译文/Translated：
我们采访了Smartpress的CEO和创始人Lachlan Greenbank，和他聊了Smartpress平台，该平台能为企业简化使用EOSIO智能合约的过程。
能和我们聊聊Smartpress吗？
Smartpress是一个软件即服务（SaaS）平台，它让你能快速地把自己的应用连接到EOSIO智能合约平台上。
让我们形容Smartpress的话，我们想说它是“智能合约云平台”。想利用智能合约、在第三方区块链浏览器验证交易、为数据增加安全性、可信度、有效性的各方都是Smartpress的目标对象。
我们提供了API包，这样你就可以在我们平台上轻松地启动智能合约。接着你就可以给用户创建账户，映射到自己的内部ID，而不用担心区块链层。
有的团队想要通过利用EOSIO区块链中获得好处，却没有准备好要从零开始解决智能合约开发中所有复杂问题，Smartpress就会让这种团队的日子轻松多了。他们可以让自己的应用连接到智能合约中，让事情非常快速地进展下去。如果愿意的话，他们还可以在某个时间点完全接管。我们会向他们提供智能合约，并签署转交管理者(active)密钥和拥有者（owner）密钥。
这就有效地让我们成为一个EOSIO应用引擎——我们帮助企业开始在EOSOIO智能合约上运行，他们不用去考虑聘请专业的区块链开发者。他们可以凭借现有资源，利用智能合约提高数据的安全性和可靠性——最近我们的一个客户聘请了一个只有六个月工作经验的JavaScript开发者，但连他都觉得把Smartpress集成到他们的前端很简单。
您怎么想到要创建Smartpress的？
我们的灵感来自2018年8月，我们参加EOS全球黑客马拉松悉尼赛事时的经历。当时参加的有几百人，他们来自不同的领域和行业。只有少部分（包括我）真的有设定和编写EOSIO智能合约的丰富经验。
比赛开始了，我们也开始行动了。这时候大多数团队还至少要多花几个小时启动EOSIO，而我们能却马上开始运行。这样，从技术层面和时间层面来看，我们团队都有了优势。但更重要的是，我们就有时间观察和识别这个用例了：如果你能设定一些参数、按一个按钮、就让应用生成安全码，这样不好吗？
我们意识到，这能在黑客马拉松的时候节约好几百小时，所以我们这就创建了Smartpress，让每个区块链和EOSIO技术新手能节约时间。来年，这款软件的用户可能能达到数百万，我们也希望我们的产品能够因为帮这些开发者节约时间和金钱，为他们带来巨大的影响。
您为什么会选择使用区块链技术，又为什么会使用EOSIO技术呢？
区块链可以起到强大的作用，但也可以用简单的方法进行。一个基础的智能合约就可以让用户自己审计和验证数据，从而与用户产生信任。这就是我们对区块链的信念：不要相信企业，而要让它们向你证明，它们干的就是自己说的那些。
EOSIO则是现在最好的区块链软件。它性能极高：数据发布和验证都可以快速进行。
eosio.contracts则提供了一系列有用的基础合约，其提供的功能都自带已经通过审查的稳健的代码。
我们也相信Block.one的领导和眼光，我们相信，随着时间地发展，它们会不断创造、改进EOSIO。
Smartpress简单、直观的UI界面，利用EOSIO智能合约从此变得简单
您现在处于哪个阶段呢
我们已经构建了Smartpress的核心平台，它现在已经在起作用了。我们有许多付费用户，我们也准备好随时迎接新用户。因为其管理和对核心软件的更新，公共EOSIO区块链不断改变。我们也在不断努力，稳步跟上这些更新，这就是使用Smartpress的一个重要理由了。
因为我们对平台后端所做的努力，用户体验几乎能一直保持不变。
您克服了哪些挑战，是如何实现的呢？
我们现在遇到的一个问题是要说服民众利用区块链的优势解决他们的问题。要跟普通人解释一些崭新的技术问题是很困难的。
于是推广都变得很难。目前，我们还没找到一个常见的数字营销工具帮我们实现可规模化、可重复使用的模型。我们几乎就要证明，如果我们在一个策略上支付X金额的营销费用，我们能获得Y金额的利润。有时候我们能有一些利润，有时候却什么都没有。
