a lot of things happening on the phone On the internet on the web, so and I think they call it web three dot O, I think that's right. And what is the role of something like a crypto wallet on a mobile device in all of this because

Dmitry Bespalov: 10:58

well, we see the mobile device as, as, basically its primary primary device that most of the people use. And this is something that people trust or something that people use everyday for different things. And it is also a good good case where you have both convenience of use and security because wallet, the role of the wallet or mobile, mobile wallet apps is to hold this hold the private keys or hold the encryption keys in the app in a secure way. And use them to connect to the other obligations to make transactions to interact using those private keys or wallets with with the crypto ecosystem.

Jeroen Leenarts: 11:50

And this is also the area where an SDK like wallet connect comes in.

Dmitry Bespalov: 11:56

Yeah, that's right. One of one of the problems already I get the problem that wallet connect, is solving and was solving at the time when there was nothing on the mobile on the mobile space is that there are lots of mobile apps or mobile, different mobile wallets. But it is hard to connect the mobile wallet where the key is scoped to the website, or to the other mobile, mobile. I don't know web application, or another mobile web mobile decentralized application. And this is where what it connects comes into play. It is a standard that promotes a way to establish a secure connection between decentralized application the maybe uniswap or something or something else. And the wallet, the actual account that represents the user.

Jeroen Leenarts: 12:55

Okay, so and yeah, you just casually mentioned uni swap their uni swap is what people call a decentralized, decentralized exchange, if I'm correct. So that's pretty much a place where you can sell and buy your cryptocurrency into other cryptocurrencies. Correct.

Dmitry Bespalov: 13:13

Yeah, it is. uniswap is one of the one of decentralized exchanges that exists. There are others for example, there is there is a recent but they're but gaining a lot of traction, call swap exchange. There, there are different services that are that are there that are there in crypto such as balancers, balancer services, that allows people to invest with their with their cryptocurrencies. So a lot of different opportunities to use to use the funds to use the money which is all part of the bigger, decentralized finance movement or ecosystem that that has grown over the last one and a half or two years.

Jeroen Leenarts: 14:01

Yeah, cuz, because you also mentioned something called private keys. And those are pretty much the secrets that you have to safeguard as a user of anything related to crypto, because with that private key you can actually create and sign transactions onto a blockchain correct are actually submitted to whatever blockchain you are working with, because the details vary a little bit here and there.

Dmitry Bespalov: 14:29

Right. So, in the in the blockchains. In the blockchain space, every user represented by an account and account has has has an address the same way as as we have a bank, bank account numbers or we have our emails not well, maybe not as emails, but IP addresses, there is an address for an account in the blockchain that holds the balance and is responsible for transacting with with other entities and to control the accounts. One of the one of the type of accounts is called externally owned accounts. And those accounts are controlled by secret keys. There is a way if you hold the secret key there is a way to give to make a signature that would verify or authenticate that it is actually your account that making that signature. And if you can make such signature that that are accepted by the blockchains then that means that the blockchain can execute the transactions on your behalf. And this is this is why this like yes, eventually secret keys, this is an I would say, a key component, no pun intended, key component in all of this

Jeroen Leenarts: 15:55

structure. And the role of a wallet application is to first of all safeguard those key so that you have them to some extent, stored securely. And but also that you can use these keys in a way that is that your keys remain private and protected. But still you can do the signing and creating of transactions. So with those keys, correct?

Dmitry Bespalov: 16:19

Yes, that's right. However, there is there is a risk with the with this secret keys. It is that if you are using this externally owned account, and usually externally owned account is controlled just by one secret key. And this is where you have a risk that if you lose this key for some reason, or you expose your secret key somewhere, for any reason, then you might potentially compromise this account and might lose access or basically, anyone who has such a secret key could take control of this account and issue transactions the same way as you would do. And there are multiple solutions to secure such keys, for example people use called wallets for is known as hardware wallets such as lead ledger hardware wallet, to to generate their secret keys and store them on this hardware Ledger Wallet hardware wallet that never leaves the device. And then you could connect that hardware device to mobile app or to the web to the desktop, and use your security keys from there. However, it is also not not the most secure solution because if you still lose such a key, or if you still somehow gets compromised, there is no way back. And this is where Multi signature or smart contract based wallets come into play. And our wallet is an example of such such a smart contract based multi signature wallet. This in this case, you can secure access to this to your to your account by using multiple keys. Okay, and maybe.

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:04

And does that allow use cases like for instance, you have like, I don't know 10 keys on your multi signature wallet. And that if you then lose, or that one of the keys gets compromised or is not trustworthy anymore, that you can just mark that key as not trusted anymore, so that you still have nine valid keys remaining? Or how do I look at this.

