Zen Team Interviews: Arno

Tell us a little bit about yourself. What’s your background and experience?

My Name is Arno Pfefferling, I am 30 years old, hold a M.Sc. degree in material science, and have worked since 2011 in the semiconductor industry. I am living with my little son and wonderful girlfriend in the capitol of Saxony, called Dresden. In 2014/15 I lived several months in Nairobi, where I tie up my mindset about regional differences in relation to culture, economy and politics.

In education I had a curvaceous path. I left gymnasium, graduated to an IT-network assistant, worked in a call center, and went back to school to finally go to university and gain a B.Eng. degree in Microtechnology. Luckily, I found directly after studies a job as manufacturing engineer at GLOBALFOUNDRIES, where I still work and I was able to do a part-time master degree.

Since my bachelor and master studies I attended some MEMS competition, joined a student fraternity, gave public talks in studium generale and at work I have several invention disclosures mostly for general process improvements (methods). I think my open and restless mind set brings somehow fresh and innovative ideas to real practical use. Whereby my thinking about “problems” is focused on using different views and understanding the basic roots.

Why Zen? What attracts you to the Zen project and mission?

As I said before, in problem solving the understanding of basic roots is my personal key to success and that is actually what makes Zen seem exceptional to me. ZenCash has a fresh and quality team, it is not old enough to be a over-sized project, and the underlying technology is unique. In detail, I mean the zk-SNARK (originally from ZEC) and governance process (inspired by DASH a/o PIVX), which is in my opinion the only way to have a solution about the “crypto dichotomy”, because it allows the participants to use a technology based on infrangible privacy and on the other hand it engages each user to be active and have a say with the system itself.     

I mentioned the above “crypto dichotomy” which is more and more discussed not only from technology advocates or IT experts, insiders or various anonymous anarchists, it is getting in the global society. With this transformation, a lot of hidden a/o obvious problems are on the table already, so for me I see the Zen mission as my best-fitting way to contribute to a safe, private, and global equality. The first step is to help people to understand cryptocurrencies like ZenCash, give them access and let them experience this environment. This stage is right now very well shown in the Zen project, which makes me proud to be part as German Market Lead.  

What do you bring to the Zen team?

As you can read in my background and experience for me the following symbols are most important in life: freedom of change, equality and fairness globally, and respectful interaction between humans, animals, and nature. You surely have personal experience where one of the above symbols were infringed upon, and for me one big thing which often comes in play is simply money. In the current status, Zen is a solid cryptocurrency and acts as a money alternative. And I want to amplify Zen’s usage, distribution, and value.         

I am not shy to go in open discussion about the “crypto dichotomy” and try to keep reading and learning about economic, social, and political science. That is why for German market this year an huge point is on personal get to know each other. In this way my thinking is to build a community free of prejudice, understanding risks, and chances in blockchain technology and widen the entrance for the whole society in an non-anonymous way.

What are your thoughts on the crypto market as a whole?

As a whole I need to do a little separation, 1) crypto in perspective of blockchain based developments, meaning any kind of code, following the given principle of digital autonomous historic ledger is definitely a big invention in 21th century. Based on this we can find already cooperations like Consensys who made Ethereum happen. Small and medium companies (SMEs) start to implement blockchain technology more on local level, generally I am happy and excited about this processes.

2) Market in perspective of crypto currencies I have very mixed feelings and worries. Feelings come into my mind when I check news or let’s say general mass media articles about Bitcoin, altcoins, ICOs and soon. Major arguments are about money, which is indeed a big driver for actions of humans, but to talk only about FIAT or coin values we reduce the opportunities of this technology. If we have IT hackers who fake, cheat or steal or if we are in a capital bubble or not it matters most for financial aspects, so for bank or governmental institutions the crypto market is like Wild Wild West. The laws and restrictions are created, but in real life I don’t see much mass adaptation for the participants in the system. If you consider that a private person has to do data privacy on his own and is per se a market product for e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Google, …  The crypto community should not focus only on finance. Generally for me I see no healthy stable status with a lot of difference reasons in crypto market. My worry is that we create a separate world not of poor and rich, but of crypto-anarchists and rest.

All in all I think the best way is to share, collaborate and start evolving your mind about the crypto market, because we are able to keep 1) and as more and more the knowledge and wisdom of the participants grow, point 2) will be less fragile and more concrete.

Predict the future – What excites you about the potential state of the world 20, 50 years from now?

In 20 years I hope to see a more equal state of the world, meaning that in 50 years the younger generation does not have to experience racism, poverty or war. Human rights should be a status quo for everyone and society can finally celebrate the human itself. I mean everyone of us is so impressive, unique and sometimes not reasonable. Somehow like a zk-SNARK transaction ;-), who you know it will happen only once with a specific encrypted pattern of bits and bytes, but amount, sender, receiver are hidden and the reason for doing it is in your one and only own hands.