Peng Zhong, CEO and President of Tendermint Inc., Tendermint's first employee, and a member of its newly formed board of directors, shared his insights on leading the company and shaping the future of blockchain. Having served as CEO for roughly a month and a half, Zhong described his new role as "quite a departure" from his previous focus on visual design and user experience. His primary objective is "getting everyone on the same page, getting everyone working on the same mission" to realize the vision of "the internet of blockchains." Zhong outlined a three-pronged mission for Tendermint under his leadership: first, "to continue to invest in engineering"; second, "to continue improving the developer experience," particularly focusing on the usability of the SDK for developers without prior blockchain experience; and third, "to grow the value of the cosmos ecosystem," envisioning a future with many more tokens beyond just ATOM, especially with the advent of IBC. He confirmed that the idea of a fee token, such as the Photon, is "still alive in the minds of many," with Tendermint collaborating with ChainSafe on the Ethermint project to bring the Ethereum Virtual Machine to Cosmos. Characterizing his leadership style, Zhong stated there would be "definitely very little of sweeping the slate clean," as he believes in building upon the valuable work already established by Tendermint and the wider community. A significant project he is spearheading is an alpha product launch, "a tool built on top of the cosmos sdk that makes it very simple and easy for any developer to build a blockchain." This tool aims to reduce the time it takes to go "from an idea to a blockchain" from hours or days to minutes, specifically targeting mainstream web developers rather than existing blockchain veterans. He highlighted the vast disparity between the millions of global developers and the mere thousands involved in Cosmos, aspiring "to bridge that gap to bring cosmos to many more people." Zhong expressed his hope that by lowering the barrier to entry, Tendermint could spark "the same explosion of ideas and tools and companies onto the internet of blockchains as the internet today," akin to the impact of TCP/IP on the internet. He also conveyed his excitement for the upcoming Stargate upgrade and IBC 1.0, which he sees as fulfilling the original vision for permissionless blockchain connectivity. Addressing the challenges of his role, particularly in a remote company, Zhong emphasized the difficulty of ensuring "alignment" among team members and managing differing expectations. His approach centers on resolving conflicts by ensuring both managers and employees feel heard and empowered. Over-communication is vital, as "the more you're able to repeat yourself, you know the exact same message the more it actually helps your team align on the same goal." He also stressed the importance of one-on-one conversations to foster deeper connections. On a personal level, Zhong advised prioritizing self-care, stating, "you shouldn't make your life about work," and encouraging a "marathon" approach to building a "long-term project," rather than a sprint that leads to burnout. He values outdoor activities like hiking and enjoying nature to "keep grounded" amid difficult decisions. Zhong recounted his journey into blockchain, starting with discovering Bitcoin on Hacker News in 2011. He was contacted in late 2015 by Jay Kwon, with whom he had previously worked. Feeling "intimidated" by crypto development as a web designer, he took the opportunity, becoming Tendermint's first employee. Early efforts focused on "enterprise blockchain hosting," aiming to provide a blockchain backend like AWS or Google Cloud. This idea eventually pivoted to Cosmos, which proved "much more exciting" and led to their successful 2017 fundraiser, raising "$17 million in BTC and ETH over the course of 30 minutes." He mused that their initial enterprise focus might have been "too ahead of the curve," as Tendermint is "still looking into actively within the company" a similar market. Discussing other blockchain initiatives, Zhong expressed hope for interoperability between Polkadot and Cosmos, noting that shared security, while potentially "very expensive," is valuable for "high value chains." He reiterated that "IBC really is the killer app" and anticipates "a lot of great things happen" as projects adopt it. On the topic of decentralized social media, Zhong confirmed the possibility of building a decentralized Twitter using the Cosmos SDK. He had previously developed "Dither," an "early alpha version of a decentralized Twitter built on the SDK." However, he identified scalability as a core issue, as Twitter's high interaction and low-value transactions overwhelm current SDK capabilities, suggesting an ideal solution would involve "its own blockchain with its own custom message types and a decentralized storage method." He also strongly advocated for an "offline first user experience," recognizing that "not everyone has an always-on internet connection," and that while CLI tools exist for offline transactions, a user-friendly UI is needed for wider adoption. Looking ahead to the developer experience, Zhong envisioned a future where even an 11 or 12-year-old could "actually use the SDK and build a blockchain and deploy it," similar to how he learned HTML. He stressed the need for extreme accessibility, simplified terminology, and documentation translated into multiple languages to create a "worldwide web of blockchains." Regarding futuristic development interfaces, he imagined AR/VR integration, but still expected developers to primarily use screens and keyboards in the long term. Zhong also shed light on the origins of the Looney wallet, which he originally developed as "Cosmos Voyager." Its name evolved through several iterations, designed to facilitate user interaction with Cosmos blockchains. As Tendermint shifted its focus to "core infrastructure," the project was spun out. The original Cosmos Voyager source code was taken over by two employees, Jordan Bibla and Fabian Weber, who, with funding from the Interchain Foundation, rebranded it as Looney Systems. This allowed Looney to expand its focus as "the best staking interface for all proof of stake blockchains," not just Cosmos. Addressing a "controversial question" about the centralization implications of a board of directors, Zhong clarified that the formation of the board actually represents a decentralization effort. Previously, Jay Kwon was the "sole board member and the CEO," meaning "any effort we take to create a board with more than one person is actually further decentralizing the ownership of the company." He announced a recent expansion to five board seats, including Claire Hough and Nick Tomaino, chosen for their experience with larger companies and their potential to guide Tendermint. He found the idea of adding community members to the board via on-chain votes "makes a lot of sense," and expressed interest in researching how the Cosmos SDK could be used to create "distributed autonomous organization[s] (DAOs)" where token holders act as shareholders influencing decisions through on-chain governance. Finally, Zhong discussed PRISM, a project he created following Edward Snowden's NSA revelations, which gained significant traction by listing open-source alternatives to proprietary software vulnerable to government surveillance. Though he no longer maintains it, he is proud of its community-led continuation. He emphasized his "idealistic" belief in privacy, stating that the "lack of privacy is abused by people with authority over those without authority," and that unfettered access to information gives "too much power to have other people." He remains supportive of tools that "safeguard them against that against abuses of power and privilege." Among non-Cosmos/Ethereum/Bitcoin projects, he highlighted Near Protocol for its accessibility to JavaScript/TypeScript developers and Avalanche for its "very elegant and clean" consensus protocol, viewing them as positive contributions to the broader blockchain ecosystem despite being potential competitors.