Interview with Marjorie Hernandez in Lukso en Español (Translated from Spanish)

What follows is an English translation of Marjorie Hernández’s contributions during X Spaces conversations with Xela, Ile Designia, Antonio, Davelez.lyx, Punkable, and Panot. The original discussions were in Spanish and included questions from interviewers, but this version highlights Marjorie’s key points and opinions for clarity and ease of reading. As it’s translated from the original transcript, some filler words or conversational elements may still be present. 😅

Antonio:
How was the Net Gala?

Marjorie:
The Net Gala was phenomenal, we are truly happy with everything we’ve done with the girls from Boys Club. The venue was phenomenal. The event was super beautiful, everything was very well organized, and well, we also had the pleasure of having Kid Super there, who brought his machine with the t-shirts we co-created, and the people who attended could claim a t-shirt in the physical world with the machine, in a very similar way to how you did it on Universal Page.

And well, I’m really happy, many lifelong friends from Ethereum from 10 years ago were there, and we’re super happy with how everything turned out.

Antonio:
Could you tell us about your background and how Lukso came about?

Marjorie:
I’m Marjorie, a 38-year-old Venezuelan architect living in Germany for almost 16 years. I’ve always been passionate about technology, design, beauty, and video games. During my architecture studies, I was heavily involved in programming, algorithms, and visual aspects. While I loved the balance between the technical and creative sides of architecture, I realized after graduating that being an architect wasn’t as fulfilling as I thought. It felt more like customer service, and the projects were long and complex.

I decided to pursue a second master’s degree in Germany, where I met Fabian in a pre-Bitcoin, pre-Ethereum world. Years later, we learned about Bitcoin, and that led us to Ethereum. In Berlin, the Ethereum scene was vibrant, and we were fortunate to be in the epicenter, surrounded by key players in the space.

Around 2017, a trip to Japan opened my eyes to the global impact of Ethereum. I realized this was a unique opportunity to be involved in something transformative. Fabian and I, with our backgrounds in science and art, saw the potential of blockchain technology in the creative economy.

I created a one-pager outlining the concept of Lukso and shared it with friends. My close friend Silke, a successful entrepreneur, was the first to encourage me to pursue it wholeheartedly. With her support and Fabian’s involvement, Lukso began to take shape. The rest, as they say, is history.

Ile Designia:
What does Lukso mean to you?

Marjorie:
Sure, and by the way, I minted an Ile Designia NFT this morning with my alt account because I did it from my phone, but I didn’t want to forget.

For us, the focus has always been on understanding the needs of the creative economy and how we can facilitate its growth through technology. We knew blockchain technology would be a game-changer, but the question was where to start. Back in 2017, this whole thing was very esoteric. It was clear that this technology had the potential to change the world, but how to actually begin was a mystery. It wasn’t like you could just download an app to change the future of the rainforest.

So, we focused on identifying the key components and creating them to the best of our abilities, using our knowledge and making them available to everyone. Practically speaking, Lukso is an Ethereum sister chain, and we have standardized smart contracts to make it easier to build a self-sustaining economy through products, profiles, creator identities, and all that. The idea is for Lukso to become an invisible backbone, with others building products based on our technology. It’s a feedback loop where we learn from what people are building, and vice versa. We facilitate their creations, enabling creators, entrepreneurs, and businesses to enter this space regardless of their geopolitical situation.

In that sense, this is Lukso’s mission, which is still somewhat illustrated in the white paper, although it has a more fashion-oriented flavor, especially in the use cases section. However, the initial part, where we outline the three principles, clearly explains our vision for the creative economy as a whole, its applications, and the connections and relationships that arise as a consequence.

For me, Lukso’s success will be defined when it reaches a point where it’s tacit, where you don’t have to explain it. It’s so ingrained in the background that it doesn’t need to be discussed. We don’t constantly talk about aqueducts or electrical wiring, right? They’re there, we know they exist and facilitate many things, but we don’t need to talk about them daily. So, for me, that’s the vision: for Lukso to become something indispensable, yet equally invisible.

Ile Desgnia:
Have you faced any challenges being a woman in this industry?

