William Entriken, 37
MS/MBA finance ’08
Lead author of ERC-721 and general manager, Pacific Medical Training
By day, William Entriken runs and co-owns an online nursing certification firm. But come Tuesdays at 6 p.m., he’s @fulldecent on Twitch, where he fields questions from blockchain developers about NFTs.
In the world of non-fungible tokens, he’s a guru, better known as the lead author of ERC-721, the programming standard for trading virtual assets on digital ledgers, a.k.a. blockchains. His passion project lit a fuse under the NFT moon rocket in 2018 and has made Entriken a cool $1 million selling pixels on Su Squares, a digital billboard he minted as a demo.
Now the Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, native and father of two (with wife Su Wang, MS accounting ’10) is midway through a 10-year mission to convert entrepreneurs in commerce, art and culture to the possibilities of digital disintermediation.
In addition to hosting “community hours” on social media, Entriken runs workshops and speaks worldwide. He also consults for accounting firm EY, helping Fortune 500 clients adopt blockchain technology.
“My vision for the future is that anything you buy, you should be able to verify its authenticity and seller claims,” he says. “So if you’re buying some food and it says ‘kosher’ or ‘organic’ on it, what does that mean? Next, we’re going to see traditionally famous artists, musicians, journalists, directors, actors…all these people will be able to directly appeal to their fans. NFTs are a way to sell your reputation.”
As recently as 2017, Entriken was a crypto skeptic, denouncing Bitcoin as “fentanyl money” and declining invitations from a friend to work on Compound, a de-fi project. Then along came the CryptoKitties craze, and with it, an epiphany. He saw that the goofy blockchain game based on collecting and “breeding” cat avatars had the seeds of something bigger — if only someone could make everyone agree on how to buy and sell assets on the blockchain.
Entriken’s Su Squares NFT — his demonstration of the ERC-721 protocol, modeled after Alex Tew’s famous Million Dollar Homepage — was displayed in Times Square on November 2021.
“You need to bring a community together to build this product, and you need to build it for the next 10 years,” he says. “And P.S., developers don’t like agreeing on standards. They’re all artists.”
The story of how he rallied his ERC-721 co-authors has been told elsewhere. Suffice it to say, Entriken has an eclectic skillset and what his proud parents say is an “uncanny ability to learn anything.” In addition to orchestrating M&As and consulting for corporations, he’s a citizen hacker, photographer, novelist, a self-taught Mandarin speaker, and a card-carrying member of Mensa.
His advice to anyone eager to join the blockchain economy: Don’t buy NFTs. Instead, “Start looking for classes,” he says. “Don’t be shy about spending $500 and flying to New York to show up to an event. This could be life changing. Education is expensive. Go to these events and make these connections. Go to the classes.”
Meanwhile, NFT use cases are quietly multiplying behind the scenes and on private chains. Entriken knows, because he’s working on some of them. He expects next-gen projects will burst into the mainstream in 2023. Microsoft already uses NFTs to license Xbox games. Merck’s animal health division tracks antibiotics. Breitling mints them to authenticate luxury watches.
“Obviously, it won’t take long for a 50-cent certificate of authenticity from Breitling to replace the forgeable $1 [hard-copy] certificate that they used to use,” he says. “It costs less; it can’t be copied… You don’t have to be a genius to realize this is going to happen everywhere.”