Chjango Unchained, an ecosystem developer for Cosmos, described her role as a multifaceted occupation, distinct from the traditional "VP" title which she finds "a little bit, you know, corporate." She intentionally moved away from the "head of community" or "community manager" titles due to their negative connotations, stemming from the 2017 ICO boom where "all they did was really boost up their vanity metrics such as Twitter followers, or like they would get bots." Chjango views the work of cultivating a "decentralized swarm full of different actors who have a single aligned mission, but all have different interests" as a "dark art." Her current definition of ecosystem development encompasses collaboration with key individuals, marketing, community building (acting as a coordinator for tasks), and strategic allocation of capital or investment decisions. Ultimately, she sees herself as an "evangelist that like has a high operational capacity to like get things pushed through." Reflecting on the evolution of roles in the blockchain space, Chjango believes that regardless of a person's starting point—be it through a meme like Dogecoin or deep technical interest—the most impactful community builders are "zealots" or "maximalists" who believe so strongly in a project that their passion shines through, creating a "virtuous cycle" of awareness and adoption. For her, "the top of the funnel is the most important" aspect of marketing, as it captures the widest audience. She champions "meme worthiness," stating, "If you have a very strong meme or like a narrative that is really concise, it's very tight and like instantly makes sense. You know, that's also a branding exercise, right? ... That's why like Dogecoin was so effective." Chjango emphasized the necessity of balancing short-term speculative marketing with long-term brand building, despite personal preference. Acknowledging that "up to 99% of all of the cryptocurrency market is speculation," she argues it shouldn't be dismissed. She views a coin's liquidity as "a really strong moat," providing defensibility against competitors. While some "religious zealots are also purists" and might ignore speculation, Chjango believes that "marketing a coin has to include the coin market cap," as "token price is the means to the ends" for achieving mainstream adoption. She notes, "unfortunately, early adopters are speculators," making attention to this segment crucial. Discussing the Cosmos Hub's direction, Chjango expressed enthusiasm for using community-governed funds for marketing but voiced alarm over Proposal 33's "extra recentralization factor," which would move funds to a six-signer multi-sig rather than directly distributing them to those performing the work. She questioned the necessity of this "intermediary layer." Looking back at the Cosmos Hub's journey, Chjango cited its "long term research oriented outlook" as both a strength and a regret, as it "comes at the detriment of addressing immediate market demands," particularly in the rapidly evolving decentralized finance (DeFi) space. She wished Cosmos had addressed DeFi "in a more expedient way starting last year," lamenting the current friction in building and deploying DeFi applications compared to Ethereum's "frictionless" environment. With IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) on the horizon, along with an automated market maker on the hub and permissionless whitelisting of fee tokens, she foresees "really interesting interchange DeFi happening in Cosmos." For 2021, the strategic focus for the Cosmos Hub will be "refocusing on building the infrastructure that's needed for enabling DeFi to happen in Cosmos," even if "a little bit late to the game." Chjango's personal view on DeFi has evolved dramatically. Initially, she "denigrated DeFi for being this just just like a like a shit coin casino." However, she later underwent a "right angle, 90 degree turn," proclaiming, "I'm all about DeFi." She credits DeFi with making cryptocurrency "compelling to even just like the Wall Street types," transforming perceptions of blockchain into a "credible technology." For her, DeFi is "the next logical iteration of cryptocurrency," with Bitcoin being the original financial asset. She was particularly "mind blown" by the concept of "programmable liquidity" demonstrated by projects like SushiSwap, recognizing the "hackers are some of the most innovative people in the world." She also revealed that her own defunct project, Supernova (2018), had an early concept of "airdrops on steroids for Adam holders," which was essentially "incentivized token locking or incentivized staking," predating the yield farming phenomenon. When advising builders, she stressed the importance of mitigating MEV (Miner Extractable Value) from the start to ensure "more long-term sustainability." Addressing the semantics of "ecosystem" versus "community," Chjango reiterated that "it's just semantics," but the term "community" carries baggage from 2017's superficial community management practices. In cryptocurrency, she views "community building is really just the replacement for user-based building," where the "customers are the community" in a decentralized project. She maintains that at the "very start of any project, you need that initial set of people who just get it," those who can envision the project's "10 year, the 20 year grand vision," to evangelize and spread its message exponentially. Chjango's personal journey into crypto began in 2014 when a college friend introduced her to Bitcoin, which "just clicked for me" as a passive investment while she planned to travel the world. Her "conversion event" involved deep research, starting with Brian Kelly's "The Bitcoin Big Bang" and culminating in reading the "entire Princeton Bitcoin book," a highly technical dive into its monetary policy and cryptography. She honed her understanding by being a journalist and technical writer, realizing that "as soon as you teach other people about a certain subject, that's when you realize where the holes in your understanding are." Beyond Cosmos, several projects inspire Chjango. Bitcoin "changed my life forever," and she views it as the "financial backbone of the future" and a "chaos hedge," an innovation she attributes to Satoshi. Ethereum also inspires her as the "foundation for like all these different applications," particularly for enabling DeFi and driving mainstream adoption. She praised SushiSwap, despite its controversial start, for giving her an "aha moment about why DeFi is cool," showcasing the creativity of "hackers." Finally, Handshake is a project that gives her the "same conviction about handshake" as she had for Bitcoin in 2014, believing in its potential for a "decentralized, uncensorable internet." She sees Handshake as solving the "single choke point" at the DNS level, complementing Bitcoin as a decentralized payment rail and awaiting a solution for decentralized bandwidth to complete a truly free and open internet. Even Tether, despite its "mystique and taboo," earns her respect for its "innovative" nature as the original highly liquid stablecoin, proving "very useful" for traders.