J: How's everything? Where in the world are you now?
M: Warsaw, Poland. This is where I live most of the time.
J: Cool. I've been there once as a kid. My dad has a business in glasswork and ceramics, and we visited Bialystok and Warsaw. It was around the time of Euro 2012. I was a 12-year old kid but the city felt great, from what I can remember.
M: Yeah, that was a really fun time. The Euros were huge here.
J: It was hosted in Poland and Ukraine, right?
M: Yes! There was a famous match between Italy and Germany in that tournament. Everyone thought Germany would win, but then Balotelli scored two goals, and one of those became a meme. You know, the one where he’s standing there flexing. I watched it live in the stadium!
J: Let’s chat about Kiwi. I’ve been using it for a while, and it’s one of those apps I check daily for interesting things to share with my team. Kiwi often gets compared to the Hacker News of crypto. When did you realize this platform needed to exist?
M: It’s a funny story. When I got into crypto, I knew I wanted to build something, but I didn’t know what. So I started a podcast, thinking that talking to founders would inspire me. The podcast, Web3 Talks, did well. I interviewed founders from Farcaster, Zora, Gnosis, WalletConnect, and others. But as I tried to grow the podcast, I struggled with distribution. Twitter didn’t like links, sharing links on Discords and Telegram chats felt spammy, and there wasn’t a place to share quality content where it would be seen. That’s when I thought, 'Hacker News for crypto would be great.' Around the same time, Tim, who’s now my co-founder, launched a very basic MVP of a crypto version of Hacker News. To submit a link, you had to download a GitHub repo and use the command line interface. I thought it was cool and asked Tim how to add my podcast. From there, I started helping him, and eventually, we decided to build it together full-time.
J: So, both you and Tim were scratching your own itches—finding a way to distribute your podcast and Tim wanting a space that didn’t reject crypto like Hacker News.
M: Exactly. Tim had posted his non-crypto blog posts on Hacker News and got a lot of traffic (and business) thanks to that. But when he posted crypto-related links, the Hacker News team either banned or ignored them. He was fed up and wanted a decentralized version where links couldn’t be censored. That’s how Kiwi came to be. We store all the links on a protocol, so different apps can interact with it, just like how NFTs on Ethereum can be accessed through OpenSea, Blur, or Magic Eden. If someone doesn’t like Kiwi’s moderation, they can create their own app with different moderation rules but still access the same links.
J: That’s a unique approach. I also love the story behind the name ‘Kiwi.’ Something about eating kiwis with the skin on, right?
M: Yeah! A friend named Kenny posted a picture of himself eating a kiwi with the skin on, and Tim reacted by saying “Vitalik, you should ban him from Ethereum for this” Vitalik chimed in, saying he eats oranges the same way. It became this meme, and now we even have a website about the ‘right’ way to eat kiwi. It’s a funny story that stuck with us.
J: I ship a lot of content for various projects and the hardest part is always: distribution. How does Kiwi help content creators get their work seen?
M: Great question. The main issue with social media is that people typically want to stay on the platform. In other words, if you post your article on Twitter, you might get 50 likes but only three clicks. People like the headline, not the content, and it’s hard to make them read your longer posts. If you don’t want to deal with that, you have to keep repurposing the content for different platforms—threads for Twitter, short summaries for Discord, Telegram, etc. No author wakes up thinking, “I’d love to spend some time repurposing my content so that people can actually read.”
Kiwi is different. We’re focused on quality and real readers, not quantity and likes. So on Kiwi you won’t get 10,000 views, but you might reach the right people—the power users in crypto, the ones who will ask insightful questions and share them with influential people. And it gets even better when we run writing contests since our authors and partners help us reach more readers - in the last contest we did with Lens, some of the essays were read by Vitalik, Stani, and Alex from zkSync.
J: So, it’s more about hitting the right audience than casting a wide net. How do you ensure that?
