Working at EMURGO - Meet the Team Taking Cardano Mainstream

We interviewed the team at EMURGO, the company at the forefront of blockchain innovations. Learn more about their ability to provide custom-built blockchain solutions on Cardano, what are the tech challenges they are trying to solve, take a sneak peek into their culture and find out what it takes to be part of their team.

How would you describe EMURGO?

EMURGO is a global emerging technologies company, providing custom-built solutions to solve the most complex problems of enterprise and government clients. As a founding entity of the Cardano protocol, EMURGO is able to leverage its abilities for large scale blockchain development and rapid solutions deployment to benefit its roster of global clients.

EMURGO has offices in Singapore, Japan, the USA, India, and Indonesia, and is proud to have an experienced and international team based in many other locations all over the world. Coupled with our healthy remote work culture, this enables true global perspectives and the ability to meet the needs of our clients at all times through our different business units.

Our EMURGO Enterprise Solutions unit works with large enterprises and governments to provide custom-built blockchain solutions on Cardano that are uniquely tailored to meet their needs and solve their most complex problems. Our most successful product to date is our traceability solution, which is an end-to-end traceability solution leveraging blockchain technology to solve the complex problem of product traceability.

Our Digital Asset Services unit provides and maintains a suite of digital asset services for the Cardano and overall blockchain community. As EMURGO is a founding entity of the Cardano protocol, our Digital Asset Services unit regularly develops, updates, and maintains services pertaining to Cardano ADA such as wallets, staking, extensions, APIs, and developer toolkits & other related materials. Our unit also supports the onboarding and development of other token types that display mutual synergy with Cardano through strategic partnerships, and other collaborative research initiatives.

Our EMURGO Academy unit fosters an online & offline community through the creation and delivery of content for developers & career professionals, where they can learn to build on top of blockchain platforms and enhance career opportunities. We provide a platform to connect developers & career professionals with enterprises, enabling more opportunities for both. This unit equips developers & career professionals with the blockchain skills necessary to contribute towards solving the complex problems of enterprises and governments. For more information on our online course, one can visit here to sign up.

Our Venture Capital unit works with later stage companies to bring capital to boost their growth and add value to the Cardano ecosystem.

Can you tell us more about EMURGO’s tech stack?

There have been many tech developments on both the enterprise front and the digital asset services front.

As mentioned above, one of our most successful enterprise products to date is our traceability solution, which is an end-to-end traceability solution leveraging blockchain technology to solve the complex problem of product traceability.

EMURGO developed and integrated a blockchain-based traceability solution for Blue Korintji Coffee - an Indonesian coffee brand - to transparently and accurately track their coffee beans from farm to cup. This solution solves opaque and inefficient supply chain issues for Blue Korintji. Our traceability solution brings them more and their coffee supply chain stakeholders more trust and transparency behind things such as ingredient quality and purchasing prices. Coffee consumers also benefit from being able to trust the quality of their coffee and this generates increased brand loyalty. This traceability solution is also being used through our Brandmark joint venture with Israel-based enterprises such as Ahava Cosmetics.

On the digital asset services front, we developed Yoroi Wallet, a simple light wallet that securely sends, receives and stores Cardano ADA. Cardano ADA holders are able to use Yoroi to also stake their Cardano ADA to receive ADA rewards. It’s available for free download on the Android, iOS, Chrome and Firefox extension stores. Recently, Yoroi Wallet surpassed 80,000 browser extension users and 50,000 Android installations.

EMURGO is also partnered with Ergo - a proof-of-work blockchain protocol built to be a platform for applications with a main focus on providing simple solutions for financial contracts with its UTXO-based smart contracts. EMURGO’s strategic partnership with Ergo aligns with the objective to also meet the increasing needs for tailored decentralized financial (DeFi) solutions moving forward, including R&D of AgeUSD - a joint stablecoin research project. As the interest in building decentralized financial services grows in tandem with the overall blockchain industry, this partnership allows for much-needed deeper research & DeFi solutions development.

What are some tech challenges EMURGO is looking to solve?

Enterprises have a need for high scale, immutable and reliable end-to-end solutions in a rapidly increasing digital age, something which Cardano is perfectly tailored to provide as a blockchain platform.

For example, the needs for data security and transparency are two of the highest in the food industry and its associated supply chains. It’s a very complex problem for enterprises. It’s crucially important that anyone is able to trace where their food comes from, and to be able to verify its authenticity for quality assurance and safety purposes. Blockchain technology is the perfect solution for such a need, as it is in its very nature secure and immutable.

If we look at the coffee industry for example in Indonesia, it is ranked 4th globally in terms of coffee production, and according to a World Bank report, around 10 million people in Indonesia are economically involved in the coffee industry as a stakeholder. However, in terms of supply chain stakeholders in Indonesia, 96% (more than 2 million farmers) of the coffee produced is by small farmers lacking technological resources & receiving weak government support to properly benefit from this boom. Their huge local market is made up of a very fragmented network of small farmers, roasters, processors, logistics companies, and others, highlighting the necessity for technological blockchain solutions to embed trust and transparency in the supply chain to prevent imprecise pricing and data.

As such, 38 farmers started using our EMURGO’s Traceability Solution to track their bean production up the supply chain. In the Kerinci region alone where we launched this solution, there are more than 500 local farmers. We are aiming to eventually trace all 300 tons of green coffee beans produced in the Kerinci region with our solution.

We believe that blockchain with its history of preserving data records in a secure manner and ability to shed transparency to all stakeholders carries tremendous, innovative value to not only supply chain stakeholders, but consumers as well by bringing more transparency than any other method available.

Check out their open roles!

How would you describe EMURGO’s culture?

The blockchain industry tends to attract some of the most forward-thinking and brightest minds that want to help build the foundation for the digital age that we are moving towards. In that regard, EMURGO is at the forefront of innovation as a founding entity of the Cardano protocol, and our culture reflects the motivation to continue to build awareness of Cardano’s benefits for the business community and governments. Everyone at EMURGO is committed to these goals of fostering a healthy blockchain environment through real solutions to real industrial problems, greater education & awareness, and support for companies wanting to build services on top of Cardano.

What are some traits that would make someone successful at EMURGO?

Being a likeable team player with the discipline to achieve the team’s goals independent of constant supervision is a desirable trait. Clear and timely communication, a determination to consistently provide solutions to the complex problems of our clients & community, and a passion for the blockchain space are also very much preferable to increase the overall harmony at EMURGO.

EMURGO is always open to hearing from talented people with the qualities mentioned above. If you feel like you have a talent that could provide value to EMURGO and the Cardano community, you can also stay up to date about the latest openings here and by following us on Twitter @emurgo_io.

And finally, why should someone work at EMURGO?

EMURGO is a founding entity of the Cardano protocol and we provide real blockchain solutions to the most complex problems of enterprises and governments. If this is of interest to you, EMURGO is the perfect place for you.

“EMURGO is driving the commercial adoption of Cardano which is one of the strongest and more future-proof blockchain infrastructure systems in the entire industry. Come be a part of the future!” - Florian Bohnert

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