除了要提高我们数字营销的效果，我们还在寻找一个更“温和”的方法接触潜在客户，包括在各种活动和会议中寻找潜在顾客等。我们还计划通过扩张吸引一些新用户。
您有怎样的扩张计划呢？
我们在扩大Smartpress的顾客基础，从而扩展业务。我们计划要推出一套以客户为中心的产品。
用户可以登陆网站，知道Smartpress是智能合约云平台，但是他们还会看到一系列用Smartpress或者在Smartpress上构建的产品。这样也能帮助我们争取新用户，同时也让整个市场了解区块链技术的优点。
我们现在在做的一款产品会解决文件验证的问题。我们主要要向教育机构展示为什么这个有用。比如，如果你想验证一个求职者是不是完成了项目某个课程，你去找这个教育机构。你可能需要完成他们的支持程序，然后他们会在前前后后确认后，几小时之后给你寄信或发邮件确认。
如果他们有用过我们的新产品，你要做的就上传证书的PDF，我们会告知所有你需要的东西（发行时间、成绩、课程，等）。这样，你就可以马上审核这个求职者而不需要再去找相应机构了。
我觉得这种验证解决方案能向人们展示利用区块链技术能多快帮民众和企业节约大量时间和精力。很多组织都能从这个服务获得好处：发放文凭的大学、发放酒类许可证的地方政府、需要检查工人叉车许可证的建筑公司。他们都可以方便地选择Smartpress的产品验证自己的文件，而不需要自己写智能合约、提供网站。
您参与了EOSIO社区哪些项目呢？社区怎么评价Smartpress呢？
我们在堪培拉主办了几次会议，向社区介绍了EOSIO。我们总部设在悉尼，就想在悉尼开展更多外联活动，其中包括参加一些聚会和活动，让人们知道Smartpress——通用技术活动，不单单是区块链的活动。
我们是2018年EOS全球黑客马松的冠军，这是遇见和联系世界各地的EOSIO社区成员的一个很好的机会。这给了我们一个非常好的开端：在生态中的识别度、一些很好的资源、了解我们要去哪里找谁讨论EOSIO。
能和我们介绍一下您的团队，以及其特殊之处嘛？
Smartpress现在唯一一个固定员工是我。但我聘请了一些合同工做设计和销售。我们赢得悉尼EOS全球黑客马松、到开普敦参加决赛的时候，我们还有其它的核心团队成员。但是他们都离开了项目，主要是因为时间不匹配或者想更好地陪伴家人。
但能完全掌握一个公司是很刺激（也很恐怖的）。我可以聘人完成该做的项目，设定策略方向，但是最后的结果是企业的成功与否全落在我自己的肩膀上。我倒是对自己的能力很有信心，相信我能领导和管理Smartpress，实现利润和增长。
我17岁开始学编程。我去读了个社区大学，整个学校很水。那时候，我自己也不是很喜欢读大学——我还是喜欢和朋友出去玩。但是，我在那里成为优等生，甚至赢得了一次编程比赛。
大学毕业以后，我到澳洲国立大学攻读IT学位，这个大学是澳大利亚最好的学校。EOS全球黑客马拉松举办的时候，我还在硕士第二年。那是我还在一个小公司工作，但是比赛前几个月我就辞职了，因为我觉得EOSIO比较特别。这成为我一个重要的机会，我也很高兴我冒险开始了这个旅程。
您觉得Smartpress的未来会怎样呢？
Smartpress的核心愿景保持不变：让用户和企业更容易从EOSIO区块链技术中获益。我们的信条是精炼，因为我自己就是这么一个简单的人。我自己搭建东西的时候，我就喜欢一步到位完成，而不要去做配置和设置。
因此我们想继续让用户能够获得方便、廉价的方法，在企业活动中使用智能合约，从而吸引客户。我们还会发行一整套利用我们平台的产品，为顾客提供有用的功能。
因为我们主要关注给顾客提供价值、展示产品如何节约时间和精力，我们对很多市场状况能保持低敏。如果区块链受欢迎度突然提高，那就特别好，我们做好了扩张的准备、可以在未来六个月服务一百万客户。但是如果区块链发展缓慢，还需要几年时间慢慢来，那我们也做好了准备。
请用一句话概括一下Smartpress?
