Speaking at Google Campus Warsaw
In 2018, while working as a full-stack Web3 developer at IOST, I was invited to speak at the newly opened Google for Startups Campus in Warsaw.
Blockchain was beginning to move beyond speculation toward a harder question: which systems could support real applications? My talk examined Proof of Work and Proof of Stake through the engineering trade-offs that shape performance, security and trust.
The Developer Behind the Talk
I had already been building blockchain software since 2014—long before Web3 became a mainstream industry.
My experience included cryptocurrency exchange infrastructure, wallet integrations, data pipelines, smart contracts and full-stack decentralized applications. That breadth meant I approached consensus as a practical engineering decision, not an abstract protocol debate.
A blockchain’s architecture eventually reaches every part of the product: transaction speed, operating cost, reliability and the experience delivered to users.
Building at IOST
IOST was developing a high-throughput, developer-focused blockchain for large-scale applications. Its architecture explored sharding and a consensus model called Proof of Believability, designed to improve efficiency without abandoning decentralization.
I worked from the Berlin office on Web3 applications, smart-contract integrations and infrastructure connecting developers with IOST’s backend systems.
The Berlin team also acted as a bridge between the core protocol group in Asia and the European developer ecosystem. That required more than writing code. We had to translate protocol-level ideas into usable software, documentation and developer experiences.
Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake
The centre of the talk was a comparison between the two dominant approaches to blockchain consensus.
Proof of Work was established, battle-tested and deliberately expensive to attack. However, its energy requirements, limited throughput and dependence on increasingly concentrated mining infrastructure created serious constraints.
Proof of Stake replaced computational competition with economic incentives. It could dramatically reduce energy consumption and support faster networks, but introduced different risks around validator economics, governance and the concentration of token ownership.
Neither model was automatically correct. Each encoded a different answer to the question of whom a network should trust—and what that trust should cost.
Why Consensus Matters to Product Developers
My central argument was that consensus is not an invisible backend detail.
It determines how quickly an application can respond, what transactions cost, how the system behaves under pressure and which assumptions developers are making about security. Those constraints directly influence what can be built and whether the resulting product feels usable.
Developers choosing a blockchain therefore need to understand more than its headline throughput. They need to examine incentives, validator behaviour, decentralisation and the compromises hidden behind the performance numbers.
Translating Infrastructure Into Understanding
Speaking at Google Campus required turning a complex protocol discussion into something useful for a mixed technical audience.
That ability has remained central to my work: understanding systems deeply, identifying the decisions that actually matter, and communicating them clearly enough that developers and product teams can make better choices.
The invitation was an important career milestone. It recognised both the technical experience I had accumulated since 2014 and my ability to represent that experience beyond the codebase—onstage, in public and in conversation with the wider developer community.