Today we interview Paul Razvan Berg, previously a part of Aztec Protocol, self-proclaimed “Streamer of Money” and the man behind new Sablier.
How did you get your start in crypto and what inspired you to build Sablier?
The bull market of 2017 took me by surprise and I said to myself that there must be some kind of fundamentals behind all the hype. It turned out there was and I’ve been involved with Ethereum and smart contracts ever since.
I started working on Sablier after getting my paycheck delayed by a few days. Mind you, I was working at a crypto startup, so I asked myself why do we have to use these legacy payment systems when smart contracts can be as fast as … real-time?
What are you building and what sets it apart?
Building Sablier, the protocol for real-time finance. Just like you can stream music on Spotify, so you can stream money on Sablier.
As far as I know, we are the first Ethereum project to have implemented a money streaming protocol that is production-ready and is accompanied by a nice user interface.
Who do you view as the ideal user or customer for your product or service?
DeFi people, particularly freelancers and gig workers, but we have bigger plans for the long term. Check out this Twitter thread.
1/
Today, we’re publishing “Building with Sablier”: a broad collection of ideas and use cases for real-time finance⏳
This is invite for you to steal any of the tweets below and make it your own project 💡
We provide you with the picks & shovels for the money streaming part 💸 pic.twitter.com/WWPCtItsHs
— Sablier (@SablierHQ) January 6, 2020
What future event or feature on your roadmap are you most excited for?
Sablier v1 is cool, but we can do much better. I look forward to not require our users to deposit in advance, so they can start a stream for e.g. 1 year without having the money upfront.
Where do you see your Sablier fitting into the future of DeFi?
Sablier provides insurance and optionality by making the passage of time itself the trust-binding mechanism.
I know nothing about the future, but we came up with a new financial contract. I’m excited to see what people will use it for!
What’s something in DeFi that you think more people should be paying attention to?
+ Zero-knowledge proof technology (ZKSync, STARKs, AZTEC)
+ Automated investment vehicles (TokenSets, DeFiZap)
+ Smart contract wallets
+ Permissionless employment (Gitcoin, CLR matching)