Smartpress是智能合约云平台。
. . .
建立在 EOSIO之上
我们的 #建立在EOSIO 系列展示了利用EOSIO科技的一些卓越的项目，它们都能为我们更加安全和联系的世界添砖加瓦。如果您想给我们下一个阶段的项目提建议，请给我们的开发者关系小组发送邮件spotlight@block.one
– Block.one 开发者关系小组
. . .
重要通知：所有提供的材料都受此重要通知的约束，您必须自行熟悉此间条款。该通知包含与我们软件、出版物、商标、第三方资源以及前瞻性声明相关的信息、限制和约束内容。通过访问我们的材料，您接收并同意此通知的条款。
原文/Original：
We interviewed Lachlan Greenbank, CEO and founder of Smartpress, about their platform that simplifies using EOSIO Smart Contracts for businesses.
Could you introduce Smartpress for us?
Smartpress is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that lets you rapidly connect your apps to an EOSIO Smart Contract.
We describe Smartpress as: “The Smart Contract Cloud”. It’s for those who would like to adopt Smart Contracts, verify transactions on a third party block explorer, and add security, trust, and validity to their data.
We provide an API wrapper so that you can easily launch a Smart Contract on our platform. You can then create accounts for your users that you can map to your own internal IDs without having to worry about the blockchain layer.
This makes life a lot easier for those teams who would like to enjoy the benefits of using an EOSIO blockchain, but who aren’t quite ready to take on all the complexities of Smart Contract development from scratch. They can get their app connected to a Smart Contract and get things flowing fairly quickly. If they like, down the line they can then take over completely. We will provide the Smart Contract(s) to them and sign over the active and owner keys.
This effectively makes us an EOSIO adoption engine – we help companies get up and running with EOSIO Smart Contracts without having to think about hiring specialist blockchain developers. They can use Smart Contracts to improve the security and validation of their data with their current resources – recently one of our customers who were using a JavaScript developer with only six months’ of experience found it very easy to integrate Smartpress with their frontend.
What inspired you to create Smartpress?
The inspiration came from our experience at the EOS Global Hackathon event in Sydney in August 2018. There were hundreds of participants there, from different sectors and industries. Only a few of them (myself included) had significant experience setting up and writing EOSIO Smart Contracts.
When the time came and we started hacking, most teams had to spend a couple of hours at least getting started with EOSIO, whereas we were up and running immediately. This gave my team an edge technically and timewise. But, most importantly, it allowed us to observe and identify this use case: What if you could set a few parameters, press a button and have an app produce secure code for you?
We realized this would have saved hundreds of hours of effort at the hackathon, so we created Smartpress to save time for anyone new to blockchain and EOSIO technology. This software has the potential to reach millions of developers in the years to come, and we hope that our product will have a massive impact by saving them time and money.
Why did you decide to use blockchain technology, and specifically EOSIO?
Blockchain can be used in a powerful yet simple way. A basic Smart Contract can be used to build trust with your users by allowing them to audit and verify the data themselves. This is what we believe blockchain is about: not trusting companies anymore and making them prove to you that they are doing what they say they are.
EOSIO is the highest quality blockchain software out there. It is highly performant, which means that data publishing and validation can be done very quickly. The eosio.contracts repository has a selection of useful basic contracts which offer functionality with vetted and robust code.
We also believe in the leadership and vision of Block.one, and that they will continue to innovate and work to improve EOSIO as time goes on.
What stage is Smartpress at?
The Smartpress core platform is built and functioning. We have a number of paying customers and are ready to onboard new users at any time. Public EOSIO blockchains change over time, due to their governance, and adoption of changes to the core software. We are constantly working to keep up to date with these changes which is a compelling reason to use Smartpress:
The user experience will stay close to constant due to the work we are doing on the backend of the platform.
What are the challenges you had to overcome, and how did you do it?
One of the challenges that we are facing right now is convincing people of the merits of using blockchain technology to solve their problems. It’s tricky to explain something new and technical to people.
This all makes advertising difficult. So far we haven’t been able to find a scalable, repeatable model using common digital marketing tools. We’re getting closer to being able to predict that if we put in X amount of marketing dollars into a strategy, then we get out Y amount of revenue. Some days we have a lot of success, and some days we have none at all.
