Chris Castig

How Chris Castig is building a better Discord with web3
November 1, 2022
Leo Nasskau
43:56

Chris Castig started his first company to teach people how to code. Incubated by Y Combinator, the legendary startup school behind Reddit and Airbnb, Chris' company was built on a single premise: what if you could learn anything in One Month?

An educator at heart, he went on to become an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School and an angel investor advising startups from product to strategy. Today he is the co-founder of Console, a chat platform which takes the best of Discord, the best of blockchain, and creates a tool that gives communities and individuals a stronger voice.

Augmented by blockchain identities that make scams easier to uncover, more secure and encrypted data storage, and integrations with external tools like voting and treasuries, Console is “super-powering the chat” to empower communities online in the same way that Wordpress empowers individuals (and 40% of sites on the internet).

Fundamentally, Chris' goal is to build “a secure chat app that just happens to use blockchain”. He speaks to Leo Nasskau about his journey to web3, the differences between Bitcoin and proof-of-stake blockchains like Ethereum, and how he hopes Console will change the world.

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Leo is part of the founding team at Culture3. An award-winning editor, he is also the Chair of UniReach, an EdTech non–profit he founded whilst studying at the University of Oxford. He writes about technology, change, and culture.

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