Rachel Horn - WAGMI Women of the Week
Rachel Horn - Head of Marketing and Communications, Filecoin Foundation and Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web
After more than a decade in media, tech, and finance, Rachel Horn transitioned into web3 in 2019, and now serves as the Head of Marketing and Communications at Filecoin Foundation, where she works to foster and grow the Filecoin ecosystem. Filecoin Foundation is one of many contributors to the Filecoin project, a decentralized storage network powered by cryptocurrency. Rachel joined the foundation from Protocol Labs, an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory, whose projects include IPFS and Filecoin, among others.
Q. What was the first coin or NFT you bought? Filecoin! I’m fortunate to work on a project that’s driven by utility. Filecoin as a token is much more than a store of value. It’s a new foundation for the web.
Q. If you were given $1k, what coin or NFT would you be buying more of? The smart answer here I think is BTC. But realistically I would buy Apecoin. Can I have more than $1k though? :)
Q. Any new crypto, NFT projects or artists you are excited for? In the spirit of projects with real-world applications, I think Helium is an exciting and valuable project. They’re building a decentralized wireless infrastructure.
Q. What inspired you to work in this industry? My entry point into web3 was when I learned about the work of The Starling Lab, run by the very forward-thinking Jonathan Dotan. Jonathan was working to preserve copies of 55,000 genocide survivor testimonies on the decentralized web, leveraging the Filecoin network. Hearing about this project made me realize how vulnerable our historical records are. Many of us simply expect and trust that big cloud storage companies will reliably store and protect our data. But why are we so sure? Decentralization and peer-to-peer computing offer opportunities that simply can’t be matched by centralized services. And the more people who participate in these decentralized networks, the stronger they become – it’s a collective ownership ethos that I admire.
Q. Fav influencer that we should follow? There are a number of podcasts I listened to that helped me get up to speed when I first moved into the decentralized web space. I’m an auditory learner so these shows helped me learn the fundamentals and mechanics of web3. My go-tos: ZigZag, Unchained, and the a16z podcast.
Non-crypto podcasts, I love “You’re Wrong About,” “60 Songs that Explain the 90s,” and “Ringer Dish.” Some books I go back to time and again: The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green, and A Tale for a Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.