In addition to improving the effectiveness of our digital marketing, we are focusing on a “warmer” approach to contacting potential customers. This involves meeting potential customers at events and conferences. We plan on attracting new users as a result of our scaling efforts as well.
What are your plans for scaling?
We are actively scaling the business by growing the Smartpress customer base. We are planning on offering a suite of user focused products as well.
Users will arrive on the site and see that Smartpress is the Smart Contract cloud, but they will also see a number of products which they can use built by Smartpress, on Smartpress. This will help us to onboard new users to Smartpress as well as educating the market as a whole about the benefits of blockchain technology.
One product which we are working on will solve the problem of document verification. We can look at education providers to demonstrate why this would be so useful. If you want to verify that a candidate has completed a course in programming, for example, you would need to go to the course provider. You would probably need to go through a support process and they might send you a letter or an email after several hours of effort going back and forth.
If they had used our new product, all you would have to do is drop the PDF of the certificate in, and we would tell you everything you need to know about it (when it was issued, which grade was attained, which course it was for, etc). In this way you can vet the candidate for the job instantly without having to rely on anyone else.
I think these types of verification solutions are going to show people how quickly blockchain technology can be adopted to save people and businesses lots of time and effort. A lot of organizations could benefit from this service: universities dispensing degree certificates, local councils granting liquor licenses, construction companies who need to check workers’ forklift licences. They will all have the convenient option to use a Smartpress product to verify their documents instead of writing their own Smart Contracts and providing a website.
What EOSIO community initiatives have you engaged in, and how has the EOSIO Community responded to Smartpress?
We have hosted several meetups in Canberra to tell the community about EOSIO. We are planning to do a lot more outreach in Sydney now that we are based here. That includes going to meetups and events to tell people about Smartpress – general technology themed ones, not just blockchain.
We were grand finalists in the EOS Global Hackathon series in 2018 which was a great opportunity to meet and connect with EOSIO community members from all over the world. That gave us a headstart with name recognition in the ecosystem, some great resources, and knowledge about where to go and who to talk to about all things EOSIO.
Can you introduce your team and tell us what makes them/it special?
The only permanent member of Smartpress right now is me. I have a few contractors doing design and sales, though. When we originally won the Sydney EOS Global Hackathon and progressed to the Grand Finale in Cape Town, there were other core team members. They have since left the project, due to timing and family commitments.
It is exhilarating (and terrifying) to be in total control of the company. I can hire people to do what needs to be done and set the strategic direction, but the consequence of this is that the success of the business rests solely on my shoulders. I am confident in my ability to lead and manage Smartpress to achieve profit and growth.
I started out learning coding when I was 17. I went to a community college which was fairly laid back. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about higher education at that point in my life – I was more interested in hanging out and having fun with my friends. I turned out to be an apt student and even won a coding competition when I was there.
After I gained my college diploma I studied an IT degree at ANU, which is actually the highest ranked university in Australia. I was two years into my degree when the EOS Global Hackathons started. I was also working at a small company and I quit my job there a couple of months before the events because I thought that EOSIO was something special. It turned out to be a huge opportunity and I am glad I took the risk and embarked on this adventure!
Where do you see Smartpress in the future?
The core vision of Smartpress remains strong: making it easier for users and businesses to benefit from EOSIO blockchain technology. Our niche is simplicity, because I am a simple sort of dude. When I am building things I like plugging stuff in and getting it done without a whole lot of configuration and setup.
So we are going to continue to attract customers to our platform by offering them a convenient and cost effective way to use Smart Contracts in their business activities. We will be releasing a suite of products that leverage our platform to offer useful functionality to customers.
Because we are laser focused on providing value for our customers and demonstrating how our products can save time and effort, we remain resilient to a range of market conditions. If blockchain explodes in popularity then that’s great, and we are ready to scale up and onboard a million users over the next six months. If it takes another few years though, with slower growth, then we are ready for that too.
In a sentence, how would you want readers to remember Smartpress?
Smartpress is the smart contract cloud.
. . .
Building on EOSIO?
Our #BuiltOnEOSIO series showcases some of the amazing projects leveraging EOSIO technology to build a more secure and connected world. If you would like to suggest a project for us to feature please send an email to spotlight@block.one for our Developer Relations team to review.
- Block.one Developer Relations team
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