In this interview, Robert talks to Rami about his journey into the cryptocurrency world and his work with Genius Yield, a decentralized exchange platform. Robert, who originally had a background in filmmaking, transitioned to animation and crypto content creation due to the economic challenges faced in Lebanon, including hyperinflation and banking issues. He got introduced to the crypto space by another connection also called Rami, who shared insights about Cardano, sparking Robert’s interest in cryptocurrency.
Robert joined Genius Yield as a contractor and became their main video content creator, producing various explainer videos, animations, and promotional content for the platform. Genius Yield, in addition to being a decentralized exchange, offers services such as a yield optimizer, a Launchpad for new tokens (Genius X), an accelerator program for crypto startups, and educational resources through Genius Academy. Robert highlights the creative freedom and trust that Genius Yield placed in him, allowing him to visually represent complex crypto concepts. He values the leadership and trust from the Genius Yield team, appreciating the opportunity to contribute to the crypto community. He expresses his aspirations to expand his crypto clientele and potentially start his own agency specializing in crypto-related content creation. The interview ends on a positive note, with Rami expressing gratitude for Robert’s insights and personal experiences in the crypto world.
Rami : hello everybody hi Robert hope you’re doing well thank you for being here um so Robert we go way back uh Robert is a very friend of mine um so Robert can you give us a quick background about yourself who you are and uh maybe how did you get into crypto
Robert : yeah for sure so hey Really really nice to be here having this talk with you uh yeah I’ll definitely I’ll introduce myself I’ll give a bit of a background about what I do so yeah I’m Robert Shammas I have a background in film making that’s originally my profession I’ve been doing this for almost 15 years and I’ve started my career you know as a freelance videographer just taking any job I can find until eventually I co-founded a production house with a friend and we did work throughout the years we worked on all sorts of video content from documentary series TV shows comedy sketches commercials with like experimented with so many genres of videos uh through this production house and we even did the animation so there was a so this is connected to to the later question about how I got into cryptocurrency and the work I do now so one style that I really liked while working in video production is called the hybrid style so we would fuse um you know like real life footage with animation and this is where my my passion for animation kind of like was really really started to to pop up previously we used to have a team we used to Outsource like a graphic designer animator and focus more on the direction and the storytelling uh but eventually I started to take up interest in animation from watching my team work so I was eventually taught myself to do that on my own and um and uh so this is what I’m doing now fulltime more than what I used to do before with the production house I’m doing animation full time like 2D 3D animation and I do it mostly with “ Genius Yield” and uh so yeah how I got into crypto so there was a year Gap where work had gotten like very scars and that was due to um covid that was due to mixed actually with later on the the revolution that we had in Lebanon and finally the big explosion which was the the port explosion which like we completely stopped you know business in the country so at that time things were difficult with work and uh also there was also the thing about the banks like not giving you your money anymore the hyperinflation in the country like we completely lost trust in that system because what happened with us specificly in the country which kind of naturally led me to get interested in in cryptocurrency it’s mainly thanks to a good friend of ours that you had here also on a call interviewing him which is Rami Azar which we are all I guess grateful for you know for introducing us to this world at the very very beginning and he was mostly also invested in cardano from the very beginning so he told me about that and after doing my research I thought that as I said naturally that would be like a way to move to move away from the banks to move away from this broken system especially in Lebanon which was a complete illusion that left us um you know like how to say it like all the work we did it was for nothing in the sense that we couldn’t keep our money safe like we worked for for nothing just in that sense so um so yeah I naturally took up interest in crypto and uh one of the ways we were doing that so of course naturally I invested in some coins among them cardano and different cryptocurrencies at the beginning but I didn’t know what I was doing that much but one technique of like investment was that we would follow new projects and their socials like Twitter Discord uh and telegram we would join these groups like from the very beginning of their foundation and at the time Ramy sent me uh an invitation to the Discord uh group of Genius Yield so that was back in March April 2021 and that eventually to me working for them so you were you were already in Lebanon so you were already in Lebanon and that’s everything happened while you were in Lebanon um yeah
Rami : so uh my question is uh what is genius yield ?