Marjorie:
You know, I’ve lived a relatively blessed life, in terms of these issues, until recently. I never really put much emphasis or interest on the whole gender thing. And I never felt that people saw it in me either. I’ve always had a lot of male friends, and architecture is a profession that’s often associated with men. There were a lot of guys, but we all got along great, and I never had any problems with any of that.

It was later in life that I started to realize that sometimes people have a problem with me, and it must be because I’m a woman. And that seems so strange to me because, well, why does that matter? But it does happen. I started to realize it super late, like in my 30s, that people have… I always thought those issues were a thing of the past, you know, all that misogynistic stuff and whatever about race, that those were things that existed but weren’t so present anymore, and that our generation was too sophisticated to deal with that nonsense. But now, I’ve realized that it does still exist and it’s present.

But look, in the end, you have to choose your battles. I’ve never, intellectually… well, I don’t want to sound arrogant, but with all my friends, we play games, and I win. I’ve never met a man who could outsmart me. I have a lot of super intelligent friends, but you know, gender isn’t a factor unless we’re racing, then the guy is much faster, but that’s it. And in other things, I’m more agile and whatnot. So, in the end, I try not to put too much emphasis on it. Of course, it’s always disappointing, and your feelings can get hurt when you realize that the perception of who you are isn’t based on who you are as a person or your substance or what you do or your work, but rather on things that people perceive that, even though I don’t control the chromosomes that generated me when I was in my mother’s womb. So, it’s kind of stupid, but well, that’s how it is. What are we going to do?

Davelez.lyx:
How did you come up with the idea of dematerialization as a solution to the current consumption problem?

Marjorie:
In terms of consumption, we need to change certain patterns of behavior, but on the other hand, it’s like, well, as humans, as we exist today, we have hardware and software that’s super old, you know? And we have to exist in this world that’s so much more sophisticated than the world our ancestors lived in.

So, that sense of control is really difficult, how do you control yourself if you have so many options, if no one before us had those kinds of options? But well, I think beyond that there’s a desire and a search for beauty, comfort, to get in touch with the things that we like, and so on. And I don’t think that’s necessarily bad. The problem is the scale, you know?

So, well, I think the point we’re at right now is super interesting because, well, this already sounds like a broken record, but, like, we’ve seen in our lifetimes how things dematerialize before our eyes and that, well, in the end, the things that we really enjoy or love, and that we dream about, are sometimes things that don’t exist in any physical world, like when you see, I don’t know, read a book and it fills you with fantasy, or you watch a movie, you know, like all those things exist in a world that’s in our imagination.

So, well, on the one hand, like, understand that products are going to dematerialize and that it’s like a good alternative to understand that, well, there’s a space to get those things that we all want to have and enjoy without it having, like, a huge impact on the planet. You know? And I think that’s a super important discussion and I don’t consider myself necessarily as a person who, particularly, is like an advocate of, all this environmental stuff, and whatever. But I think all humans have a responsibility to be as aware as possible about these things, you know, and you don’t have to become a maximalist and now, like, I’m vegan and I only use, you know, whatever fabric, but like, well, understand that what we’re doing has an impact and that we have to be aware and well, and see what we can do little by little, right, and understand that in the end it’s difficult to understand the impact of the things that one does as an individual, but in the end, if you realize, we’re not so different from each other. So we’re all doing more or less the same things. So, when you realize that you have to multiply your actions by millions and millions of people, you realize that, well, those small actions do have a huge impact at the end of the day. We have to try to do what we can.

Punkable:
What’s your take on meme coins?

Marjorie:
I think meme coins are kinda cool, you know? Like, I think it’s part of internet culture. And some things don’t need to be taken so seriously, right? There are things you can do just to have fun and joke around, and it’s not a big deal. Meme culture is like… well, there are professors and people doing research on memes and what they mean and how people act, so it’s a super interesting topic that’s part of our culture. So, embrace it, you know? I’ve never been a big meme coin person myself. I’ve never bought much of any of that stuff. But I think it’s super cool.

Punkable:
What do you think of the role of Latin America in Lukso?

