Around the Block With Jefferson Nunn – Interview With Aleksey Zavgorodniy at Unicsoft

Podcast Introduction:  0:08   

Hey guys, buckle up for a new edition of Around the Block Podcast, the one and only podcast meant to educate young entrepreneurs like you how to make your way in the cryptocurrency world. Today we’re talking with guest Aleksey Zavgorodniy. Aleksey has been an entrepreneur for his whole adult life. He started his business Unicsoft at the age of 20 and is still running it. For the last five years he has been in the blockchain consulting services business, acting as a technology think tank for crypto startups and innovative businesses willing to adopt blockchain.

Jefferson Nunn  0:46   

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Around the Block with Jefferson Nunn. I’m here today with Aleksey of Unicsoft. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  0:55   

Really well, thank you very much for inviting. 

Jefferson Nunn  0:58   

Cool, cool. So yeah, there’s been a lot of things going on in the crypto market. And it’s like innovation is still going ahead, although looks like some funding had been pulled back a little bit. But others, I think like Vitalik Buterin have said, if during the bear market, sad, you know, innovation really takes off. So tell me a little bit more about yourself what you’re doing and what’s going on? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  1:24   

Oh, yeah, I’m running the company, the Unicsoft. So we are doing blockchain development, and consulting. So according to some writings, we are number one in Eastern Europe and act as a think tank for our clients who need brains to actually conceive and then develop the solution. So we operate in in the GameFi and DeFi industries primarily. That’s what we do in one sentence. And in terms of changes in the crypto world. Yeah, that’s changing much. A lot of things from the regulation side, a lot of things from the bear market side, a lot of turbulence. I believe that the life doesn’t end in the bear markets. There are interested niches which which will thrive in even during the next year. While everything else will be a bit down. 

Jefferson Nunn  2:19   

Cool. Yeah, there’s, you know, a lot of innovation happening. Can you tell me what are you more exciting projects had been and much liked about it? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  2:30   

Yeah. So, we are doing, yeah, we’re doing a lot in, in the define, and recently adopting the practices we have developed in this decentralized finance to the game industry. And that is quite exciting, because I left computer games always. And yeah, that’s, that’s my childhood. So, we solve a lot of problems mainly using the blockchain, right, because it’s a huge variety, we help our clients to choose the right technology and the right framework to take care of not only there are a lot of buzzwords, but you have to take care about the client’s business to the technology should have sustained sufficient pool of developers that technology should be reliable. So, what we’re doing we’re constantly researching this and the technologies see how mature these and that’s the problems we solve on the early stage, which one to choose.

On the later stage, it comes the problems of the scalability, because not all blockchains are particularly fast. And here we do a lot of work with the side chains implementing them to scale up the capacity of the solution. So basically, fundamental problems of blockchain are still there. We it’s a scalability. And lately, we encountered a new kind of set of problems related to compliance, more and more, your regulatory bodies asking for different types of reporting and everything. So that’s number three, I guess. So, scalability, yeah, choosing the right one, in terms of adoption, scaling it up to make it viable, and actually lucrative business for our clients. And number three is compliance right now popping up more and more often. 

Jefferson Nunn  4:37   

Cool. So yeah, there’s been I think quite a lot of development, growth and support right now. We’re still in the early days, so to speak, but there’s a lot of innovation coming out of this space. What do you see, you know, in the next year or two, what do you see as the most exciting innovation that we might see from blockchain or crypto in general? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  5:03   

Oh, we put a lot of bets on the GameFi part. Because it looks like the fastest adoption of the blockchain goes into the areas where it’s not related to the physical world or less related to the physical world. Yeah, there are a lot of potential and tokenizing real-life objects. But that involves huge amount of bureaucracy and legal stuff, where we see the most potential of the fast and explosive growth is entertainment, specifically find engagement and digitize and collectibles. Let’s, we have couple of football fan clubs working with us on projects like that, and the GameFi, because blockchain has the real potential to turn around the industry and change the way gamers interact with each other. So that is, let’s post exciting and promising directions we see right now, in our business. 

Jefferson Nunn  6:12   

Yeah, I think there’s been a lot and within the gaming industry that’s been really developing over the last few years. I’ve noticed, for example, guiding, they’ve been developing a lot of very innovative games that are all using Blockchain as a technology. So, I really think that over time, the blockchain based games or makings actually mark they’re a little bit more transparent, but also give us access to some amazing features, like within a Tee, you know, being able to own you know, things and bring them from one game to another, right?  

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  6:54   

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.  