Robert : okay so genius yield it’s it’s a lot of things so Genius Yield is mainly a decentralized exchange but that’s how they they aim to to start like by building a a decentralized exchange and then implementing on top of that exchange a yield Optimizer to manage people’s yield and then besides that they’re also they also have Genius X which is a Launchpad for new tokens and an accelerator program to help other companies like crypto startups become successful and also on the side they have the Genius Academy which kind of breaks down all the fundamental concepts you know of blockchain web3 they explain everything and they have um video content articles uh that for like absolute beginners to more Tech savvy crypto professionals you know so they have that range of educational content as well and yeah that’s pretty much all the branches of Genius yield so you have the genius yield “Dex” yield Optimizer genius X Launchpad and the accelerator program and then you have the Academy of course they have their to yeah of course so they have the genius token and the Genius X yeah and the Genius X token
Rami : okay great uh yeah that’s it so because I had this idea about them that they do um yield farming
Robert : yeah it’s part of uh what they do it’s just part of it of what part of the services that provide on on their decks
Rami : so Robert uh um what what do you work uh with genius Shield what do you do uh are you employed by genius Shield what do you do exactly
Robert : so I’m a I’m a contractor with genius field so I’m not like a full-time like not officially an employee but they consider it kind of like a full-time job but I’m actually like a contractor with them so I’m freelancing with Genius Yield and what I do is that I create all their video content I create all the the video content for their socials mainly for their YouTube channel we create many different video series to cover everything that they are doing with this project starting. it started from their isbo which is initial stake pool offering which kind of was which is kind of like their their funding program to get the project all started and then we did like a series to explain how their decentralized exchanges going to work it’s like an eight episode series we did the um an episode series also for the “Genius Academy” which was explaining you know all the concepts of blockchain and cryptocurrency in web3 and kind of like they dump they dump down the content so most people would understand how what are those. those Concepts um we did some videos explaining what’s Genius X how the Launchpad Works how the accelerator program works and what are the services that you provide to the the other like crypto startups that they want to help accelerate uh and finally there was the the monthly the monthly Tech update that “Genius Yield” does that’s presented by their Chief technical officer Marvin Burton so I was editing all of that and once a year we go to the cardano summit so I film a bunch of interviews for “Genius X” for all the startups that have joined their accelerator program and a promotional video of the of The Summit in general so that’s pretty much what I do with “Genius Yield” so I make all their video content so their digital content created
Rami : amazing so you’re going to be in uh this The Summit in almost like uh a week yeah it’s in one week yeah um I hope you enjoy it and it’s very fruitful and full of networking um so so pretty much you’ve been pretty much you’ve been with genius yield since the beginning then um it’s been a while I remember it’s been like at least two years you’ve been working
Robert : yeah so there’s a yeah there’s an interesting story behind that like how it happened it’s just like a matter of like being in the right time at the right place kind of situation for me because few months before like around March April 2021 Ramy Azar as I said he sent me the link to the “Genius Yield” Discord group at the time when I joined them it was still like at the level of just an idea and there was there was maybe just one moderator on the group it was didn’t have much activity then around November I noticed that there was like a lot of activity happening on the their Discord Channel more people were talking and I just was lucky enough to spot um lauren’s message Lauren who’s now the current CEO of Genius Yield who was asking at the time who needs to who wants to be a moderator for who’s interested in being a moderator for Genius Yield for the main Channel and I just happened to be there at the right moment when he asked that question and I DMed him Directly asking him like can I be a moderator with you because at the time work was like not that much I thought maybe it’s a good way for me to infiltrate kind of that that community that that new field so he accepted with my little experience and know how in this what was the the deal maker at the time was that I spoke three languages and that motivated him to hire me and so I was hired to manage like to be a moderator on the on the main Telegram and Discord Channel and translate some content into Arabic which I did also amazing and that lasted yeah that lasted for a month then after a month when I got to know Lauren and the the head of community which was Valentin at the time uh I told them that I’m a I’m a video editor I do animation so they said let’s do a trial with you we’ll give you a text explaining what our “ISPO” is and you do like an explainer video for that I sent them like a one minute sample of that what would that video would look like and they loved it so much that the month after I started with them as a full-time video content creator and it’s been two years since then making all this content I talked about awesome previously yeah so I was lucky to meet to meet those people amazing team great work with them and yeah just lucky to be part of this whole community and the “genius” family
Rami : yeah time flies. so now the last question what’s the best part about working with genius Yield? what would you say ?
Robert : I think it’s mostly the amount of trust they put they put towards working with me and kind of the creative freedom they give me which for me is like very important because as at least this for me this is my impression is that there is not much content about crypto in general in the whole crypto space there’s not that much video content especially not like elaborate explainer animations and promotional content and things like that so for me there was no reference to what this could look like you know as videos for this kind of field so it was pretty challenging and at the same time stimulating to kind of turn all these texts that they would provide me these explainer text and scripts into like these visual adaptations of what blockchain could be and everything so it was very fun and stimulating to kind of put these words into like a visual adaptation and create all these fun animations that I did like from explaining how the Dex works and and the the “Genius Academy” content and everything so yeah so from so the best part would be definitely that they trust me and they give me the creative freedom mainly their Corrections are about the information within the video so it’s not like completely wrong because I’m not like super experienced in crypto and that’s more their job but everything visual created they give me full permission to do whatever I want and this motivates me to do better you know because they just give me all that trust and uh yeah started with lauren just taking a shot you know with me and just telling me like okay work with us and every time he’s like taking a shot with me I’m thinking like I’m Not Going to make him I’m gonna not going to let him regret this decision because like it’s unusual for me as someone who works here in this environment in Lebanon to have someone put so much trust in you like from the very beginning but I feel like that’s such amazing leadership you know and uh I appreciate that kind of what’s the word like like that kind of interpersonal uh yeah that’s the way you should treat like contractors and your employees and they will in that case push themselves to the best that they can so yeah yeah that’s pretty much it I uh “genius yield” is pretty much my only crypto client but hopefully I’m going to expand my crypto clientele and eventually like open maybe an agency that’s dealing with these kind of clients because it’s a community that I really appreciate and I’m hoping to meet a lot of cool people
Rami : cheers to that. cheers to that knock on wood. uh I hope everything goes according to plan and thanks again Robert for sharing all this this experience , this personal experience and uh thank you for your time thank you and hope to see you soon also uh so for sure for sure uh have a good day
Robert : you too bye