Today’s guest is Andrey Nayman, Founder, and CEO of the Magic Store. Magic Square is a unified, integrated, interoperable space for users to discover and experience community-vetted crypto apps, NFTs, DeFi, and GameFi, and for app creators to market and monetize quality crypto apps. Magic Square is a multifaceted system that covers all UX bases: The Magic Store guides users to discover community-vetted crypto apps with built-in integrated DeFi. Users sign in to all their apps with one SSI-secured Magic Connect leading to their personalized dashboard to organize, use, and track their crypto activity. Users and creators discuss and collaborate in a dedicated Magic Community space. Andrey Nayman is an Entrepreneur, Mathematician, Quant & Professional Investor, an early adopter of Crypto (2013), and has successfully led multiple technical ventures. He is an Executive Product Owner and Proven Company Leader with a deep background in Algo-Trading, Startups, and Scaling Tech oriented Companies. He began his professional career at Final, one of the world's biggest Algo-Trading companies, where he worked for 7.5 years. He served as the CEO of Vidmid, a technology leader in the OTT space. He then worked as the Managing Director at Radical Ventures – one of the most active VCs in Israel, for five years. He is currently the CEO and Founder of Magic Square, a financial infrastructure company. We discuss Magic Square, the importance of decentralization, the Ethereum Merge, the Magic ID, and much more. We begin our discussion about why there is a need for a crypto-native App Store. Andrey discusses how a lot of the value created by Web2 marketplaces centered around discoverability and how this is a missing component within Web3. We transition to discuss the state of Magic Square. Andrey discusses the listing process and how Magic Square empowers its community to spearhead the listing process. Andrey stresses that Magic Store is a community-first company, and he does not want to be a gatekeeper. We dive deep into the actual mechanics of the listing and vetting process. We discuss encryption and our mutual admiration for the beauty of encryption. We transition to discuss Magic ID. Andrey shares what he loves about Web3 identities and why it is the future. Our next conversation topic focused on the Ethereum Merge. We discuss the various arguments surrounding PoW vs. PoS. We also discuss the technical challenges that apps will face when the merge happens and the possible implications of the merge. We pivot our conversation to confer the benefit of launching during a bear market. Our final conversation topic centered on Andrey’s decision to jump from VC to founder/operator. Andrey shares that one of his main drivers in building Magic Square is to leave a positive impact on the world. Please enjoy my conversation with Andrey Nayman. -- SafePal is a Singapore-based Binance labs backed company that provides secure and easy-to-use wallet solutions for the crypto masses. With the mission to make crypto secure and simple for everyone, SafePal has built comprehensive crypto asset management solutions, including hardware wallet, mobile wallet, extension wallet, cross-chain swap, trading service, and more. SafePal has supports 48 blockchains and 15 languages, and serves more than 6 million users global-wide. Use code charlie for 10% off SafePal’s S1 wallet at https://store.safepal.io/safepal-s1-h... Download the SafePal App and SafePal extension wallet at https://untoldstories.link/safepal -- This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co