Changing the World With Blockchain

Joe Roets is the founder, architect, and CEO of Dragonchain, an enterprise and start-up-ready platform that allows developers to build scalable, flexible blockchain applications. 

He is a serial entrepreneur who has led multiple technology startups over the years and has over 20 years of software architecture experience, primarily working with scalability and security. 

The idea for Dragonchain initially stemmed from an encounter between a member of Joe’s team and himself in 2010, where he was shown the Satoshi Bitcoin white paper and was intrigued by what he saw. He was fascinated by the new technology system and how there was something new and unique that had been put together in a brand new, innovative way. 

After learning about Bitcoin and exploring the technology, Joe and his team started doing everything they could to experiment, learn about, and build upon the technology – after all, this is what they typically did with any new technology they were presented with. 

Over time, these ideas continued to grow in Joe’s mind, and over the course of his career, he was finally able to leverage his ideas and experience into what Dragonchain became today. 

Joe’s experience shows how being fascinated, interested, and curious about new technology can lead to a plethora of opportunities down the road. His experience allowed him to position himself as someone who was willing and able to be one of the innovators in this unique space, ultimately leading him towards founding his startup.

Joe’s interest in blockchain technology continued to grow over the years, and he worked/led various technology companies while simultaneously learning and absorbing information like a sponge. 

One eventful day, Disney reached out with an opportunity, leading to Joe and his family relocating across the country to Seattle. 

While at Disney, he started working on a variety of internal projects, but there was one that particularly caught his eye – the blockchain platform project. They put together a small team to start this endeavor and began expanding and broadening their blockchain project and getting more support from across the company. 

Over time, Joe and his team were able to put together a solid team, build out various proofs of concept for blockchain technology, and achieve some fascinating results. As the project grew, there was growing interest in their blockchain project throughout Disney as well as from outside the company. 

This is how Dragonchain was born. 

Joe pioneered the effort to release Disney’s internal blockchain project as ”open-source,” meaning the code was publicly available and could be used and expanded on by developers around the world. 

After a series of legal approvals, stakeholder buy-ins, and an uphill battle, Joe’s blockchain project eventually made its way out as an open-source project. All of the intellectual property (IP) of the project was signed over to Joe, and the rest is history. 

To this day, he has continued to fuel his passion for new technologies and blockchain technology and does everything he can to advance this project as Dragonchain.

As interest in blockchain technology continues to grow, there seems to be an endless array of opportunities. 

When more and more companies around the globe begin to transition their projects into decentralized blockchain applications, Dragonchain is aiming to position itself as a solid framework upon which these blockchain apps can be built.

When it comes to specific industries and future applications, the blockchain can make large impacts within the supply chains of various industries. 

During an interview with Joe, he brought up an example of food security and how the blockchain allows you to trace a bad food batch all the way to the farm. Since you know where the food was sold, what city it traveled from, and what farm it originated in, you’d be able to pinpoint and diagnose issues much quicker than before, saving companies both time and money. 

Additionally, Dragonchain recently released a full sitewide governance system, where members of the system are able to weigh in on how that system is managed. This is an excellent feature of decentralized systems since members have the ability to vote and choose how they want a particular system to be run, often in great detail. 

If the management of a particular company begins to go against the best interest of its users, full sitewide governance will allow the members to step in and make changes on the fly, preventing any future issues or failures further down the line.

Currently, Dragonchain is working on a large number of enterprise projects that are beginning to gain steam but haven’t been announced yet. Some examples of their current enterprise projects include:

• Solving the measurement of environmental metrics
• Analyzing a manufacturing process — is it green?
• Supply chain improvements and innovations
• Sitewide governance improvements and enhancements

Dragonchain is a pioneer in a brand new space — one that we’re sure to see more of in the coming years. 

Their origin story is an inspiring one, showing how a dedicated effort towards learning, pioneering, and keeping up to date with new technologies can pay off massively in the long run – and potentially develop world-changing ideas in the process.

Next Steps: 

• Check out Dragonchain’s company profile their insights for aspiring entrepreneurs, and ways to support them.
• Hear startup stories from real founders on the Startup Savants podcast.
• Keep up with more startup companies by visiting our list of the top startups to watch.
• Form your own startup by reading our review of the best online incorporation services.