Casper Labs is a company that delivers applications and services that drive revenue and radical efficiency for companies and governments, lowering the barrier to entry for blockchain adoption. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Casper Labs CEO Mrinal Manohar to learn more about the company.
Mrinal Manohar’s Background
Mrinal Manohar spent most of his career on Wall Street, leading teams at Bain Capital and Sagard focused on tech, media, and telecommunications.
“As a computer scientist by trade, when I was introduced to digital assets and blockchain back in 2010, I immediately thought about how it could transform the finance industry, among other functions. I then became an early investor in Ethereum, Tezos, and Filecoin,” said Manohar.
Formation Of Casper Labs
How did the idea for Casper Labs come together? “With my early interest in blockchain, it didn’t take long to realize there was no protocol designed specifically for the technology needs of the enterprise in terms of scalability and flexibility. With blockchain’s capabilities to make transactions more secure, transparent, and seamless, my co-founder Medha Parlikar and I saw an opportunity to expand the technology beyond a niche space and make it more viable for broader-scale business use. We founded Casper Labs in 2010 and have since grown to work with companies like IBM, Hyperledger, and more,” Manohar shared.
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges Manohar faced in building the company, and has the current macroeconomic climate had any effect on the company? “Cryptocurrency is under a lot of scrutiny right now. It’s important that we’re able to distinguish that cryptocurrency and blockchain are separate entities – with the latter being just a single application of the former. It’s of course critical to establish requisite protections for investors in cryptocurrency, but we need to be careful to avoid overly sweeping legislation that also hinders much of the meaningful innovation happening around the broader blockchain technology right now. In many cases, businesses that use blockchain will do so in ways that have nothing to do with cryptocurrency. More and more businesses – including many building on Casper – are using blockchain to drive new efficiencies and open new revenue streams, an especially critical consideration in this uncertain economy,” Manohar acknowledged. “I wouldn’t so much call it a challenge as much as an opportunity: but we need to make sure we’re able to continue promoting this transformative technology for businesses and to avoid overly broad legislation that can stymie the creation of new and significant economic value.”
Core Products
What are Casper Labs’ core products and features? “At its core, Casper Labs delivers products and services that are built for the long-term interests of enterprises and institutions, designed to be flexible and enduring. A primary feature of our solutions is interoperability, meaning that the technology can be fully integrated into an organization’s existing tech stack – and do so in a way that relies on familiar, traditional programming languages instead of unreasonably expecting businesses to recruit and retain hyper-specialized and hard-to-find engineers that know niche blockchain programming languages,” Manohar explained. “We’re also the first and only layer-1 blockchain solution to offer native upgradable smart contracts, enabling businesses to easily update code even when it’s already running on the Casper blockchain. This unlocks a new world of control and flexibility so that organizations can employ industry best practices like continuous integration and continuous deployment, just as they do in non-blockchain environments.”
Evolution Of Casper Labs’ Technology
How has Casper Labs’ technology evolved since launching? “We’re constantly iterating based on customer and developer feedback. Among other notable updates, we’ve introduced greater control and account management functionality that ensures sensitive data is never inadvertently shared with the wrong party (a mistake that can cost businesses millions of dollars). It may sound minor, but it’s a major – and to date, elusive – feature that enterprises have been seeking,” Manohar noted.
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Casper Labs’ most significant milestones?
— In January, at the World Economic Forum (Davos), we announced one of the largest blockchain deployments on any chain to date, minting millions of patents as NFTs on Casper Blockchain in partnership with IPwe.
— In March, we announced a partnership with Google Cloud to integrate Casper Labs’ secure and flexible blockchain solutions with developers. The highly accessible model enables developers to build on the blockchain without needing to learn new and highly specialized programming languages backed by Google Cloud’s infrastructure.
— Also, in March, we announced a partnership with Skybridge Capital and Al Maskari Holding. The long-term partnership grants us strategic support for business development, investor relations, and marketing services. This announcement also occurred amid Casper Labs’ expanding footprint in the MENA region, signaling the continued growth of enterprise blockchain.
— We also joined the World Economic Forum’s Global Innovator’s Community in April as a Blockchain and Digital Assets partner. Through this platform, we will continue to fill the knowledge gap when it comes to blockchain by educating the industry on its existing and potential applications.
–– In July, we partnered with Robot Cache, the world’s first blockchain-powered video game distribution/resale platform. This partnership is a breakthrough use case for gaming and aims to deliver gamers a more equitable model to prove ownership of games and capture more value for goods across platforms.
— We also recently announced that Casper Labs is offering tokenized equity shares for investors on INX, the only fully-regulated and SEC-compliant exchange for security tokens. This announcement is a major milestone for tokenization and its increasing usage across the financial services industry.
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Casper Labs pursuing? “Blockchain is already a multi-billion dollar market globally, and it’s expected to grow as high as $10 billion by 2030, so there’s clearly an exciting and massive opportunity ahead,” Manohar assessed.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Casper Labs from its competition? “Casper Labs is the first and only blockchain solution that caters to the unique needs of the enterprise with upgradeability, interoperability, and scalability. We meet every company where they’re at in their blockchain journey with solutions that enhance their existing tech stack. Already, we’re working with some of the world’s largest enterprise and government organizations to drive efficiency and value, proving that blockchain is here to stay,” Manohar noted. “We’re hard at work to make blockchain boring, differentiating it from its crypto ties. While in the past, blockchain has been synonymous with digital assets. Our goal is to educate key decision-makers and the greater public about its incredibly broad capabilities beyond that, with the power to transform the way data is stored and accessed. During a time when businesses are under intense pressure to create new value streams, blockchain answers the call.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Casper Labs’ future company goals? “Broadly, we want to be the blockchain of record for the majority of the Fortune 500 – and many more organizations. Casper is poised to usher in a more mainstream adoption cycle for blockchain technology: that is, was and will always be our guiding principle,” Manohar concluded.
