Welcome to another recap of Around the Block, TRON DAO’s way of staying in touch with the community by bringing you expert opinions and conversations about blockchain topics that matter. In episode 12, host Feroz Lakhani, Senior Marketing Manager at TRON DAO spoke with Sipan Vardanyan, Co-Founder at Hexens.io, and Vasco Felner Pinto, VP of Ecosystem at Multichain.org about securing digital assets in cross-chain protocols.

In this episode streamed on July 29, 2022, Feroz started the discussion by asking Sipan what his role is at Hexens.io. Sipan explained that Hexens focuses on the blockchain field and Web3 and they provide top-notch cybersecurity services starting from social engineering tests and awareness training. 

Feroz then asked Vasco the same question about Multichain. Vasco expressed that multi-chain is the leader in cross-chain bridging and they work with 56 chains and that number keeps growing. Vasco used to work in traditional finance and made the transition to work full-time in crypto in 2019. 

With such rapid expansion, Feroz asked how Vasco and his company view security and what they see as a concern in this space. Once your protocol starts securing a few million dollars, security needs to be a priority, Vasco said. Everything they do at Multichain is audited. At Multichain, Vasco believes in decentralization, in open sources, and everybody who wants to use their product needs to know what’s happening on the backend. How it works and why it works like that. So, putting security as a priority is a main focus for the company. 

Sipan added it’s not always about smart contract security, but he would always recommend users to check audit reports, especially if they covered the whole project. Sometimes projects don’t spend enough attention and money on all the audits and only cover what they think is crucial for the project. 

Switching gears, Feroz asked Sipan what exciting things will be coming out of this bear market. Sipan expressed that he’s looking forward to the balance that’s finally going to come to the market. He said it’s obvious that the market is really unbalanced right now and that the bear market is a necessary pain at the moment. He thinks we have to survive this in order to achieve mass adoption. Feroz agreed to say that everything has a cycle. It was going to happen sooner or later.

Vasco also concurred that he believes the bear market is good for something. He thinks that it brings a filtering process that is giving a spotlight to all the quality projects. Another thing Vasco is also excited about is cross-chain messaging. He’s eager to see what developers are going to come up with and believes we’re going to see cool stuff in the near future. 

The discussion ended with Vasco advising developers to keep building through the bear market. 

“Continue building,” he said. “Join a project that you believe in, build something that you believe in. We are early in an industry that has the potential to change the world. By being a part of this industry, you might be able to get a piece of that pie.”

Sipan’s advice is to let your passion lead you. 

“If you love what you do, it’s going to be cool,” he said. 

Thank you for reading this short recap of another great episode of Around the Block. We look forward to bringing you another episode with our team, bringing web3 experts together for engaging conversations.