Nik Christodoulakis: ‘The industry needs to have ethical people to lead self-regulation’
INTERVIEW: Jillian Godsil meets Nik Christodoulakis, CEO of Ēnosys…
It’s not often that a CEO gets voted in by his peers, but this is the starting ground for Nik Christodoulakis, CEO Ēnosys, a position he holds carefully. Three years ago, he was CTO for Ēnosys (then called FLR Finance) leading the technical development of the company. The previous CEO left in unexpected circumstances and the remaining team voted him into the position.
“They persuaded me that I was ready for the position and, fast forward to now, I am pretty glad that I did,” he says.
Christodoulakis Is not fazed by moving out of his comfort zone; he welcomes challenges and approaches them with an honesty and humility that is at odds with many C suite managers in Web3.
Perhaps his journey into Web3 can partially help explain this approach. As a young student, he attended a course Web Applications Development at NTUA (National Technical University of Athens). When the course ended, he did not want the learning to end and approached the lecturer Dr Dionysis Zindros to see if he could continue, but added that he did not have the funds. So kind was Dr Zindros that he volunteered to become his mentor – a role that he maintains to this day.
A lack of family funds contributed to Christodoulakis not attending university. He is not perturbed and expresses a wish to one day attend college, in particular Stanford University, but he recognizes that many people do not get this opportunity in life.
“My path was quite different,” he reflects.
“I decided to become self-taught and started as a back-end developer. Actually, early on, I realised that much of what is built is very ugly and I knew I could do a better job.”
He subsequently pivoted into design and concentrating on user interfaces and experiences. He identifies as a unicorn professional – ready and able to turn his attention to any aspect of the business. This is just as well as moving from strictly technical to the role of CEO, which involved some major mind shifting. Here again, Christodoulakis benefitted from another mentor. He reached out to Dr Zindros, who introduced him to a senior manager in Mastercard.
“She was incredible in helping me grasp the business requirements for the CEO position and is now my second mentor.”
Christodoulakis has a third mentor directly from Web3 and an early investor in Ēnosys. He actively uses all three to his and the company’s benefit.
“I am a fast learner but having access to experts and mentors has been invaluable,” he explained.
“I am also a curious person which makes learning fun – and indeed imperative. When faced with a problem I never say it is impossible, rather I say let’s try and figure it out.”
Christodoulakis has spent the majority of his career working in startups, initially in traditional finance and later on in the medical and hospital space. He works long hours, often 15 to 16 hours a day, but he thrives in this milieu. It has also taught him to be able to jump from department to department, learning as he goes.
“I am learning how to be a leader and part of that is understanding that not everyone works as I do. Everyone is unique and brings their own talents to the table.”
Christodoulakis credits his role with teaching him patience and also how to be a critical thinker and separate emotion from logic. With almost 40 people working at Ēnosys he also has learnt how to lead the company with shared values.
“The team feels like my family and I try to care for them in the same way. Patience and humility go a long way in a CEO for if the team is not with me, then I am nothing.”
While the company and branding has changed over the past three years, the main thrust of solving problems remains – only now on a bigger scale with a more structured approach. Ēnosys endeavors to use academic research to fast track the learning as well as challenge and optimally prove every single assumption made.
“We’re pretty much a research and software development center and we’re building this super app – the Ēnosys ecosystem – which means ‘oneness’,” he said.
“We can see that the crypto space has broken down into silos and we want to bring everything under one umbrella so we can solve the problems together.”
Today Ēnosys has three main aspects. The first part is the ‘super app’ which is an ecosystem of products including multi-sign wallets, API and other infrastructure, the second part is to offer DeFi with five to six products. There is also a third component offering an NFT marketplace to connect digital assets with real world products. Overall, Ēnosys has very experienced professionals with niche expertise that also work with other companies.
Ēnosys has been building with Flare Network since the very beginning. Christodoulakis has not found another layer one blockchain its equal.
He adds: “I don’t think any other blockchain can combine the utilities of Flare – it is fast and secure with an endless list of new products, such as FTSO Layer Cake and more, coming down the track, I don’t think anyone else simply has that kind of value proposition.”
The idea behind the super app harkens back to Christodoulakis’ initial reaction to the ugly user interfaces he encountered at the start of his development career. He compares everyday TradFi experiences such as interacting with a bank teller, opening an account, and getting a debit card with its crypto equivalent.
“Compare that to the awful user experience in Web3,” he explained.
“We tell people to remember 24-word phrases and if they lose it, they lose their money. Then if they do want to extract their money, we tell them to go to another unrelated company down the block and use them – that makes no sense at all.
“If we are expecting mass adoption to happen under those conditions, then we are deluded. We need to make it easier. People don’t need to understand how it works, if they don’t want to, just that it does. That’s the vision behind our super app.”
There are currently 12 products live on the Ēnosys Super App running on the Canary network on Songbird. The NFT marketplace is also up and running, allowing people to redeem physical items via NFTs. Currently, there are approximately 210,000 people holding the Ēnosys tokens, with $19 million held in total value and the DEX listed within the top 100 DEXs in the world. It has just recently launched on the Flare mainnet as well.
Christodoulakis’ approach to software development mirrors the Flare ecosystem. The initial process is where the developers test the software internally, in their case on the test net and later on test publicly in staging on the Songbird network. The team has been testing and updating the software on Songbird for the past year and a half.
“When dealing with other people’s money we have to make sure everything works and take responsibility for their capital while on our platform.”
The time spent testing the platform is time well spent. Next up is governance, then the APY Cloud which is a central fee aggregator.
“Governance will allow for the transition of power into the people’s hands – our team is a big advocate of this,” he says.
“We are also very excited about the APY Cloud which is very unique and will accrue real yields, taking a percentage of fees from every transaction and not relying on inflationary token activities.”
For Christodoulakis, mass adoption is key and he believes a combination of good user experience and solid, protective regulations will drive this process.
“The industry needs to have ethical people to lead the self-regulation, allowing good products to be built that actually solve problems,” he concludes.
“We need to come together as an industry to achieve this. It all starts with us.”