Dmitry Bespalov: 18:27

As I said before, there, there are accounts that are called external accounts that are protected just by when punky but also on Aetherium. There is another type of account is called smart contract based accounts, those accounts or protect or like those accounts are controlled by the program by the smart contract. In this case, in the case of the smart contract based wallets, the program that controls this account acts like a wallet, so it is able to make transactions when you direct. When you say to this program, Hey, make a transaction for me. And the program can verify that you are the owner of it, you are the owner of a multi signature wallet by verifying your keys. So stores you can store references to multiple addresses who will be the owners. And in case one of the owners is getting compromised, you can programmatically remove it by making a transaction to modify your multi SIG wallet. Or you can replace it with some some other key. Or if if if you know it's compromised, and you cannot remove it for in some case, you can maybe execute some transactions still to move the funds out of the wallet to some other to secure us to your security account. So there is a flexibility

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:51

there. So if I understand this correctly, the the wallet itself actually lives as a smart contracts on blockchain. That's right. And but where are the private keys stored in this situation then or is that different?

Dmitry Bespalov: 20:09

smart contracts and the private keys obviously they are different. And in the case of the smart contract wallets wallets represent. They exist in the logical space of the blockchain. So they exist in the in the EVM, or virtual machine. When you execute transactions.

Jeroen Leenarts: 20:26

You mentioned EVM. That's the Aetherium virtual machine. So that's like a virtual computer that is conceptually created by the Ethereum blockchain. And that is also your execution environment for your smart contract. So that's what actually runs your contract code.

Dmitry Bespalov: 20:43

That's right. And the difference between the contract accounts and the external, externally owned accounts is that contract accounts are not controlled by the by the keys, they are controlled by the code, okay, and you still hold your keys, you still hold your secret keys. But our contract is written in a way that we can validate the signatures that are coming to it. So each signature can be resolved or recovered, so that we can know who signed which address has signed. And we can then check if all of the signatures that we receive for some transaction that we want to execute if all of them are owner soaps, the smart contracts and the owners, owner addresses are stored in the smart contract state. So in memory, so then the smart contract can check. Okay, I have all the addresses that are owners, then I can let the transaction through.

Jeroen Leenarts: 21:47

Okay, yeah, so that's a bit of public private key that's being used, right. So you have to private key still in your multi SIG wallet. And the smart contract is aware of the public key that is related to this private key so that any transactions that you submit to the contract can be verified by checking it with public key. Correct. So, okay, just grasp things a little bit here. Because this is all I know something about crypto, but multi SIG wallets is something that is completely foreign to me. So but that's where Gnosis comes in, right? With Gnosis safe, that they actually create something that allows you to do this in a way that is, well that even a non technical person can can can work with these kinds of tools, correct?

Dmitry Bespalov: 22:38

Right, we have have many teams working with no safe, who use who use not safe as a, as a wallet for their community, or as a as a wallet for their group that they want to manage their account together. So this is it's specifically for, it's useful for that case, when you have multiple people who are managing different keys to the same account. But also we have individual users who also store their funds on another safe and use them from the safe.

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:20

So and as an individual user, what would be the benefits of using a multi signature wallet as a single person.

Dmitry Bespalov: 23:28

For for user as a single person, the most the biggest benefit is a security as I said, if one of the keys is compromised, and you hold a significant amount of funds on your account, then you lose you lose access, you potentially lose access to those funds. And if you have different authentication schemes that you have a backup you have multiple keys as a backup you still you still can get access to it and

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:59

okay basically, and does the smart contract that runs all this is that also created by Gnosis or is it something that is available in the community and that Gnosis has selected as a as a good contract to work with to create this feature.

Dmitry Bespalov: 24:17

So this smart contract that gets executed or that the trans on the blockchain, it is deployed by by user so when you want to create another say for yourself, you do it by yourself. So you make you make a transaction that creates Psygnosis safe for you, most safe account. However, our our, our team, our company has, has developed Psygnosis a smart contracts and my colleague, Richard Meisner, and our CTO, Stephen, Stephen George, they develop the smart the smart contracts that are actually being being executed when you when you work with the most safe.

Jeroen Leenarts: 25:06

So but is there any risk involved with this smart contract itself? Because it's still code that is written by humans that there could be bugs in there right?

