Meet our new hire — Philip Manokhin, Community Manager

6 min readMay 28, 2021

#8 — This post is the eighth post in our “Meet our new hire series”, where we get acquainted with the newest members of the Blank team. We want all of you to know who we are and be up to date with what’s happening behind the scenes.

This time we’re pleased to announce Philip Manokhin as the latest addition to our team. Philip will be taking care of all direct communications for Blank and engage the community for insights into the project. He has a strong background in all areas of community management. We’re looking forward to seeing him engage with our growing community.

Continue reading to find out more about Philip and get all the details on his background as well as his thoughts on Blank and cryptocurrency.

What’s your job position here at Blank?

I have joined Blank as a community manager — I take care of everything that involves direct communication with our users, investors, and supporters. I spend a lot of my time answering questions related to our product, helping with technical issues, and trying to keep up with the crypto community and trends in general. I also spend a fair share of my time talking to our supporters 1-on-1 to get some feedback and learn more about what is expected of the team and the product.

How long have you worked with that/in that sector?

I have an extensive background in social media, customer support, community management, and project management. I’ve spent about 3 years helping to build one of the leading food delivery startups where I was taking care of the courier support and communications. I also managed my own marketing agency for about 4 years where I spent a lot of time working on establishing social media presence for various clients as well as providing personal support to said clients. On top of that, I have some experience managing crypto communities.

Which projects have you worked on before?

My first project was a marketing agency which I started in 2016 with a couple of friends of mine — we were primarily focusing on social media marketing and management and worked with small to medium-sized clients. Later, we merged with a larger marketing agency and had an opportunity to work with some national and international leaders such as GoodLife Fitness and Aveda.

At the same time, I was working as a project manager at SkipTheDishes/Just Eat where I spent a lot of time working with couriers and managing projects in that department. My most successful project involved learning about couriers and their preferred method of communication, and then revamping the company’s approach that they took to communicate with the couriers.

Most recently, I have contributed to the growth of an NFT platform that I prefer not to disclose. At that NFT platform, I took care of communications with our partners and managed our community.

When did you first get involved in crypto?

I first got involved in crypto back in 2017 and I approached it purely as a speculator — I was fascinated by Bitcoin and its performance. In 2018 I decided to get into altcoins and I was the one who bought the absolute top of TRX and held a bag of Music Coin on Cryptopia. I remember all my co-workers were laughing at my crypto investments and telling me it was similar to the Dutch tulip mania but my conviction in crypto was really strong and I was just laughing back at them. Fast forward a few years — those same co-workers are now asking me about crypto and where they can buy some.

What do you like the most about crypto?

Memes! But on a serious note, there are a few things that attract me to crypto. First, it helps people to learn about monetary and fiscal issues that we have at hand — there’s simply no way to get into crypto without realizing that there is something fundamentally wrong with how the world operates today.

Second, it provides equal opportunities to every market participant — you don’t need to be an accredited investor to participate in lucrative investments such as IPOs for example. You can be a regular person, support projects early on, and be rewarded for your vision. You can even start your own company and you won’t need to go through the complicated process of raising seed capital and searching for VCs. Third, it takes away the power from centralized entities, removes redundancy in our systems, and allows us to move away from the archaic way of doing things.

What made you interested in Blank?

I think one of the major issues that we face today is the privacy issue. It’s not only about crypto, but it’s about our personal data too. There are too many players who try to use our data against us, and in my opinion, it is particularly important to be able to keep your financial data private if you choose to. As we see more and more people are adopting crypto and starting to use it to send and receive money from their friends and family, participate in DeFi, or make purchases, I think it is imperative that they keep their funds private. Blank is tackling this problem and this is what sparks my interest.

Why do you think privacy matters on blockchains?

Blockchains aim to solve a lot of important issues, but by design, it is transparent. Transparency can be good and bad at the same time. I think when such transparency is used by the wrong people, it can infringe on our freedoms. There is a direct relationship between freedom and privacy, and I think every human being has the right to privacy. If we choose to build our future using blockchains, I am absolutely confident that it is crucial that we also make sure that people retain their right to privacy when using blockchains.

Do you have any predictions on where crypto will be 5 years from now?

I think central banks and governments will try to take their piece of the pie, but ultimately, decentralization will prevail. I think we are still very early, and there are so many opportunities out there. Are we going to have our drivers licenses and birth certificates as NFTs in 5 years? Probably not. But I am sure that in the next few years we are going to build the frameworks and technologies that will allow us to make a huge step forward as a society in the next decade.

Any parting thoughts?

Crypto is about building networks — so spend your time building relationships with people, and always remember: in a trustless society, trust is invaluable!

About Blank Wallet

Blank is the most private, non-custodial Ethereum browser extension wallet.

Blank allows the user to easily interact with privacy smart contracts on Ethereum to hide the amounts and the origins of cryptocurrency held, in a decentralized, non-custodial, and frictionless manner.

Blank solves the problem of privacy in crypto transactions. Each time you want to make a withdrawal, Blank will create a new wallet address for you with the amount of crypto that you requested. This address originates from the smart contract where everyone’s funds are pooled. All of this is achieved using cryptographic proofs to ensure that the user cannot be linked with the original depositing address.

With crypto transactions increasing, on-chain transaction privacy is being highly discussed to keep you safe from exposing yourself. Blank has developed a system that adds the ultimate protective layer to your crypto transactions while facilitating every function that other wallets offer.

Anyone can easily install Blank and start reaping the privacy benefits in no time at all. Besides the smart contract functionality, Blank wallet offers a higher level of privacy due to Tor integration. Upcoming functionality includes DeFi web3 integrations as well as support for Metamask Snaps Plugins to allow for seamless connectivity and usage.

Reclaim privacy on your Ethereum transfers. Go Blank.