Vision & Culture: Interview with EpiK
We set out on an expedition to ask the King of Alpha & Psyops himself, EpiK about the Vision and Culture of Concave.
Could you tell us more about Concave’s mission and vision?
Concave exists on the fine line between a Bitcoin Monastery & a Hyper-Structure. We believe that the world is going through a massive reorganization with geopolitical events occurring. It is likely that we see the balkanization of many current nation-states as we are living through one of the most uncertain time periods in history. I am, foremost, a systems-thinker & social-engineer. Concave began as an Ontological Experiment, where I bled my ideas on how to create a dynamic system that would survive the massive polarity shifts in consciousness in our world. This was done on purpose in order to attract the best minds and talent to work on the project in addition to our passionate community members yearning for a tribe that shared our deeply held values and beliefs. The whole concept of this relied on self-organization which is the antithesis to learned helplessness. In the world that is to come, we must take action and execute our ideas if we are to survive. Concave’s mission is to thrive through coopetition and playing positive-sum games with all the individuals & protocols involved.
Our vision is to create the fabled “Heaven on Earth” & become a Network State as the current world decays around us. Concave aims to explore the concepts of John Nash’s “Ideal Money” & sees money through the lenses of George Gilder’s Information Theory. We value Proof of Work and we want to work with those who want to work with us. We believe in the concept of “serious play” and Infinite Games. Concave is a place that attracts Winners. We want to win, and most importantly win as a team. Concave wants to introduce ideas such as the Uranium Standard that will shape the new paradigm while making our world a better place by solving problems & providing better services than our predecessors. We believe in the future Network States will be forced to compete for citizens and we want to attract the best citizens. We have even developed our own Culture Code & Ethos based on a mashup from the frameworks of Stigmergic Collaboration and Scaled Agile that includes the Culture of Continuous Learning.
What do you think are the advantages of DeFi and how does Concave complement the space?
DeFi opens the game that was once closely-held by Traditional Finance institutions to everyone. DeFi should be viewed by all as an opportunity. It allows everyone to finally be in the same field and gives many a real shot at financial freedom. It allows us to put our economic ideas & experiments to the test in the free market and see how they perform. I think in regards to Cryptocurrency, we are still in the infantile stages. I personally view Cryptocurrency as one big social coordination tool above all the other narratives that get pushed down the mainstream (programmable money, store of value, web3 etc.). In my opinion, most of the problems that exist in our world right now are actually coordination problems. How does Concave complement this? Concave is the best at coordination games. We have a lot of novel ideas and the engineers that are able to implement them with high degrees of confidence in regards to safety. Also, our ability to quickly move an idea to production across multiple departments via communication tools and daily syncs keeps everyone focused.
What do you anticipate would be the biggest challenges that Concave will face in the first year of its launch?
It is important to keep a small team and not waste too much budget money on people who are not A+ team-players. Ultimately I think Concave's biggest problem will comedown to Organizational Leadership issues and expanding the team too quickly as well as potential problems that arise from working in a flat-hierarchy system of authority and accoutability and Concave will need to address Leadership in the future ultimately.
What is the determinant “secret sauce” that Concave has that would allow it to surpass all the other competing projects, do you think?
Concave definitely has its own secret sauce, but if you look closely it’s the ingredients that matter. When I refer to the ingredients I am talking specifically about the PEOPLE that make up Concave. In crypto you can fork technology and you can fork tokenomics but you cannot fork the people, the minds, and the passion of the team. When all our unique ingredients blend together, it makes our secret sauce. People jerk off to the idea of being a “lone wolf” because believing in it means they don’t have to exhibit any leadership or social skills, and they believe that “needing other people makes you weak”.
Want to know what Alexander the Great’s secret was?
His 32,000 Elite Soldiers.
Imagine a case study where a proposed Concave feature nearing its completion suddenly becomes much less viable, probably due to changes in players’ risk appetite or due to an implosion of a similar protocol with the same feature - how would you steer the ship?
Concave has the ability to pivot ruthlessly built-in. It is about always making the best decisions at the time and acting decisively with speed.
Working in a decentralized organization has its pros but also its cons. What is your greatest challenge when it comes to communication and assigning tasks to the contributors? How did you solve this problem?
Decentralized organizations don’t really exist, at least they aren’t what people think they are. We call ourselves a Co-op because it is much more honest signaling. We aren’t decentralized and we believe branding ourselves as a DAO would be deceptive marketing. I believe this question is actually referring to the coordination problem itself and the answer is backed with simplicity. Our team’s sync daily, using the proven model of traditional product scrums to keep everyone accountable. With the team in near-constant communication, it becomes much harder to commit telephone-game style errors. Our concept of “sync,” means that we strive to always be on the same page, and communicate with any work related-blockers as soon as they happen so they may be resolved as efficiently as possible.
