Greetings from Stanford University!

Hi Steemit Community!

My name is Ben and I'm a graduate student at Stanford. Previously, I spent 9 years building consumer electronics products (mostly open source software and hardware products) in the U.S. and Asia. I'm now working on a few crypto ideas for 2018 and excited for what's next.

I've been learning about crypto since 2010 but didn't spend too much time on it until 2015 when Ethereum went live. I was always attracted to the idea that you could model complex incentive systems and discourage cheating with code and secure it with cryptography, and thereby reduce the need for many central administrations in both business and government. I'm most interested in blockchain use cases, education for new entrants, and decentralized governance models.

Here at Stanford, we're growing a community of blockchain enthusiasts who vary from people who are trying to explore the cryptospace, to people who understand the fundamental concepts, to people who have been active in the space for awhile. I'm one of the co-organizers of this group and am looking forward to growing in 2018.

I'm also a new father, and that consumes most of my non-school, non-crypto time.

On Steemit, I'd like to add value to the community by thinking critically about what's happening in crypto and publishing some of my thoughts. It won't be perfect, so all non-trolling feedback is definitely encouraged!

Thanks for reading!

@ben-el-baz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-el-baz/