TezTalks Radio #38: Roman Schnider, President of the Tezos Foundation
Roman sat down this week with TezTalks to discuss his background as a financial auditor, the early days of Tezos, and why the Foundation takes a long view of Web3.
450 words, 3 minute read
Roman Schnider has an important job. As president of the Tezos Foundation he oversees perhaps the most powerful organization in the entire Tezos ecosystem. Roman Schnider sat down this week with hosts Marissa Trew and Stew Elmes to discuss his background as a financial auditor, the early days of Tezos, and why the Foundation takes a long view of Web3.
We’ve pulled out some key quotes below, and you can watch the full video above.
On what attracted Roman to Tezos:
There were a couple of events that really impressed me. It was an early time, and there was a lot of uncertainty. I went to Paris and met the [Nomadic Labs] team and they were immediately excited about the technology and what they were building […] that was amazing to see and you could feel that they were really onto something.
I had the chance around that time to talk to Arthur [Breitman] and various board members and I thought ‘OK I can help’. At the beginning, a lot was organizational. How to build an operation, how to make sure the finances are under control, and making sure that you’re not backward-oriented but looking forward.
On the prospects for DeFi on Tezos:
From my perspective, coming from finance I can see the importance of DeFi, and quite often we’re asked ‘did you forget DeFi?’ […] and in my view, DeFi is a very important vertical, also from an infrastructure perspective. I see us catching up now, it’s not always easy, and we’ve seen that over the past couple of weeks but I see a lot of hard work going on in that sector and I’m very positive about it.
On the Foundation’s long-term view of Web3:
The building of a blockchain is not something that will happen overnight, so if we want to build it together, in a sustainable way, we have to be aware of the fact that there will be other features that [will] come. We’re talking about optimistic rollups at the moment, we [also] talk about privacy still being something that needs development.
I’ve also heard Arthur say that some things may take three to five years until we see parity. […] The buildout of the blockchain is one thing, but if you look at it as a technology that is here for the masses, you also have to rethink and re-adapt the processes. People have to […] build new processes, with that you have new environments that need to adapt, legal matters, regulatory frameworks that need to change, that doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a process.