PRELUDE
What’s up, Noodlers!?
I’m still working on my catch phrase. Bear with me. I also still need to figure out my audience and what the heck I’ll be writing out.
First, the audience. I’m not an expert in these fields I intend to explore. And I’m going to assume you aren't either. We’re just two apes scratching at the surface. But in this newsletter experiment that we’re about to embark on, I like to think of the audience as some sort of intelligent sentient being who just arrived on planet earth and is curious about the ongoings of our meat-space. And they (ie. you) are looking for a guide. Unfortunately, I’m your guy. Your first point of contact. Your ambassador to earth. And sometimes I don’t even know where to begin. Like in this post, for instance. Things are all over the place. And I don’t enjoy editing.
Good news is though, as I figure this out, I intend to discover people smarter than me. I’ll listen to what’s tickling their noodle, and I’ll report back relevant findings. Which brings us to our second issue. (Three paragraphs in, and we already have multiple issues. Yikes!)
What is this newsletter about? I’m hoping we’ll choose and explore these topics together in some kind of collaborative-creative approach. Like some kind of meta interactive choose-your-own-adventure newsletter, where anybody can contribute to any extent*.
People often misuse the word meta. And I may be doing so here. But what I mean to say is, I wish to explore themes like interactivity, technology, collaboration, and art, all while incorporating them into this rabbit-hole experiment. Some kind of recapitulation. Ooo, or this cool anagram I just came up with:
Collaboration Rabbitholes Experiments Art Technology and …. I’ll let you come up with the second E word. See, we’re already CREATing something together!
For starters and more specifically, I’d like to sniff around topics like Web3.0, NFTs, and various DAO’s, and share my findings with you along the way. And if those words don’t mean anything to you but you’re curious, then great, you’re in a good place.
So, strap in and grab your butts!
* I attempted something like this years ago with Offhand, and had some great contributions, thank you!
** While writing this post, I came up with the idea to insert Noodler “NODES” which we can loop back to explore further, if we so wish. You can leave a comment if you want to explore this NODE topic.
*** Having you choose the topics is maybe needless pressure and effort, for now. So I’ll navigate the first few lags of this wormhole.
EPISODE 1: A NEW HOPE
“Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists.”
-Kevin Kelley
Back in 2005, I came across this chart in a first-year physics book describing different models for our expanding universe, that looked something like this:
On the Y-axis you had space, and on the X-axis you had time, as both approached infinity.
Graph A assumed we’re just expanding indefinitely. Rather exhausting outlook in my opinion. B, proposed our universe expands for a while, then collapses upon itself. Dreadful thought. D, I can’t even remember what the shape looked like. I didn’t care. Because I was set on C.
I took one quick look and thought, it had to be C. A sine wave that drifted off into infinity. It was the most elegant (both instances of the word) and selfless outcome of the four options. Why would it be anything else? I didn’t even give the other models a chance. For years, I was convinced and comforted by this forgiving & eternal forecast - a universe that would expand and collapse like an accordion, with some cycles maybe giving life, other times perhaps not. It didn’t matter, there was no course . Matter, like that stuff stuff is made of, would inflate and deflate like a newborn’s lungs.
Fast forward ten years or so, and it dawned on me what I was experiencing something called faith. A word that I always balked at. Especially because I viewed most faiths to be self serving. But here I was wanting to believe in something to be true only because I found comfort and hope in the idea.
Recently, I experienced a similar fuzzy hope-fueled sensation about something elegant and selfless, but this time it wasn’t some natural law, but rather an invention... Or concept? I don't even know yet. And if you’ve tried to have a conversation with me in the last half year you can probably guess what it is. Drum roll please.... blockchain. Did I just lose you? I’m sorry, stay with me for a second.
As a funny parallel and side note, the more I started to research blockchain, the more I realized how it functioned like a faith or religion. Blockchain was created by a mysterious figure (Satoshi Nakomoto), who in the ancient days of blockchain gathered a few apostles to teach them how to practice cryptography, then suddenly vanished (maybe around Easter, idk?) only leaving behind an ancient script (actual code) and a commandment (a whitepaper). The script taught how we could treat each other equally.
OK, I’m stretching here. And I’m sure others have written a more concise comparison of blockchain as a religion. But I’m not here to discuss that. Although, the idea of blockchain as a faith is slightly ironic, as the fundamental idea behind the technology is that it actually eliminates faith or trust in any governing authority: that is to say, it’s a trust-less ecosystem.