Marjorie:
Right now, I have an Argentinian woman who joined the team a few months ago. And little by little, there are more of us. The thing is, we’re in Berlin, so we’re super far away, but that’s okay. Hopefully, more of the team will be Spanish-speaking, but we all know how the Latino population in the United States is growing more and more. It’s a very important part of the economy and culturally super important.

And honestly, I think now more than ever in my life, I’m a bigger fan of Latin America. I feel that culturally, we Latinos are super interesting because, well, as much as anything, few people in the world understand you, and I feel that we understand the complexity of, or the challenges one can face in life better than many people from many parts of the world, particularly in the Western world. You know, even the most privileged person from any city knows that life isn’t easy, that there’s inequality, that people are struggling, and that there’s a lot of difficulty.

So, I feel that we Latin Americans understand that there’s a very beautiful part and that Latin American magical realism that’s present, that we have, we have that optimism of the new world, but we also have an empathy for other people. The race part is also very interesting because, in general, almost all of us are mixed. So, of course, I feel that Latin America, in that sense, has a very unique thing, a very unique position in the world.

Now more than ever, I’m a bigger fan of us than before, not that I wasn’t before, but now I feel it more. And well, we’re super hard workers. No one can take that away from us. I remember when I arrived at university in Germany, I graduated first in my class and I was crushing those classes, but it’s because I worked too hard because at university in Venezuela, if I didn’t produce an enormous amount of work, the feedback I would get from the professors would make me cry, so they made you work. And it was like they made you a solid person. And thanks to them, to a certain extent, I became the person I am. So, when I arrived there, I was crushing it, but it’s because of that work culture we had, that in a place like Germany, which has a very high level of comfort and that Germans do work, but they work the strictly necessary. And well, in the end, yes, being consistent, that helps, and you see that in a country like Germany. But well, a whole culture, infrastructures, and institutions that are very solid and well supported. But Latin Americans, very few people work as hard as we do. So, for that reason, I hope that yes, that we’ll be in more and more interesting positions.

Davelez.lyx:
Do you think Lukso should have more Spanish speakers involved?

Marjorie:
I’d argue that the interesting thing about us, well, sure, the language is super cool, but it’s not the most interesting thing. Like, I’d say that growth isn’t based on what language we’re communicating in. And I think the contribution, because of course, if we stick to our language, then we stay among ourselves, you know? So, I think the contribution becomes interesting when we culturally influence the space as a whole, collectively. And language there is more of a strategy. We speak English because, well, the whole internet speaks English, but culturally, it’s about transmitting and communicating that point of view and that culture that is ours.

And I’d say: look, we speak English, we speak German, we speak Spanish, in the end, it doesn’t matter, we all have such different accents, and sometimes when I speak Spanish, people only understand half of what I’m saying because they don’t get the slang I use. So, you know, in the end, I’d say that yes, of course, Spanish is beautiful and I love it. But I wouldn’t say that the goal is for us to be speaking more Spanish, but rather that we flood the culture directly with our ideas. And that in the end, they’re speaking English, but with our ideas, that’s what I like best.

Ile Designia:
Can you tell us about the Lukso grants program?

Marjorie:
Yes, of course, I am part of the foundation. I participated in establishing it because it’s a lot of work, for a long, long time. And well, I’m also the president of the foundation. So, I’m there and I’ll be in that role for the foreseeable future.

As for the grants, we’ve had, I think, two rounds of grants in the past, which weren’t widely advertised, it was more word of mouth, and they were small and such, and we’ve already given them out. The grant has existed for several years, but this has been the official launch and now the grant will come from the foundation. Before, the grantees received the grant from the German company, and this is the first time it’s coming from the foundation. So, that’s super cool because, well, we’ve learned over the last few years. Now we’ve created a really cool process, Jonathan and Clara are leading that.

And well, the idea is to use the tokens for what they’re for, which is to support the growth of the ecosystem and help entrepreneurs and creators get started. So they have money to start their projects. So, well, that’s the goal. And well, the first round of grants was announced, but that will be there. It will be ongoing until we don’t have any more tokens left, effectively it will be there.

