April 22, 2022 was an epic day for Lorenzo Melendez, 22, and Ulysses Atkeson, 21, lifetime friends and promising blockchain entrepreneurs.
Following three months of building their Cypher Accelerator, a support program for young crypto and blockchain companies, Lorenzo and Ulysses were ready to pitch their business to the public at the Accelerator’s grand finale event, known as Demo Day.
They stepped up to the front of the room at Wharton’s Stevens Center for Commercializing Crypto Success at Demo Day was validating, say the ‘Cowboys,’ who graduated from Kent Denver High School in Colorado, U.S. (where they were world robotics champs four years in a row), and both attended Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri (Lorenzo graduated in 2021 and Ulysses will graduate in 2023). “It was great to see that others love the things we love to create,” notes Lorenzo, who calls their past three months working with Cypher pure gold in terms of connections and deep support. “It meant that we are on the right track.” Fresh off their victory, Lorenzo and Ulysses (aka Uli) sat down with Wharton Global Youth to talk crypto, blockchain and Web3, the name that many computer scientists and engineers have given to a new internet being built using decentralized blockchains. Cowboy hats in hand, they agree that this new world in which they operate is truly the wild, wild west. “There’s a really big difference between where blockchain is and where it’s going,” says Lorenzo, who is NFT (non-fungible token) or knows how to interact on the blockchain.” So, where is the business of crypto and what can we expect from this radical new financial network? Lorenzo and Ulysses give us a peek into the commercial crypto terrain. Pudgy Penguins. First step is to understand Cowboy Labs, a business operating in the new crypto and blockchain Web3 in Action: Cowboy Labs Takes on the Business of Blockchain
