We met with Modex’s CEO, Mihai Ivascu, to learn of the latest developments in blockchain, and how Modex is using this technology to make a significant impact for both developers and their clients in the real world.
How has Modex grown since the beginning of the year?
At the beginning of the year, we were still working on building the Modex Marketplace, which has been successfully launched on March 15th. Since then, we have been focused on developing the platform and onboarding developers and clients for the multi protocol smart contracts we have for sale. We’re happy that more and more developers are joining our marketplace, and we are proud to be growing this great talented community.
These past few months, our team has taken on the challenge of building a full developer environment and becoming the go-to place for developers wanting to shift to blockchain development. Besides offering a mature marketplace, where blockchain developers can monetise their work, we want to offer all developers, already familiar with various programming languages, the necessary tools to easily shift to blockchain development, by providing them with a full set of tools to learn, create, test, deploy and sell their smart contracts and DApps.
Our objective is to bring to the market an end-to-end solution for developers, resulting in an increase in blockchain adoption and also in the quality and sophistication of blockchain development projects. We strongly believe that Modex will become a real enabler for blockchain development and will contribute to significant innovations in this space, by fueling decentralised creativity.
What is the problem you guys are solving? Has anyone tried to solve it before?
Given the major changes in the complex landscape of smart contracts, the adoption of blockchain technology comes with several challenges, notably a lack of expertise, high costs of development and integration concerns.
We have designed the Modex marketplace and the developers environment with one thing in mind: to offer the best solutions for developers to build and sell decentralised solutions, starting with smart contracts. One of the biggest problems for blockchain adoption is the lack of development tools. Basic resources available for web or mobile development are not available for blockchain, so we want to empower developers with the best tools and put them in the best position to create and sell to the right customers.
What is the real world application of Modex’s smart contract marketplace?
The Modex Smart Contract Marketplace provides a forum for developers to showcase their skills and offer smart contract solutions to buyers and/or other contributors. It provides a way for the real-world community to easily find smart contracts that meet real-world needs, without having to scout developers and manage one-off development projects for their individual project. At the same time, developers can build a reputation and pipeline based on their accomplishments, allowing them to get clients and build a recurring revenue against the on-going sale of their smart contracts.
Modex is empowering developers with a token of their own: the MODEX Token, which is the world’s first token designed for developers, that acknowledges and rewards their hard work in building DApps. The MODEX token brings value not just to developers, but also to businesses and endusers. Our token will seamlessly connect developers with the real world, helping companies and end-users find the right solutions for their needs. The smart contracts that developers write, upload and sell on the Modex marketplace will make a strong social impact in the community. Translated in hours of development work, MODEX is the world’s first token empowered by developers.
How did you balance your team between use case experience and blockchain experience?
I think we have a good mix of people on our team. We have managed to recruit very talented executives and developers, some with a background in blockchain, and others with experience in well known big companies like Oracle or Temenos. The good part is that they have all been open to getting out of their comfort zone and learning new skills. I believe that being open to doing things differently is key when joining an innovative company or startup.
There are a lot of ICOs out there trying to raise very large sums of money. How did your budget and timescale affect your funding goal?
We are, first of all, fully committed to the mission of developing the Modex smart contract marketplace, and we have significantly accelerated the development and prototyping of the blockchain dev tools. Financed through our Initial Token Offering, the Modex Unified Developer Environment is taking shape with constructive feedback from the blockchain community.
d we are ahead of schedule with the product by one year, so we have adapted the token sale strategy to the current state of the market, by reducing the hard cap for the Modex ITO and allocating a larger number of the issued tokens to contributing developers, in order to increase the marketplace adoption.
Is the blockchain industry a maturing one? If not, what more does it need?
Blockchain has developed a lot over this decade into one of today’s biggest ground-breaking technologies, but there is still a long way to go. It is all just getting started, and I believe blockchain has the potential to impact every industry, from financial to manufacturing to governments.
Adoption has been difficult so far, but the power of a marketplace or an app store to facilitate access to multiprotocol smart contracts and DApps is bound to make deployment faster, cheaper and a lot more accessible.
What would be your advice to young people starting up in blockchain right now?
Even though being young has its advantages, especially in blockchain, where one needs to be creative in order to build innovative projects, launching a startup requires lot of thinking and preparation, as the blockchain space has already become very competitive, and there is less room for mistakes nowadays.
Nevertheless, as we get older we tend to become comfortable in our customs, so when you’re young, you are bound to think differently and be motivated to change the world. I believe that age should not be a barrier in entrepreneurship, so my advice is to just go for it and find the necessary partners to help you materialise your dream. I’ve had the help of some great and experienced mentors since I first started, so learning from other people’s experience helps you jump ahead.
What’s next for Modex?
We are working hard to launch the first version of the Modex Unified Developers Environment. There’s no similar product on the market—developers will have a place where they can code, with all the tools needed at hand. After a short registration process, everyone interested in becoming part of the growing Modex Community will be able to do so.
The Unified Developer Environment will be free to use for blockchain development on Ethereum, and any developer will be able to take advantage of its features. Currently, there is no alternative to Modex UDE, so we are looking forward to welcoming talented developers to our community.