Jefferson Nunn  6:56   

So, it’d be very, very exciting. So, but what about in other industries say like, you know, healthcare, what do you think might be coming next for innovation within that space? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  7:09   

On the healthcare, we would have a lot of interest in that industry, but mainly in terms of building artificial intelligence solutions for healthcare, but we are tracking the penetration of the blockchain in there. The biggest trend I see is actually using Blockchain for storing and sharing the medical records. In the in the private way. The patient information is also a big pain in the in the healthcare industry. And there is no good solution at the moment. And that is where the blockchain also can, can be disrupter.

However, on the more regulated industries, the slower the adoption, because there are a lot of a lot of barriers and a lot of obstacles, but it’s getting there. So, what we are tracking in terms of next big thing where we can we can put our bets on is basically patient data management, using Blockchain and patient data security, with the use of blockchain and cryptography. That’s, that’s where I see the big potential personally. 

Jefferson Nunn  8:25   

Yeah, there’s a lot of potential there. And I think just it’s just one of those things. I think, in 10 years, it’s gonna be a completely different world, if you have, you know, so to speak web 5.0. As was the name just talked about? That’s web 2.0 plus web 3.0, right. But based on Bitcoin, you say, which I’m still trying to wrap my head around, because Bitcoin is not exactly programmable. Whereas if Ethereum is, so there’s all these different protocols, there’s all these different technologies, if you’re a business investor, trying to figure the path forward, what would you give it the best advice for how to approach this space and understand it and get into it? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  9:14   

For crypto investor, I would say, yeah, when I when I see, yeah, try to see a new protocol and trying to understand if it makes sense to dive into a deeper first thing, I look at is basically the community behind it. The mainly the community behind in terms of the people working on the project that developer’s community, how activities, how big it is, and if their institutional money behind it. So, I would say for fundamental analysis, if you’re new crypto investor, that’s let’s do good indicators to see if the technology will survive, but that’s not as the Luna example shows that’s doesn’t give you 100% insurance from losing your money. So Crypto is quite volatile, I would say. Yeah, what’s still fundamental analysis. Yeah. Right now, right now, basically, the biggest, most of the crypto Projects drive value and their destiny is proportional to the adoption. So yeah, adoption by the developer’s community adoption by whether the institutional investor believe in them. And if it’s late stage enough adoption by the real cases with real users. So, these three things I would look into, yeah, as a priority. 

Jefferson Nunn  10:52   

Yeah, that makes sense. And then how did you get your start in crypto? Because that’s, you know, not for everyone. And now you’re leading teams, and so forth. So how did you get your start in this space? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  11:04   

Yeah, actually, five years ago and get excited about the technology. So, it’s, yeah, it’s been going up and down, if I’ve actually first started hearing about them during the ICO boom. And I was curious whether it has real, is it? Is it just a buzzword? Or does it have real potential to bring real value to the boat? And I was struggling to understand what is the value? And in which sectors it is? It is viable? And then I found several cases, which were interested, now talk with the current customers who were interested in adopting it. And yeah, and actually from my network, got first blockchain team in my company. And that’s how it started.

We started doing interesting projects in the crypto world and learned by doing. Because that was the one the way back then we’ll know blockchain schools we will learn by doing. And yeah, over time, we accumulated a really good team. Which, yeah. Where we can actually go build building vegan sustainable products in the crypto world. So now I’m always searching for the areas within the blockchain ecosystem, which has the potential of bringing real value and getting big adoption and try to stay away from certain buzzwords, which pops up and die around and see if it’s going well so far. So yeah, I’m not an early adopter, not one of the guys who started like 10 years ago, I kind of started working with the blockchain at the second wave, but we’ll learn fast and yeah, prove our positions in the market.

Jefferson Nunn  13:09   

Yeah, well, it’s just a matter of going for the long term, I think. I mean, I started in 2010, the first time around. But the end, yeah, 2013, I really saw that this was going to be something long term. So, it definitely a very exciting field, you know, programmable money, I mean, meaning anything else, that kind of any of those properties, and not even a banking system right now can really compete with their central bank currencies.

So here, if you have programmable Ethereum, I think there’s a lot of innovative use cases, especially I mean, iterative internet of things, things that you can do there. Things like, I think up and coming very soon, we’ll see micro mining, if you will. For example, I mean, imagine if you can make a box that removes carbon from the atmosphere, and it earns you money. You know, it’s an internet of thing, you know, deploy the box anywhere, anywhere you go. Or better, you know, you want to generate some energy and do something with it. You know, same deal, you can within a local environment, same deal. There’s a lot of different things that you can do, but programmable energy that we’ve not been able to see with, you know, through the traditional system, but I know one of the hardest things is trying to get the programming done. So, to that end, do you think over time, these tools will be easier to use. And do you think adoption will increase over the next five years? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  14:44   

Yeah, definitely. That’s for sure. And that’s very good. You mentioned that IoT because IoT, plus blockchain is a very, very powerful combination. Indeed. We and the IoT plus blockchain and ESG trends, the sustainability trend and climate aware financing and everything climate aware agriculture. Plus, IoT plasma chain has a lot of potential as well, and a lot of very interesting applications. I think that’s maybe a little bit in the later perspective, like, you know, like, two, three years but it will be coming and a lot of interesting solutions to come in that area. 