Dmitry Bespalov: 25:20

Of course, there's always always risk with with everything that is that is in crypto and especially everything that is with a smart contract, there is a smart contract risk for every kind of contract that it that you're using. Yeah. However, we we actively were managing this this risk in in different forms. So we have formally verified our code. And our all of our code is open sourced everything smart contracts, the backend services that we use mobile apps that mobile apps that we do, that we made, web apps that we made, everything is open source and available for anyone to check to us to contribute. And on top of that, the smart contracts are formally verified, that the court knows is safe contracts, has been verified multiple times. And every, every time we issue an update to the smart contracts, it's getting audited by external, external firms. So that we would, we would trust those new updates.

Jeroen Leenarts: 26:34

And so there's a high degree of confidence created by doing all the necessary steps to at least to formally verify to get external review, to do testing obviously, and, and just good, good clean ways to actually assess if the if the, if the code is up to snuff. But as you mentioned, just there casually is that everything is open source about Gnosis. So how as a company, does Gnosis creates revenue, how are they able to pay your income? Because I, I reckon you don't do this work for free.

Dmitry Bespalov: 27:12

Of course not. The company itself is is still working from the investments that have been made during, during the during the early stages of the company. And we are coming to the point of finding the business model for our products. Right now the company right now that Gnosis and Gnosis, Gnosis Tao, is it has two main two main products have actually three main products there are running, one is not safe. And other one is called Zodiac is a suit of tools based on Jose for decentralized autonomous organization. The third one is the decentralized exchange aggregator called cow swap Exchange, which is built on top of Psygnosis protocol. In the front exchange infrastructure, and the company itself is, as I said, it's still still more or less a startup that were in a search for the business model.

Jeroen Leenarts: 28:30

Okay, that's sounds like as exciting stuff. Is it happening at where you're working right now? And you already worked out for three years? So sounds like you're really enjoying what you're doing there. And if you if you look at working in crypto as a software developer, what are what are the what are the biggest challenges that you face? Day to day? So what are the things that you need to learn? Or what makes it difficult or interesting?

Dmitry Bespalov: 29:01

I think there are multiple, multiple steps or multiple levels that you go through progressively. And it also depends on your experience, right? Obviously, when you well, actually, I would say I would, I would say right now, it would be easy to start because we do have several starting points in the community where you can, you can go and use example projects, very good tutorials that are really easy to start and learn in the ecosystem. The in the beginning the major difficulty is is processing all of the new information, because a lot of a lot of things like you need you need to to build a picture in your mind or the build to build the concept concepts in your mind. And it takes some time. And then it takes practice to when you start actually playing it because there are there are test networks that are available for you to try out your your programs or something. But it is also a bit different when you start developing and getting main main networks that are that are actually in production. So there are quirks in different apps, there are quirks and different wallets. And yeah, well as I said conceptual face is something that can be challenging. And then sometimes when you work with a technology that is actually on the I would say on the bleeding edge. Things are things are breaking or things don't work as they expected or this they're in the invitation because The technology move forward. But that mutation is not up to date. And you have to figure it out. Sometimes on a low level of debugging different transaction just looking at the binary code,

Jeroen Leenarts: 30:57

yeah. And then but you can run your own tiny little blockchain in like a virtual machine a like a Docker image, right? For testing purposes.

Dmitry Bespalov: 31:05

Yeah, you can run it on your computer and it like, I would say, literally in five minutes. You can start up the development, beginner development environment to start coding smart contract or or web up.

Jeroen Leenarts: 31:23

And do these concepts do the easily transfer from like blockchain to blockchain? Or is it that is an investment in this conceptualizing of what you're dealing with that you have to do again, and again, depending on which blockchain you are working on? Because of course, you have Aetherium, that that's something that people tend to know about a little bit. At least they've heard about it. But like, I don't know, I don't know how many blockchains there are, how many protocols?

Dmitry Bespalov: 31:54

There's, I think there's currently something like a Cambrian explosion of different blockchains and different different things bunnies spinning up. A lot of them are based on the Etherion virtual machine on EVM. A lot of them are so called level two, level two solutions. So things that are solving performance issues or transaction fees issues that are present right now in the current main net cerium. Blockchain, regarding the question, how much of the things are translated as a developer, I would say 85 to 90% of the things would be translatable, because there is a foundation that you will learn when you when you get up to speed. And then if you would be willing to stay on the same EVM base change, then obviously, like a lot of it, you can you can transfer, but maybe on different chains, there is going to be different start standards or modifications to the standards. But in any case, you would be able to figure it out. I would admit, like you would, you would need to ask someone who has jumped between different chains development, so maybe maybe haven't qualified.

