“I also love algorithms and cryptography, so while my early career was in Life Sciences and included robotics programming and dabbling with 3D games and AI, it was no surprise that I soon migrated over to crypto and blockchain, first working with an arbitrage platform trading between different crypto exchanges and leveraging AI.”
Next stop was Bitstamp Cryptocurrency Exchange, which is the longest standing crypto exchange in existence. Zrimšek believes it also to be the most regulated exchange. As a Banking Technical Lead he worked with departments from across many aspects of the exchange from payments, to accounting, to treasury and even support.
At this stage, while Zrimšek knew he was working in the right sector, he also knew he wanted to be a founder and not just an employee. He wanted to put his drive and enthusiasm into a project of his own making and enjoy the full rewards of his efforts.
“I am always dedicated and give my all and then some wherever I work, but I wanted more than a tap on a shoulder and a paycheck at the end of the month. I’m grateful for all the startups and big corporations I’ve worked for, they equipped me with all the know-hows I would need on my entrepreneurial journey. It was just a matter of time until I would stop building other people’s success stories and focus on my own one.”
As chance would have it, he met Ben Appleby who was already working on a Web3 startup and was invited to join.
Working in Web3 suited Zrimšek. He took time to learn not just about cryptocurrency and trading but the technology and the business perspective. He became an investor and with skin in the game his knowledge grew exponentially.
Back in 2017 he witnessed the ICO craze but was not very impressed with many of the projects.
“People could raise money on the back of a beer mat and many of the projects were not legit and there were a lot of scams. The lack of regulation and the anonymity of teams made it easier for scammers. Working for Bitstamp was interesting for me. It is a financial institution so it had to adhere to regulations, which was a good learning ground for me.”
Zrimšek met Appleby and his co-founder Richard Kieswick when the idea behind Akshun was well advanced. What they lacked was the technical implementation and Zrimšek was very happy to join them.
“We have had some hiccups along the way in terms of development, having a short strict deadline tied to the start of the Premier League season. Also, we have some excellent advisers from the likes of Binance, Bitstamp, Sweat Economy, Elliptic, Outlier Ventures, to name a few.”
Core to the Akshun platform is the use of NFTs and smart contracts to denote ownership of key moments in sport. Zrimšek has followed the evolution of NFTs from JPGs to wash-trading through to actual utility.
Akshun is the only platform to take the real-life actions of sports players – in the first iteration it’s the Premier Football League – and immortalize them on the blockchain as NFTs. Akshun takes the data from OPTA which logs all live games’ statistics and sends the data to betting companies. It’s the official source of the sports data. As all actions are verified, the data is live streamed into smart contracts on Akshun.
“Akshun smart contracts were carefully architectured and are operated in a way to prevent anyone, even the team behind Akshun, manipulating the data in the smart contracts or cheating users without being accounted for.”
They are striving to be as transparent and decentralized as possible, and are putting their names on the product instead of hiding behind anonymous identities as it’s popular in the Web3 space.
“Everything can be anonymous – we don’t need to know who you are but once you can prove you purchased the winning NFT then the rewards are yours. You can watch the game in real time and if your NFT is the winning one, then you can claim your prize on the blockchain through the Akshun app.”
Initially, there is only one use for the NFTs, but Zrimšek and the rest of the team are having fun exploring new features and uses, and may even include a token generation event governed by a DAO in the future.
“We are focused on reaching people who are somewhat crypto savvy initially, but over time we want to reach sports fans with little or no crypto knowledge – basically the Akshun app will guide them and they need not know they are using a wallet or transacting over a blockchain, yet still obtain all of its benefits.”
“We are starting with the Premier League but we are looking to migrate to boxing, basketball, tennis, polo, you name it. This is a startup, but because it’s a startup in the blockchain space it runs ten times faster than other industries – it’s like a startup city on steroids. The rewards can be enormous, but so are the stakes!”
For more information, visit www.akshun.xzy
