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High five' with enspis - Stefan Politakis

senior platform & infrastructure engineer

 

1. Could you please describe your professional career so far? What were the most influential periods in your life? Why?

I do not really remember when it all started. I think somewhere around the age of 22-23 I joined a very successful CTF team through a university course. This led to an internship in digital security in which I found a major vulnerability in the Android implementation of the MQTT protocol and some minor ones in the Bluetooth interface of Alexa. 

After that, my interest in cryptocurrency led me to diverse contracting jobs. From penetration testing android apps to writing a complete suite of trading tools, I was exposed to a lot of different technologies. Around three years ago I decided to change my focus from development and security to operations and I joined VisoTech as a System Administrator.  There I used my previously acquired expertise to automate any and all amount of manual work expected of my team. Finally, 6 months ago I joined enspired as a jack of all trades and have not looked back. 

The most influential period in my life has definitely been the couple of years after I moved to Vienna alone at the age of 18 from a small village in Crete. I had to grow tremendously to survive this new reality, and I attribute this period in my life to any success I have had since then. 

 

2. Why have you decided to become a part of enspired?

It was mostly a gut decision. It just felt right. Almost like the universe sent me a signal. After having had some time to reflect, I am now surer than ever that it was the correct decision. Every single person in this organization is a genius in their respective field, and I say that in the humblest way possible. Innovation is relentlessly pursued, there are no politics, no fragile egos. Just pure joy from building cutting-edge systems. 

I sometimes feel like we are piloting the Santa Maria sailing to discover the new world. There are no limits. 

 

3. What is an innovative product or idea you are currently excited about. 

There is definitely a lot of innovation happening on a global scale. Self-driving cars, renewable energy and mRNA vaccines have all enjoyed the majority of our attention. 

But for me, it is the rise of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) that does it. On the most basic level it allows any man, woman or child to take part in capitalism and benefit from it. 

Value is created from connections. Imagine the human brain. It's close to 100 billion neurons are all connected and by virtue of this connection and the signaling that happens the most amazing 'thing' comes to life. And exactly this is bound to happen on a global scale with the gradual adoption of DeFi. It is the first real application of the Internet. What the Internet did for Information, DeFi will do for value. 

There are multiple untapped economies. A big one is gaming. Each game has its own economy, with some games having a GDP of multiple billions. Until now all this value was locked in walled gardens and had no impact on the outside world. By connecting a game's virtual economy to the DeFi infrastructure (and it just needs to connect with one protocol to relate to all of them) all this value is unlocked. It is like the Dutch East India Company discovering a new world (let's call it Atlantis) with a lively economy and connecting it to the rest of the world. 

Another big thing that this innovation allows is decentralized governance. It's the first realistic model of direct Democracy since Ancient Athens, and it can be applied on any level. 

 

4. Where do you search for work inspiration / newest information regarding your field of work? 

I guess being bombarded by news is part of our daily life in this golden age of information. The most important skill is not finding the information but filtering out the noise. For this purpose, I use hacker news and a carefully curated feed on Reddit and Twitter. But even with highly curated and optimized news sources, there is a lot of noise that gets through the cracks. I always learn the most interesting things when meticulously researching specific keywords that got my attention. 

 

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