Well, and I invite you all to apply because even though the team is relatively large, it’s still super familiar. So of course, the grant program team will do a first pre-selection and then, we always have our board in the end. The foundation’s board will choose or approve the grant recipients and well, there are many of the projects that you see being built on Lukso that have historically received grants. So, go for it!

Ile Designia:
Any tips for people applying for grants?

Marjorie:
I’d say, more than anything, it has to be a topic you’re passionate about, because in the end, you always underestimate the amount of work ahead of you. So, be sure that it’s something you really want to do and that you like and that, well, the passion is there. And, you know, I don’t think everything has to be the next billion-dollar startup, and not everything has to be something that will last forever. It could be that someone has an idea for a solution that’s super necessary for the next year, for the next 18 months, and that after those 18 months, maybe it doesn’t have much use anymore. But for those 18 months, it was super important.

And I think, like, see things with a little more agility and maybe, well, not everything has to be an app or a protocol, maybe there are other ideas that are more, could be an artwork or a collection or whatever, you know, an initiative, a social thing, whatever, like, not everything has to be an app in the end. I think there are many things that can be done out there. So, I think, well, don’t put a limit on creativity and say: ah, I don’t know how to make an Android app, so why should I apply, but I have this idea. It’s like, look, maybe there are many forms and formats for ideas that can exist, that not everything has to be an app in the end.

And I think that… I would love to encourage people to apply, uh, to have that plurality and diversity of ideas coming to the grant. And well, in the end, I’m there, so I’m always the advocate for, for those things. So, that would be my recommendation.

Antonio:
Can you tell us more about The Dematerialised?

Marjorie:

So, Dematerialised came about because, well, I was once again, like a broken record, with the whole dematerialization thing, super obsessed. And I started to realize that this whole digital assets thing was emerging more and more and faster, and suddenly, many fashion designers were doing things outside the gaming world and outside the conventional fashion world. And I said, well, this is a huge opportunity.

At that time, I talked to Fabian back in 2020, and Fabian said we didn’t have time to work on something like that, and he told me, well, but since you don’t sleep, because I’m famous for sleeping very little, my team knows it, when they travel with me they suffer because I make them wake up when I wake up, so he told me, well, you have a few extra hours in the day. And well, that’s when I met Karina and Karina was working on something else, but related to digital fashion, and we decided very spontaneously to start it.

And in fact, we hired Hugo to start building Dematerialised. It was initially the project we had for him. And well, we started there and, well, it was an idea that we executed with very few resources, very quickly, and with the mentality that we had to make everything very easy for the user. And well, also as a way to implement Lukso and put a little pressure on our tech team, in terms of having an implementation that’s live and that we have feedback from users. So that helped us a lot in the early stages of the UP to have a super violent feedback loop.

The challenge I had with DMAT was mostly, at the beginning I was convincing everyone to use testnet, and I can guarantee you that it’s not easy to convince people to do NFTs on testnet because, of course, they don’t have the advantage of the secondary market and such. And well, that’s when the Lukso delays, you know I understand them, because I’m part of Lukso, but I see them from the other side too. So, of course, we were relying on a roadmap that wasn’t reliable. So that was a bit complex because, well, I told people, look, it’s nine months, then the nine months were a year, and then the year was a year and a half, and it was like, well, but I need to be able to tell people something concrete. So, well, the biggest challenge was, we lost a very big contract, Dematerialised had a two million dollar contract with a brand and we lost it because, well, because it didn’t happen with the Lukso timeline. And well, that’s when I started to realize that the risk we were taking, because Dematerialised is an independent company, was quite big.