Jeroen Leenarts: 33:08

Yeah, you already mentioned that that one diagnosis saved us is mostly focused on the Ethereum based blockchains. Just to switch it up a little bit. You mentioned that you got started, like three years ago at Gnosis and then you were doing iOS development before that, at solando, a big fashion retail company in Germany and Europe. And was that your first job? Or did you do other things before that when you got from when you graduate from university.

Dmitry Bespalov: 33:46

For me, that was that was my my second job. As an iOS developer, the first job that I had, was running, like running myself as a freelancer, iOS developer. And I also got me a small opportunity to work to work on the Yandex Browser, back when I was in Russia, but most most of the experience before this alanda came from the freelance freelancing. Okay, freelancing.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:20

And what was your first computer that you actually got your hands on? Even when you were like, maybe I don't know what age five years? Seven years, 14 years?

Dmitry Bespalov: 34:31

thing when I was? Wow, well, that's good question. Five years, not five. Now, maybe when I was six, my, my friend had sad, a sad six or something. It was weird. So like, 9495 it was the time when when I remember by the game by the games that I've played. So it was a time when there was Prince of Persia IIPC. So this is, I think that that's the first game that I played.

Jeroen Leenarts: 35:06

Yeah, that probably liked the 80 or XT. And then it's the 8086 Something along those lines. So like even before the 284 and IBM compatibles, all over the place. floppy drives. So but so but you mentioned that you you started your career as an iOS developer by freelancing and then picking up progressing jobs from that. So at some point, you must have thought, okay, these mobile devices from this US based company, it seems like fun to write software for that. And I reckon that for us crypto, you had like a similar experience, you already mentioned it a little bit that you that you wanted to get into the field because it seemed interesting, but how did you get an interest in cryptocurrencies and Aetherium? Initially, so what was it that made you get to know this, this space and to just start looking into what a blockchain is and what all these cryptocurrencies are? And how did that happen for you?

Dmitry Bespalov: 36:19

For me, the transition from the IRS as they're fed and alanda, to the today's diagnosis more was was a transition from and from working at the big day company, by the time they Zalando was like a big company to startup. So, what was interesting for me is actually working in a different in a different environment. And also, like, on top of that, at the time, when I was joining Gnosis, maybe I was not so interested in cryptocurrencies, then, rather focused on iOS development. So I view the cryptocurrencies as an application of my skills, in a way, it's an intersection between mobile development and the blockchain, Blockchain space, so there was a need to create a mobile app. And so, so I joined there. And then gradually over time, when you work there, and you are engaging in a community, it is a completely different environment. And then you would work for bigger corporation or maybe other other spheres. It's it's fun in a way that that the community itself is very vibrant and dynamic. And it's, it's a, it's a lot of different, different things that keep you engaged.

Jeroen Leenarts: 37:41

So what you're actually saying is that working at solando, a really big company, big development teams, a lot of teams working simultaneously, that you wanted to switch from that to a much smaller environment. So like he mentioned, the startup, and this startup, so happens to be in crypto.

Dmitry Bespalov: 38:01

That's right. So I wanted to try something new. I wanted, like I didn't know and what, what, what kind of thing, and I didn't look, I didn't specifically look for it. So when the opportunity came, I was I was I was really thinking about it. Because for me, it was like a big step going from something known unsure to something really unknown and uncertain. And in the end, I thought that, at least it's a good opportunity. I have only my like, I'm not losing anything. And there's just just the chance of success there. So there's obviously risk, but it turned out to be fun.

Jeroen Leenarts: 38:44

But if you do that more often that like, dive in at the deep end, or what's your approach to new technology, or new frameworks or new stuff that you need to learn?

Dmitry Bespalov: 38:56

If you if I need to learn something. I like reading like, Well, it sounds weird. I like reading documentation, where and I especially like good documentation. That's partly one of the things that that attracted me in the first place. When deciding which mobile platform to work on is on Android. I was I was really impressed with iOS documentation at the time, it was 2011 I think when I started to play with iOS 12. So yes, I read the docs, then do technical prototypes. This is something that that I think should be in the toolbox of every software engineer when learning something new. Just try to specifically answer your questions or answer your curiosity with building a small, small programs seeing how the API works, does it work, does it not? Is it not? And yeah, those those two things I would say a lot of a lot of support that I have in learning new technologies is having the base foundation layer of computer science and and knowing the basics of it, so it helps a lot. Her with something new, you just you just read an experiment.

Jeroen Leenarts: 40:20

And yeah, actually mentioned something interesting there. Because if you want to get into crypto, is it like really important that you have some background in maths for example? Or is it more like you need to have to be aware of what protocols and what encryption schemes that are available and how you actually use them correctly.

