Taking My Talents to Calaxy
Authored by: Paul Madsen
I will be joining the Calaxy team as Head of Identity and Standards. Amongst other duties, I will be helping to integrate decentralized identity into Calaxy’s architecture. One scenario would be Verifiable Credentials for Creators attesting to their celebrity status bound to to their Hedera HTS tokens so purchasers of those tokens can be confident in what they are buying (trust me that Spencer D*a*nwiddie has no good answers to the question ‘Who do you find hardest to defend against?’). Another scenario could be establishing consent and content moderation standards for decentralized social media protocols, also using decentralized identity.
I left Hedera a few months ago for personal reasons. For the record, it’s not because of the promised courtside tickets for an NBA game that I decided to get back into crypto with Calaxy.
Though those tickets would be nice ahem. I already have multiple friends (quite pathetically to be honest) begging me to be my Plus One.
I am taking my talents to Calaxy because of the opportunity to
- Work with Cooper Kunz again (OK technically ‘for’ this time)
- Use my brain for something more challenging that deciding whether to cut my lawn horizontally or vertically
- Help apply Hedera’s identity features (that I contributed to the development of) to a real world use case
- Work with the Calaxy team that Spencer & Solo have put together
- Lie to my friends about the sorts of interactions I have with the Creators, eg. ‘Golf? Yeah Iman and I get out for a round once in a while’
But let’s be honest, the main reason for my joining Calaxy is that it’s cool — a cool team working with cool celebrities to build a cool application.
Like so many others nearing the end of their working career, I have been wondering if I have achieved sufficient coolness in my life. And to be honest I fear that I have somewhat of a coolness deficit to address. High school was a complete write off due to chess club and studying physics in university didn’t help. And then a career in technical documentation, identity standards, and working on an ABFT DAG DLT. Nothing my kids would ever brag about in the playground for sure.
I am confident that Calaxy will help remedy my coolness deficit. In fact I’m already sensing an increased level of respect from my kids, family, and neighbors when I shared with them what Calaxy is building, and the sort of Creators they are building it for. (An added bonus is that it will be far easier to explain what a ‘creator economy’ is than gossip about gossip and virtual voting at our upcoming Thanksgiving family gathering).
About Calaxy Inc.
Calaxy is the social marketplace built for creators, by creators. Built and backed by a team of visionaries, and spearheaded by co-founders NBA player Spencer Dinwiddie and ex-financier Solo Ceesay, Calaxy is an entirely new approach to the world of content creators, putting today’s fan right at the center of the action.
Calaxy is reimagining the way people use social media: empowering more meaningful and fulfilling fan experiences. The app gives creators the ultimate toolkit to interact with their fans in one place and rewards fans for their engagement.
Utilizing the Hedera network, a blockchain alternative that harnesses the power of the hashgraph consensus algorithm, Calaxy’s open social marketplace creates a fair exchange of value, enabling creators to monetize relationships with their community through Creator Tokens, which fans can utilize for a suite of personalized experiences.
About Paul Madsen
Paul Madsen is Head of Identity & Standards at Calaxy. Previously, he was a technical lead at Hedera Hashgraph. Madsen has participated in various design, chairing, editing and education roles for a number of identity standards, including OASIS SAML, OAuth 2.0 and FIDO Alliance. He holds a M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Carleton University and the University of Western Ontario, respectively.