So, that’s when we spent a lot of time negotiating with Paper Magazine, the owner of Paper was one of our advisors at Lukso, and a very good friend of mine. He’s an eminence in the world of publishing and magazines, and we already had the deal done. But of course, ESPA is part of Universum and already had its deal with Polygon, and as much as I tried, we couldn’t. And well, there I had the challenge that, well, it already cost Dematerialised a very big contract, that, well, that didn’t happen for many reasons. But well, the testnet was one of the main reasons, I can’t cost it another contract. So, then we had to make the commitment to launch with Polygon. And well, the vision of Dematerialised there was always that it would be poly chain. Because in that sense, even though I’m the founder of Lukso, I’m not that maximalist. I buy NFTs today, even on Ethereum and all of them, you know? And I feel that as a user, no user is 100% loyal to a single brand. If we make an analogy, this is by brand, you know, I can buy Chanel, I can buy Margiela, I can buy at Zara. I mean, and I buy them all and I like them all and it’s normal. And this is normal behavior. No user is exclusive to a single brand. That would be an almost rare case, and I would be worried. So, I feel that that competition is very interesting and that, for some reason, that’s a case in the economy, that’s why commercial zones are created and malls are built, because being close to your competitors also helps you, right? So it makes everyone stronger. So, of course, from that side, I always thought that in the end, on which blockchain you receive your product is almost like a delivery pathway, you know, where do I want to receive my product. And I always felt that the user should decide where they want it, and that ideally, they choose Lukso for the reasons they should and not because they are forced to, I’ve always seen it that way, and I think that one thing is that you love Lukso more than anything, it doesn’t mean you don’t see the rest of the world. So I, on that side, am a bit more flexible, it’s part of my personality too. I don’t like those very radical strategies, but well, there we are with Dematerialised, and well, we’ve gone through a process of, well, we still have to integrate the mainnet and all these things. It’s been a slow process and well, we’re getting there. And really, from a personal perspective, I’m very proud of what the Dematerialised team has done, it’s always been a very small team with super small budgets and we’ve done everything, so, well, it’s super powerful. Right now we’re working on the rebrand and we’re working on some new things and how to relaunch the project post mainnet and well, unfortunately, most of my time goes to Lukso on operational things and such, but I hope that will change after the summer. That I’ll have more time for other things.

Antonio:
What are your plans for the near future, given your recent announcement?

Marjorie:
I’ve been working on Lukso for seven years now. There’s nothing I’ve done, nothing in my life that has taken me so long. I studied architecture for six years. So, this is already the project I’ve invested the most time in my life. And I feel that the time has come for me to have new ideas and new challenges and new frontiers, new horizons.

For me it was very important in November 2022, when we had some very big transformations within the team, it was very important to stay there and be there until, well, until we could establish the things that were fundamental like the foundation and launch the mainnet, that we had an image that was neat, that we did certain things and such. And well, I feel that to a certain extent that has already been achieved. That I, personally, am not 100 percent happy or satisfied with some things in the ways we have done them. I am a person who is naturally incredibly critical, more than anyone, and well, I am very aware that I think that if we have had shortcomings, I think many things we could have anticipated and many things we could have done better and well, there is already a limit to what I, as a single person, can achieve and can fight for, within the organization.

And I decided that I have already given it my all. I have like five gray hairs that came out, that all have names there in Lukso. So, well, I think it’s important to release in advance and that well, as much as it’s very difficult because, you know, when you start a project, it’s a very intimate relationship that you have with the project, because, of course, you know the first notes of Lukso exist in my notebook, they exist in my phone. The words, the name, the first descriptions, everything came out of there. But I think it’s a process of evolution, and that well, in the end I think one cannot try to control things to be as one says they have to be, that at the beginning, of course, as much as one wants, one informs it and has the vision and such, but then things have their own life, right, like an externality.

That’s the plan, we have a couple of things coming up until the summer. Then we have something at the beginning of August, and little by little I have a team that I trust. In particular, there are two people, they know who they are. Well, three, Martina, Sara, and Ana, who have been like the super champions of this team. That have helped me do everything. Well, I have no words, but little by little it will be the transition. And w I’ll stay in the foundation, there with my role, which in the end, is a role of being on a board, you know, I’m going to approve budgets and things like that. But beyond that, I want to reclaim my time for my little things and new ideas.

Ile Designia:
Can you give more details of what’s coming in August?

Marjorie:
Nothing major, just little things like what we did this week with Kid Super. We have some small things lined up with a couple of activities and such, but nothing too dramatic, nothing to start any conspiracy theories. Just, you know, typical activities, business as usual with the things we can do given the circumstances.

And with my team and all, whom I love very much, who are phenomenal, we’ll do what we have to do until August and then they’ll continue and I’ll go on my way, to see what I can come up with.