Efosa Ighodaro is a visionary entrepreneur and a pioneer in the African blockchain space. He is the Founder and CEO of Vinekross Technologies Limited. In this insightful interview, he shares his personal journey from forex trader to founder of Hashgreed, Africa's first asset tokenization platform, and Kross Blockchain - Nigeria's first blockchain protocol. He also explored the inspiration behind Hashgreed, his vision for the future of blockchain technology in Africa, and offered valuable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start their own blockchain companies.

Let’s begin by getting to know you Sir, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. What inspired you to create Hashgreed?

My name is Efosa Ighodaro, born and bred in Lagos, Nigeria. I then relocated to Dallas, TX, USA in 2008. I had finished my Bachelors degree in Biochemistry at the University of Lagos, the year prior.

I was heavy into the Forex trading space, created the first forex community on Facebook and Skype and also the first to organize live trading signals. All that led to me inventing Pipdroid in 2016, the world’s only user generated mobile algo trading app. It was the Pipdroid app I brought into the Krosscoin Project which I founded in June 2017. Krosscoin is the first blockchain project by an African and KSS the first African crypto.

Then I returned to build in Lagos in 2019, we relaunched Pipdroid in May 2020 and I let it run till December 2020. Basically, Pipdroid lets forex traders upload their own bots to launch or launch our pre-installed and regularly updated listings of native bots to the Metatrader 4 and Metatrader 5 platforms. It was very expensive creating new bots and so one couldn't do lots of iterations. Also our best bots could do about 8% annual return and my target was the retail market. Inflation in Nigeria at that time was 15%. The writing on the wall was clear. It was time to pivot to another product. On January 4, 2021, I conceived Hashgreed, and registered the domain name immediately. It was meant to just be a blockchain based file certification tool but in the middle of January I asked the dev to include an NFT marketplace and by January 30th, Hashgreed went live.

Then I started googling what NFT was really about. Nobody really knew the full import of tokenization in January 2021 or even the entire year. It was all about JPEGs and the provenance of art works.

What is the mission of Hashgreed? What makes it unique and different from other NFT marketplaces?

By the time I had gotten more data on the power of what we were doing, we immediately began building Hashgreed 2.0. We wanted all kinds of asset tokenization on Hashgreed. Hashgreed means demand for Hash. Or demand for blockchain solutions. So we increased the asset classes to 10 or so and it's about 14 now. We added DeFi, Freelance, Liquidity management and a NFT minter as well. Hashgreed is the first African super dApp to use IPFS technology. Even Opensea started using IPFS 6 months later. Hashgreed is designed for the user to be immersed and enchanted in the power of blockchain technology. We also added a smart contract powered ecommerce platform and also our Naira stable coin called HASH Naira or HASH for short.

How is Hashgreed helping to bring blockchain technology to Africa?

So a young user can come into Hashgreed, access ownership of real estate and assets that are usually available to billionaires, but now he can own a piece of it and enjoy the same return potentials. Same user can mint and sell his art work or buy from other artists, he can certify his documents, his poems, his song scripts, and other creations he needs to prove ownership and authenticity with a time stamp, using our file certification tool, he can send and receive blockchain certified emails and also create and receive blockchain certified contracts. He can borrow crypto on Hashgreed, Hire remote workers safely using our Hashgig tool, or get hired himself, he or she can buy and sell products and merchandise on Hashdealz, our ecommerce platform and pay on delivery. So basically, I asked myself, what do Africans do everyday? They work, they shop, they create, they own.

Let's make them do all these using blockchain technology on Hashgreed. Blockchain is not just for buying bitcoin and speculating on meme coins. It is the new and most secure data infrastructure layer of the internet. Everything can be built on Blockchain.

By the way, just one month after launching Hashgreed, we spent the next month launching Kross Blockchain, our own native blockchain, Nigeria’s First Layer 1 chain and Africa’s first smart contract enabled blockchain. By having our own chain, we can do asset tokenization at scale at no cost to the project because the network currency belongs to us. We have been developing, iterating lots of tools since January 2021. We are still not done yet.

What benefits does Hashgreed offer to its target audience?

Hashgreed right now just got admitted into the Nigeria Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulatory Incubation Cohort 001/23. And we are asked to focus on real estate asset tokenization for Nigerian users during the 12 months of the Cohort, after which, if we did a great job, we will be allowed to register and obtain various licenses and be a registered capital markets operator.

So this means we can bring ownership of the best real estate and real estate based assets to young Nigerians. What used to be only accessible to Billionaires can now be accessible to a plantain chips hawker or pure water hawker. Nigerians can come together to own Large mechanized farmlands and solve the high food prices by themselves. They can come together to build and own energy infrastructures such as Oil Depots, Fuel stations to rid themselves of suffering at the hands of what only the rich can own until now. They can take advantage of coming together to own cinemas, shopping complexes, tourist centers and have their N1, N100, N1,000 exposed to unlimited growth.

Did you know that if a Nigerian student had invested just N100k via NFTs in 2016 into Flutterwave, in 2022, that investment would have been worth N175 Million? So nobody’s money is useless, it just needs access

What is your vision for the future of Hashgreed?

Our vision has expanded greatly. Asset tokenization is a broad endeavor. Hashgreed will be a regulated Blockchain powered exchange for real estate, equity, debt, solid minerals, Halal funds, Bonds, creative economy. We will definitely have a new regulated enterprise multi asset digital assets exchange platform that will tokenize assets from around the world and having licenses in various jurisdictions across the globe. It is truly going to be a multi-billion dollar financial institution. We will also help to train and empower thousands of blockchain developers who want to build on Kross protocol. Also the KSS coin is going to be a billion dollar market cap coin and ranked among the top 100 cryptocurrencies of the world.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs who are interested in starting their own blockchain companies?

Keep learning and be product oriented not noise oriented. There are blockchain companies that made a lot of noise but couldn’t talk to the Nigeria SEC because they had no relevant solution. So like they say, “Build it and they will come”. That is really true. Build first.

Nelson: Thank you for sharing your insights with us today, Efosa. I'm sure our readers will find them very informative and inspiring. If you are looking to partner with Efosa, reach out to him via his LinkedIn profile here.

I’m loving this interview especially some of the inspiring quotes from Mr Efosa including:

1. "Nobody's money is useless, it just needs access." - This quote reminds us that everyone has the potential to achieve great things, regardless of their background or financial resources.

2. "Blockchain is not just for buying bitcoin and speculating on meme coins. It is the new and most secure data infrastructure layer of the internet. Everything can be built on Blockchain." - This quote challenges the common perception of blockchain as just a tool for speculation.

3. "Keep learning and be product oriented not noise oriented." - This quote provides practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. It emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and focusing on building a valuable product or service, rather than just making noise and generating hype.

What is one thing that Efosa Ighodaro's story has inspired you to do differently today? Your thoughts in the comment section below.