M: A few things help. First, our content is already quite niche, so it filters out people who aren’t into advanced crypto topics. Second, we enforce content quality guidelines, so if someone tries to post something off-topic, we handle it. Third, you need an NFT to post links on Kiwi, which acts as a filter. It’s on Optimism mainnet, where there are fewer users who just started their crypto journey than for example on Base. Lastly, our branding is pretty low-key, which appeals to devs and those looking for signal over noise. It’s all about building a quality-first community.
J: What role do Kiwi’s curators play in that community?
M: Curators are the heartbeat of Kiwi. Just like on Instagram, your ‘proof of work’ is sharing pictures, and on Twitter, it’s sharing clever tweets, on Kiwi their ‘proof of work’ is sharing interesting crypto links. And why do curators actually do it? We spoke with dozens of them, and many treat it as a way to express themselves and connect with like-minded people. If they share, for example, essays on tokenomics, they are more likely to meet other tokenomics fans and have an interesting discussion. Our curators also earn karma points for upvotes, and we’ve even shared revenue from new mints with them. These revenue numbers aren’t high, so it’s more of a tip than the financial incentivization we see in the space. We’re still iterating on how to reward curators in this ‘curator economy,’ but the goal is to give them meaningful recognition for their work.
J: Talking about curating — a recurring thing we do in these interviews is sharing music — what's in your current rotation?
J: Back to Kiwi, I like how you’ve mentioned karma as a reward system. It feels novel. Do you think curators could be rewarded in other ways too?
M: Absolutely. We’re seeing projects like Phaver, where you get rewarded for being early to like a post that goes viral. Zora’s model of sharing NFT sale revenue is also interesting. The challenge is making sure the incentives are genuine—avoiding the issue of people promoting things just for money. But I do believe curators should at least earn pocket money for their work. The key is to balance the money while maintaining integrity.
J: What about the writing contests you’ve run with Lens and Nouns? What have you learned from them?
M: We learned that we were doing them too cheaply, haha. It’s only a half-joke because, in crypto, reaching the right people is hard. What we have found so far is that writing contests have been much more effective for our partners than, for example, paying one blogger to write about them. Plus, it’s more genuine - in the contests, writers are incentivized to share critical essays, not just praise. Our last contest with Lens had 25 submissions, and those writers’ audiences got exposed to Kiwi and Lens as well. It’s a much more authentic way to distribute information.
J: That sounds like a new way of doing marketing. Have these contests become a core part of your strategy?
M: Yes, I think we’ve invented a new marketing tool in crypto—contests that generate thoughtful, genuine content. I think it’s a breath of fresh air in sometimes KOL-dominated space.
J: Are there any other communities, online or offline, that inspire your work with Kiwi?
M: Definitely. There’s a community called Crypto Testers that’s full of DeFi veterans. I’m not a DeFi guy, but I appreciate the quality of conversations there. Javelin is another community I love, and Farcaster, which is a much bigger one, of course.
Outside of crypto, I’ve been part of some really well-organized IRL communities— friends groups that host regular events, trips, and presentations. That’s something that inspires me to experiment with our Kiwi community. We already host meetups at conferences - we had ones in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Warsaw and Istanbul - and we think that the real-life element is crucial for building a strong community.
J: Cool! I’ll make sure to be there for the next one in Bangkok.
J: I usually end these interviews with a quick lightning round. So, first up: what’s the city with the best food?
M: New York.
J: Best meme template you’ve seen recently?
M: It’s an old one but I love the ‘flex tape’ meme, where the guy slaps tape over a leaking water tank. It’s such a perfect metaphor for crypto—like trying to fix big issues with quick solutions like airdrops or tokens.
J: Too real. What’s your favorite way to unwind after a long day?
M: I love playing RPG games if I have the time. If not, I listen to audiobooks—usually fiction or historical fiction.
J: Any book recommendations?
M: The Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. It’s an amazing historical novel about World War I, and everything is historically accurate, down to exact conversations of historical characters. So if Winston Churchill says something in a book, he probably actually said that to someone at this point in time. You get to learn a lot while enjoying a great story.
J: That sounds awesome. Anything you want to plug?
M: I’d say check out Kiwi News, of course. You can also explore our wiki, which tells a bigger story. And if you’re into deep conversations with founders, my old podcast Web3 Talks is still up.
