Hey Centrifuge fam!
I’m a bit overdue, but I joined the Centrifuge team earlier this year and wanted to introduce myself here.
My name is Asad Khan, and I’ve been actively involved in crypto and blockchain since 2017. I’m the guy who passed on Bitcoin in 2014 (because “this Satoshi guy sounds crazy”) only to find myself deep in the rabbit hold that is Ethereum just a few years later. Before joining Centrifuge, I had the fortune of being able to work in the enterprise blockchain ecosystem, including a short stint in central banking. All while following the boom (and subsequent crashes) of crypto markets in my free time. After several years of trying to grab the magic that is in crypto and bring it into the traditional institutional context (spoiler alert: you can’t), I decided to jump ship to where I had always been interested - DeFi.
Luckily I had connected with @lucasvo previously, and after a some very in-depth conversations with @ctcunning and co, I was humbly inaugurated as the DeFi Politician. What’s a DeFi Politician you may ask? Well I’m glad you did, because it took me a while to figure out if the team was messing with me or actually serious about the role. With hindsight, the title very neatly captures the complexity, challenge, and fun of working as a partner to DeFi protocols.
In a nutshell, I’m responsible for taking our existing or new protocol partnerships, and doing whatever I can to make sure they are working the best way possible. This means being present directly inside an ecosystem like MakerDAO (a community near and dear to my heart) to represent Centrifuge, support Maker’s RWA efforts, and solve any and all problems in the way of Maker, and therefore Centrifuge’s, success. To do so well means needing to traverse a variety of sub-communities, engage and communicate often in a public setting, having to deal with elections and votes, and, most importantly, building deep relationships between the Centrifuge community and our partners. A politician, in only the ways real politicians wish they could act and build, was a nice way to capture all of these elements in perfect meme form. Hence, the DeFi Politician was born.
In reality, I like to think of myself as an external ambassador of the Centrifgue protocol. To that extent, I’m hoping to be a bit more active in our forums and ecosystem, helping to share perspective, inviting our partners to participate, and working to cultivate Centrifuge as the go-to community for on-chain credit.
