Mengyi (Gloria) Wang’s journey in tech started in 2017 when she stumbled upon Bitcoin. Captivated by its potential to drive financial inclusion, she started her career as a software engineer at BitGo and later contributed to Bitcoin Core.
Her passion for using technology for social good expanded while serving as a crisis hotline counselor in San Mateo County, where she gained firsthand insight into the struggles of marginalized communities. This experience deepened her commitment to building inclusive technologies, leading her to Modern Health, where she worked on expanding access to digital mental health treatment. Today, she builds APIs for a popular design software, which enables users without design experience to create visually compelling content.
Gloria’s experiences in blockchain, mental health, and design all revolve around one central theme: using technology to empower and uplift underserved communities. She is excited to bring this focus to the Center, contributing to its mission of driving equitable, impactful change through technology.
You’re talking to someone who has never heard of blockchain, how do you explain it in simple terms?
Imagine a community where every household behaves like a “historian” by maintaining a giant bulletin board. When a resident wants to communicate something significant, like a property agreement or an exchange of goods, the resident broadcasts it to the entire community. Following the event, all community members review and confirm the details. Each person then adds the event to their respective board, ensuring that everyone shares a consistent record of what transpired.
Once an event is posted on the bulletin board, it can’t be erased or edited; it stays there permanently. If a change is needed, someone posts a new announcement and goes through the same review process again, but the old one stays visible too. This keeps a running history of all decisions and events, so anyone in the neighborhood can see exactly what happened and when, making it impossible to tamper with past records.
Because everyone has a copy, even if one board is lost or damaged, the shared record remains safe. This setup, where everyone has a (somewhat) synchronized, tamper-proof record and no one can change history alone, is how blockchain works.
What inspires your work in blockchain?
What inspires my work in blockchain is its potential to drive financial inclusion, and we have seen a lot of promising results already thanks to Bitcoin and other blockchains. I read a report from the World Economic Forum that, as of 2024, about 1.4 billion people worldwide remain unbanked due to barriers such as geographical isolation, and high bank account fees. Even among those with access to traditional banking systems, many live in economies with high inflation rates and currency instability—where double-digit inflation erodes savings and limits economic stability.
Blockchain allows people to access financial services without a traditional bank account. With just a smartphone, folks can participate in the on-chain economy that’s not tied to local currency risks, where no central authority can easily print money out of thin air and dilute everyone’s wealth (of course, this assumes the blockchain itself to have a sound governance model). Additionally, blockchain is inherently global – there is no notion of national borders on the blockchain, so blockchain can support cross-border transactions without long wait times or high fees. This makes remittances much more efficient and cost-effective.
What is one thing in the blockchain industry that you hope to change/improve?
One of the key areas I hope to improve is user experience. Since my days working at BitGo, the blockchain industry has come a long way in improving user experience. But even today, using blockchain still requires some understanding of complex concepts like public-key cryptography, the mechanics behind fluctuating transaction fees, or the nature of wallet addresses. These technical details, while important, can create confusion and barriers to entry, especially for folks without a computer science background.
I recognize that designing a more accessible, intuitive user experience is quite a challenge in this space. One has to strike a balance between making things feel intuitive while avoiding oversimplifying in ways that may lead to misunderstandings, which could have severe consequences. For instance, some users might confuse private keys with passwords that can be reset. In reality, exposing a private key can result in the irreversible loss of one’s assets, making careful design and education crucial. As the industry matures, we also need to design for real users across different levels of digital literacy, rather than designing for those who look like us. This approach will help create smoother and safer interactions with blockchain technology for everyone.
What’s a common misconception about blockchain?
Contrary to popular belief, information stored on a blockchain is not inherently accurate. In my blockchain journey, I came across an influential paper by Karl Wüst called “Do You Need a Blockchain?”, which had a major impact on me, and I want to share one of the key ideas that he talks about: this assumption that everything in the blockchain must be accurate becomes problematic when interfacing the physical and digital worlds. For example, when using blockchain for supply chain or land title management, an agent is required to enter information from the real world into the blockchain. If these agents are untrustworthy or the information is inaccurate, the “garbage in, garbage out” problem arises. While blockchain’s immutability preserves the input data, it does not verify its truthfulness, and robust mechanisms are still necessary to ensure data quality at the point of entry.
But why Blockchain?
To me, blockchain is about giving more control and autonomy to the end users. Traditionally, users have to rely on intermediaries like banks or brokers to facilitate transactions between those they cannot trust. However, these intermediaries often introduce additional costs, inefficiencies, and single points of failure. In blockchain, these intermediaries are replaced by the entire network of nodes who collectively validate and agree on transactions through a consensus mechanism. This decentralized governance model ensures that transactions are trustworthy without requiring a central authority, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and removing single points of failure. Blockchain’s ability to facilitate interactions amongst trustless parties makes it uniquely suited to solving societal challenges that traditional, centralized systems struggle to address effectively.
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