Meet Andreas Schemm, Ecosystem & Operations Director of HUMAN

Explain the meaning of your company’s name to those of us who don’t know.

We chose the project name HUMAN Protocol as it provides a protocol for all human interactions, and human requests, in human work. Any kind of request between a human and a human or a human and a machine can be facilitated through HUMAN Protocol. So we found it a perfectly fitting name. Already processing tens of millions of transactions per month, HUMAN Protocol is being used to create new economies and business solutions, such as customer reward schemes, computer game challenges, loyalty programs, traceable and rewarded customer reviews, and payment at scale to copywriters. 

What is your ground vision for the future of HUMAN Protocol and when was your company founded? 

We don’t really have a company, it’s really a collection of different foundations and open-source / community contributors working toward a similar goal. I guess you could call it a project. It was founded in 2021 when the project picked up more speed, but that’s just the operating entity. The overall project, the ideation was created in 2017. 

We started with machine learning and data labeling because that’s an industry that’s very close to our roots. We envision this to be much bigger than that. It’s much bigger than just work. It can be for any kind of request that needs settlement or that needs an answer, it is really to facilitate and to help people onboard into Web3 by building infrastructure that they can use in their own products. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your personal journey? 

My personal journey is not stock standard, which I actually like. I quit after my high school degree and decided to not continue my studies. I’ve been going from startup to startup since the age of 18. This was mainly in the tech scene and I founded one or two startups of my own, for example, a laser tagging company. Then I went to the in-game advertising and virtual reality sectors. 

It was during that time that I discovered blockchain because I was looking at advertising and the issues with it, one of them being advertising fraud, something the blockchain can really help overcome. I’ve been drawn to blockchain ever since, which is what brought me to HUMAN Protocol in 2021. 

And you are originally from where? 

I’m from Frankfurt, Germany. It’s really cool, because of the nature of how HUMAN Protocol works, we have the flexibility to work from anywhere. The team is spread across 15 or 16 different countries. So we are really living in a global decentralized world. 

Secret talent no one knows about? 

I don’t think I have a secret talent because I like to try to live by the examples of blockchain as well. Being transparent. Being trustworthy. I try to not keep secrets and really include everyone. So if I have one, that’s a secret to me as well. 

What’s inspiring you the most? 

It’s a bit cliche, but a fairer world. I see so much fraud and so much ripping off and scamming and I believe a blockchain core can solve that and help many industries. We envision using the blockchain to build a more transparent future, something that’s global at scale. That is really something that I absolutely believe in and want to push forward. Not just for work, but for any kind of interaction where payment is evolved. 

Where do you think the kind of blockchain sector will go and do you believe sci-fi movies will become a reality? 

If you have something you want to make history-proof where you need that immutable aspect, where you need transparency, for everybody to come to a consensus, I think that’s where it’s very helpful and very much the future of where we, at least I envision blockchain going. And in terms of sci-fi movies, to a certain extent maybe, I don’t think everything will come true, for the moment anyway. It’s quite funny if we look at science fiction movies from a couple of years ago, like Back to the Future – where we were promised a hoverboard, but we got bots. I believe maybe we’ll travel the universe at some point. That would be very cool.

In your opinion, what are the challenges your industry will face within the next five years? 

I think one of the biggest challenges is the one that it has faced ever since it entered the mainstream. There are so many bad apples and frauds. We’ve recently seen banks fall over and require billions in bailouts. But we also see that in the crypto industry as well. I believe that there will be a shift where there are two main directions; one is those who want to truly drive decentralization further and say we want to achieve governance, we want to decentralize and not have centralized power. And there are others who try to mask those values and just see the industry as an easy cash grab. 

I think identifying where it actually provides real-world value, that has been something that has been an issue since I joined in 2017. It’s still there, but I think it’s getting clearer and I believe that with more regulation coming, it just becomes a lot clearer for everyone who wants to enter the space of the boundaries without it. 

Why do you think HUMAN stands out from others? 

For one, if we look at how many tasks already have been solved up to January, we were at 600 million tasks. That is an outstanding number. We believe that we have shown a large amount of real-world utility. A couple of people are already earning their living, which is amazing to see. It’s impacting lives and we are just at the beginning. What makes us stand out is that we provide that and we also provide an infrastructure for people who want to onboard into web3. 

We are not only here to help our clients pay their employees, we help them route the request to the right people and get everybody onboarded and situated – we can help them in many different ways.

Which industries do most of your clients come from? What challenges have they been facing and how has HUMAN Protocol helped them overcome these challenges?

The main issues were availability and scalability. Sometimes you need thousands of people working on something, sometimes hundreds. And also, pricing of course. 

HUMAN has job launchers in the reviews sector, the gaming sector, loyalty, brand awards, marketing, and outreach. I think this year machine learning and DeFi are probably two of the biggest areas.