Pioneering of Augmented Smart Contract Infrastructure
In our ongoing exploration of the ever-evolving Web3 landscape, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing another one of Bloccelerate portfolio founders, Hilmar Orth. You can see the recording here.
Hilmar is a co-founder of Gelato and an influential figure spearheading innovation in the Web3 space. This discussion offered enlightening insights into Gelato's remarkable journey, its core mission, and the exciting challenges they have confronted along the path to progress.
Fast forward, Gelato has grown into one of the most prominent Web3 infrastructure projects empowering builders to create augmented smart contracts that are automated, gasless & off-chain aware on all major EVM-compatible blockchains. Over 400+ web3 projects rely on Gelato for years to power the execution of millions of transactions across DeFi, NFT and Gaming.
**Hilmar's Background & The Genesis of Gelato**
Prior to immersing himself in the crypto universe, Hilmar began his journey studying finance, mathematics, and economics, This provided him with a solid financial & analytical foundation.
But it was his fascination with the DAO and the boundless possibilities of blockchain technology that ignited his passion to explore further. A pivotal moment occurred when Hilmar and his cofounder Luis found themselves deeply inspired by a project with Gnosis, which subsequently let the co-founders to create Gelato, a protocol for automating interactions between smart contracts on Ethereum
**Gelato's Story: Automation Without Compromise**
The brainchild of Hilmar and his team, Gelato offers an innovative solution: a decentralized system that provides automated execution of these contracts based on predefined conditions.
Prior to Gelato, such systems relied on external services known as “keepers” which were centralized external servers that could fail due to error, downtime, and could even be vectors of attack.
Recognizing a critical flaw in this centralized approach, and driven by the conviction that there was a pressing need for a more developer-friendly solution, Hilmar and the Gelato team became fixated on addressing this problem.
This led them to create a decentralized automation tool for Dutch Auctions on Gnosis.
Once they built this use-case specific project, they knew they could generalize the tech and create a product that would be valuable for the entire industry.
Lo and behold, Gelato is now at the forefront of simplifying complex financial actions by enabling smart contracts to be automatically triggered by price movements or time-based events. With their innovative Web3 Functions service, developers can securely fetch data from any API, running custom logic to reliably push data on-chain. Gelato is taking a monumental leap forward in bridging the gap between Web3, the broader internet, and the physical world.
Ultimately, Gelato is paving the way in providing reliable, robust and scalable gasless transactions via a simple to use API with it’s Gelato Relay offering. Together with the Safe team, Gelato is championing Account Abstraction enabling developers to provide a world class UX by combining Gelato Relay + Safe's Smart Contract Wallet.
**Challenges & Triumphs: Charting Uncharted Territory**
As with any groundbreaking endeavor, Gelato's journey was not without its challenges.
Hilmar openly acknowledged the complexities they navigate in building an intuitive product. Gelato’s first users took weeks to integrate their general purpose smart contract protocol, prompting the need to reevaluate their team’s approach.
To refine their offerings and make their product more practical and valuable for users, Gelato shifted its focus to identifying crucial use-cases and pain points of their user base. The key takeaway of this experience was that building an infra in a vacuum is very difficult. Working closely with users and building in tandem with developers proved to be immensely more beneficial in navigating these obstacles.
Through trial and error, Hilmar and his team have made significant strides. They learned using Gelato’s own products and services is pivotal in understanding friction or gaps in the user experience.
Along this journey, it became clear that decentralization is not enough to bring users on board. The product experience is as important and must yield a significant improvement to attract and retain users. By relentlessly innovating and iterating, the Gelato team have built a battle tested infrastructure, forge key partnerships with other projects in the space, and build a thriving ecosystem of developers who are now creating their own dApps using Gelato's infrastructure.
**The Road Ahead: Building the Decentralized Web3 Back End**
As for the future, Hilmar envisions Gelato continuing to push the needle, thereby making dApps more accessible, efficient, and versatile. His dream is to see a fully decentralized Gelato, where if the team were to step back, the network would continue autonomously (though he likely won’t be stepping back any time soon given their roadmap).
Hilmar also wants Web3 builders to have an accessible and truly decentralized backend to build the next generation of exciting Web3 projects.
Hilmar envisions Gelato as an essential infrastructure every Dapp developer needs in their stack: a production ready, composable, abstracted Web3 infrastructure, seamlessly plugging into various data availability and execution layers accelerating Dapp development process and driving mass adoption through feature rich UX.
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My conversation with Hilmar was both inspiring and illuminating. It's clear that his pioneering work with Gelato is playing a significant role in shaping the future of Web3. I'm excited to see what new innovations he and his team will usher in next.
As the saying goes, the best way to predict the future is to create it, and with Gelato, it's evident that the future of Web3 is bright.
Stay tuned for more founder spotlights as we share the stories of leaders.
P.S. If you haven’t already done so, please take 3 min to complete this BCVC Web3 Founder Survey 2023. In return, you will receive the full report with the aggregate findings and a chance to win Bloccelerate swag.
Best,
Sam