Dmitry Bespalov: 40:44

It depends on the role that you're looking for. There are different opportunities and different in many different teams. And for a lot of, for a lot of opportunities, what I'm sure is because like I wasn't, I was on the other side of the hiring of the hiring process here. And those are safe as well, having hiring other people. And it matters more whether whether you already have good software engineering or software development experience and background, more than knowledge of crypto protocols crypto something, it will be definitely a plus. And it will show that you are motivated to learn about the space and you're just genuinely motivated to join. This will definitely be a plus. But I would say at this point is not a requirement.

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:35

And as a tech lead, are you involved with with the hiring process in any way? Do you interview candidates on a technical level?

Dmitry Bespalov: 41:45

I did when we were looking for for new for new developers and the mobile team. And that right now, when I when I'm part of the hiring process, for other teams or for other roles, sometimes it's not technical, usually I'm on the stage when we check the culture.

Jeroen Leenarts: 42:05

Okay, yeah. So that's, that's after the technical screening, right? Right. So how did you switch from an individual contributor role to attack lead role at Gnosis?

Dmitry Bespalov: 42:20

It was it was gradual progression for me. So it was, it was not something like overnight success or something, it just gradually over time, there was there was, I would say it was pretty good about iOS development already, when when joining us. And previously, I had some experience, leading small smaller teams, and some short experience leading multiple teams in Zalando, as well. And I was I was just interested in not only just technical, technical things, although this is something that that is like a base of just show your work that you're able to do. But then I also got interested in software engineering topic, and generally, how to make the software engineering teams more effective and more, more productive or better in any way, in a good way. That is possible. And from there, I was making I was doing some homework in quote unquote, reading books, looking for different online courses. Yeah, so I would say it's first First of all, it's contributing a lot. And second, is being productive showing initiative initiative, and genuinely trying to contribute to the team output.

Jeroen Leenarts: 43:57

And thus Gnosis is its distribute company in the sense that people work for the company all over Berlin, or is it mostly focused in in around Berlin city?

Dmitry Bespalov: 44:09

It isn't, it is a mix, because we have we have people working in different locations. A lot of people. I mean, a lot a lot by our, by our standards. Yeah, we work in Berlin in full node. It's a blockchain Co Co working space. And we have people working in Spain and Portugal. And before we we have people working from Russia, and also we have people working in us that work on other projects within

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:40

Moses. Okay? And just to cap the Gnosis topic off. So Gnosis they have to Gnosis safe. And there were two other products that they also have, right?

Dmitry Bespalov: 44:54

Yes, it is called swap exchange, and Zodiac.

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:59

And where should people go look for more information about the company that you work for, and these products?

Dmitry Bespalov: 45:08

To learn more about, about not safe, you can just go to our website, which is Gnosis minus safe.io. To learn more about the company, you can go to gnosis.io. And to learn about the Gnosis protocol or calls for this change, you can try it out on the cow swap dot exchange.

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:30

Okay, and where can people learn more about you are how can they get in touch with you if they have any questions?

Dmitry Bespalov: 45:40

I am a I'm using Twitter. So if you Want to say hi. Say, you can send me a message or follow me on Twitter. My handle is underscore me three the spell of. Yeah. Also, I'm on GitHub the nature of this power of easy to find.

Jeroen Leenarts: 46:02

Yeah. Well, I'll make sure to link everything from the show notes. Dimitri, thank you so much for your time. And I know that we went over a lot of different things related to iOS, and especially crypto. So there's bound people to be listening to this data that have many questions. So now they at least know how to how they can get in touch with you. And also, if there's any follow up questions, they can also ask me about it. Because I have some interest in cryptocurrency, not to the level that I can create stuff with it like you can. But yeah, it is something that has an interest with me. And I'm actually more into the turtles ecosystem, because I really liked the way that they tried to manage their their blockchain with this incremental improvements that are much easier compared to other blockchains out there. Because with Aetherium, we still have to wait for the switch from what was it now? A work based proof of net proof of work to proof of stake, right. So do you have any clue when that's gonna happen? Or? Well, actually,

Dmitry Bespalov: 47:14

proof of stake? It's already like, the Easter chain is working. It is called beacon chain. So it is running alongside the main chain and the actual merge of two chains together. For this, I don't have a definite answer. Hopefully, sooner than sooner than later.

Jeroen Leenarts: 47:38

Okay. Thank you so much for your time, and well, we'll talk again in the future.

Dmitry Bespalov: 47:43

Thanks. Thanks for having me. My pleasure.