• Crypto startups are still receiving large scale investment despite volatility in the market.
  • Merwane Drai and Chaingrep seek to improve and alter the landscape of the crypto search engine.
  • Self-taught programmers arise above challenges to gain experience and insight into the industry.

In an article, Kia Kokalitcheva, a San Francisco-based technology and business reporter, states that, “Crypto and blockchain companies globally raised a record amount of venture funding this past quarter, largely driven by a number of mega deals ($100 million and above) and investors' recently replenished coffers.” This offers a positive outlook on the prospects of crypto startups in 2022, despite the volatility of the crypto market.

Merwane Drai
Merwane Drai Merwane Drai

Merwane Drai is a self-taught programmer turned tech-entrepreneur that has utilized his independent expertise in working on his latest venture: Chaingrep. This crypto startup aims to deliver an optimized platform for developers, and increase the usability and accessibility of the crypto search engine. Drai has been able to overcome obstacles as a self-taught programmer despite any hurdles.

Self-taught Programmers

Programming is complex and multifaceted with a steep learning curve that rewards patience, trial and error and dedication. Programmers who choose to learn on their own face an intimidating task and are required to push through the frequent hurdles which learning to code produces. This means that self-taught programmers are required to have a high level of motivation and diligence.

This can be intimidating and that is why it is recommended that a self-taught programmer seek out other individuals who are also learning to code. This can be very helpful for a number of reasons. It is useful to have a concept explained in a way that is personalized and other programmers can be useful to share ideas with and learn from. Programming can be a very solitary task and other programmers can help with that aspect as well. It can also be very rewarding to teach someone else how to solve a problem that they could not before.

Merwane Drai

Merwane Drai is a self-taught programmer who overcome into a tech-entrepreneur. He has always been interested and passionate about software development and programming. At the age of 13, Drai developed and wrote a unique video game. This is an illustration of his devotion to programming.

Drai left Algeria at the age of 20 to pursue a degree in his field at a university in Germany. However, he soon found himself to be unsatisfied with the pace and content that he was learning there. As a result, he dropped out of the university and began working as a software engineering contractor for some time.

Once free from the confines of university, Drai participated in and contributed to various Open Source projects. In the same year, his entrepreneurial spirit came to shove. He founded and started a company. This was when he became interested in Y Combinator. He also began actively seeking funding, and raised a seed round from top-tier investors in the industry.

Drai, when discussing the relevance of his venture, Chaingrep, states that, “Apple and Microsoft took a technology for hobbyists and made it accessible to the mainstream. Our mission is to do the same thing for Blockchains, and we’re starting by enabling any developer to understand and integrate on-chain data in 3 lines of code.”

On Chaingrep

Chaingrep was founded and started as a search engine for NFTs. This inspiration arose after the founders discovered that the existing search experience on OpenSea was not optimal or user-friendly. Drai and his team launched an NFT project that generated approximately $1.5m in volume. Drai notes that some people made money from this, but they did not. This was purposeful. Because the NFT project became so popular so quickly, consumers began looking out for it. This unfortunately resulted in consumers falling prey to bad actors and scams.

Now, Chaingrep has evolved into a much larger operation. Drai notes that, “Parsing Blockchain data is a difficult task, and most companies have to reinvent the wheel and manage complex infrastructure to get it done. We solve all these pain points by offering this as a service through an API (Application Programming Interface) that companies can integrate into their existing systems.”

Drai states that the company has a clear roadmap. The first phase is the ‘discovery phase.’ In this, Chaingrep offers as many endpoints as it can in its API product, and attaches a key metric to each one. This is important, as it allows the company to onboard more customers and continuously evaluate what to improve on, and what to discontinue based on the usage and the key metric that was picked. The second phase is the company’s product and market fit phase.

Drai argues that, “once we have product-market fit and are certain that the product is valuable, we have to aggressively market the product from an operational perspective, and solve the scalability issues that come with it from a technical perspective. This implies that we will hire more, focus more on customer acquisition, and more.” The company further states that developers are first-class citizens on our platform, and that it attempts to simplify and abstract Blockchain concepts as much as possible.

Chaingrep has not had to reach out to anyone as of now. The company is growing organically and has a waitlist of over 3000 people and businesses.

Final Thoughts

Crypto startups have been able to procure notable investment and funding in the first quarter of 2022. This is an interesting achievement, as 2022 has seen instability and uncertainty within the crypto market. Merwane Drai, with his company Chaingrep, has become one of the startups that has been able to acquire funding and achieve a notable waiting list of potential users. Drai has been able to work on this project, amongst others, despite being self-taught. This is an eye-opening feat for an industry that is often exclusive.