Jefferson Nunn  15:35   

Yeah, I think that’s the thing. And that’s why I think this is going to be one other very huge growth industry. So, to that end, if you’re a new developer, say 22 years old, 23 years old, you know, going through a computer science degree, what would you recommend that they read, or, you know, watch or whatever, to learn more about how to do crypto developer? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  15:56   

Now, there are a lot of technological Yeah, it’s actually start to wrapping up. I mean, the schools start providing the education, I would recommend, first of all, the best thing to learn now and to navigate the industry is to find the mentor, who is already there, and who can show the ropes around. And yeah, I think that’s how we do most of the learning is. People in the team teach each other? I’m not in the development already. So, I cannot recommend much of the technology resources. Yeah, I what I follow, I follow actually the venture funds, which are crypto oriented, to see where they invest, where, where, where the money goes and what are the trends there, and that is actually give some useful tips in terms of predicting what is happening.

And on the other side. On the limited side, I tried to follow all the regulations related to crypto and all the all the new laws passed. Related to that to see how the governments react because in some spheres in some in some areas, adoption of crypto anyways, boils down to it being accepted by the by the regulators and that exception, it’s arguable statement. I understand that in my in my opinion. Yes. So that’s, that’s what I follow. So, I follow the, yeah, investors in the new rising. Yeah. And you rise in projects with, with good funding and the regulations on the on the other end? To see what is happening on the landscape? 

Jefferson Nunn  17:52   

Yeah, personally, looking forward to getting an office space in El Salvador and Bitcoin city. Right. I mean, you talked about being really innovative decades, like right there on the forefront and still going strong, you know, so I think it’s, it’s an exciting time. I think over time, people will see and governments will see the utility of this. They were all of them. Everybody was scared at the Internet. Back in the early days, right? I remember seeing practically advertisement Oh, be scared of the internet. There are cyber criminals out there. You know, and it’s always, why do hackers wear hoodies sunglasses in a dark room? Like, why is that? I mean, how can you even see the computer monitor? That doesn’t even make sense? You know? No. Yes, there will always be cybercrime, I think. But I think they’ll also be a lot more innovation as we’re seeing now. So, do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to share with our listeners? You know, what do you see next? My personal values, anything you’d like to share?  

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  19:10   

Oh, good question. Good question. Yeah. In the in the crypto industry what was the Northern Star for me as I mentioned is actually finding the real economy value behind every idea and every project, I was I was touching. So basically, for the new people in crypto, all the landscape and everything I would recommend to look at this first of all, because there are still a lot of noise. Now a little bit less while when the crypto winter so to say is expected to come. There are no there is less noise, but still, it’s very exciting, very interesting, but quite noisy industry. And it’s yeah, the crucial is ability to tell the right from wrong and to see which trends and niches within the industry will sustain. And eventually, which will eventually not. So. Yeah, so having a basic understanding of the economy, and yeah, and then the end the business concepts, and looking at every blockchain project, you touch as a, as, as you’re looking at the business plan, it actually helps. 

Jefferson Nunn  20:37   

Very, very cool. So, if folks want to reach out to you or to your company, how do they connect with you? 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  20:44   

Okay, so there are multiple ways to connect with us on our website. It’s unicsoft.com with “CS” UNICSOFT.com. And, yeah, there is my email is directly on the contact form on the website. So, feel free to contact me directly. Yeah, I’m always open for new connections. 

Jefferson Nunn  21:11   

So, and the links will be at the top of the show page. And so, it’s very great to have you on the show. Alex, I really appreciate your time. And it was awesome. Thank you very much. 

Aleksey Zavgorodniy  21:23   

Thank you. Thank you for hosting me, and have a great day. Bye. Bye.  

Jefferson Nunn  21:27   

Thanks. 

Podcast Outro:  

If you are hearing this message, you’ve listened to our new episode all the way to the end. And for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please review the episode on podcast.co or tell a friend about it and feel free to suggest future episode topics. This is Jefferson Nunn signing off until the next episode of Around the Block