It’s also worth noting that over the last ten years, much like a sped up version of monotheism, we’ve seen hundreds of blockchains sprout up and evolve from the original teachings of Satoshi, each with their own followers proselytizing masses on why their coin is the only true one promising salvation. And conveniently, each convert they attract secures their standing in their ‘church’, like some digital pyramid scheme.
But again, I’m not here to relate religion and blockchain. When I talk about hope and blockchain, I’m referring to the technology as a positive force for change. As I dug deeper, I felt more and more convinced (or hopeful?) that one day we’ll adopt blockchain into our daily lives. I also began wondering “HOW THE HECK HAD I NOT KNOWN ABOUT THIS BEFORE!?”*. I had heard about Bitcoin and blockchain over the last decade, and tried numerous times to better understand it. But I only scratched the surface. Let me bring you up to speed on my journey so far.
* The first time I had this feeling of being left in the dark, was when I came across the movie Drive a year after its release. I was disappointed in my friends that they had failed to bring this film up with me, and rattled by the fact that I had been living my life without knowing this film existed. (More motivation for this newsletter, so we make sure to tell friends things about important things, OK?). For weeks it was the only thing I wanted to talk about. And when I try to think about the significance of blockchain, to me it lies somewhere between Graph C and the movie Drive. Maybe it’s something that is worth about one hour and thirty five minutes of your attention. Or maybe coiners are being foolishly hopeful. Let’s find out.
Blockchain… What's the big deal?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say we’re on the verge of the biggest leap in technology we’ve taken since the global communication network that sprung to life at the turn of the century - where for the first time ever, one could send bits of information across the globe at the speed of light. I’m of course referring to the widespread adoption of the telegram in the late 1800s. Or as I like to call it, web .0. (see The Victorian Internet for more on this).
Okay, okay, web 1.0 and web 2.0 were pretty groundbreaking too. But now, about 130 years later, you can send more than just information around the world. You can send verified value across a peer-to-peer decentralized network, with the power of blockchain. Enter web 3.0.
OK, so what? Why should we care? Well, personally, the implications are still a bit unclear to me. Hah. But one hopeful outcome is prosperity. While the Victorian internet brought us closer together, you can argue that the 21st century internet may have actually driven us apart. In the last quarter century, we’ve seen a massive rise of wealth through web 1.0 and 2.0, but not shared prosperity. And when social inequality grows, so too does the nasty side of humans ( à la extremism, xenophobia, etc.). But can blockchain - some encrypted computer code that verifies a distributed ledger - really solve some of the biggest problems we face? Probably not. (Especially when we consider the current devastating carbon footprint of Bitcoin). But I am hopeful. And I want to take some time exploring how things may start to look different very soon.
A few things to note before we get started. (Wait, we’re not even started yet? WTH? )
i) Learning:
This post takes a rose-tinted glance at crypto. And I’m always trying to educate myself about both sides of crypto, so I invite people to share information with me. In addition, I’m a total no0b here. I’m learning about this space as I go. And I’m trying to explain things as I see them… which could be inaccurate ; ) so maybe take this with a big pinch of salt.
ii) Investing:
“I’m in it for the tech”, as the joke goes in the crypto space, either used sarcastically or to mock people who claim to be interested in the tech and social part of crypto, but really deep down are interested in investing for profits. And while I see crypto as a space for risky monetary gains, I’m not going to touch on this (at least today). If you want though, I created a crypto starter guide for beginners and also have an active telegram channel (Deep_space_69) where I share news… not financial advice. Although, I’d encourage you to learn about blockchain before investing. As cheesy as it sounds, I think the best way you can “invest” in crypto is by investing your time to learn about the space first… which brings me to my last point:
iii) Bitcoin and Blockchain technology:
I’ll avoid talking about Bitcoin and the intricacies of blockchain technology -- partly because I can barely wrap my head around it, but mainly because plenty of other great resources do it better, like Inventing Bitcoin, The Bitcoin Standard, and/or this short article “Bullish case for Bitcoin” to help understand Bitcoins place in the history of currency and trade.
But, in a nutshell, when we talk about blockchain technology, it’s often described as a distributed public, trustless, append-only ledger that can be programmed to record and track anything of value. A definition that needs footnotes:
Distributed - it’s a decentralized network that exists across thousands of computers with no one-central node or authority.
Public: it’s transparent and open-source.
Trustless: It doesn’t rely on trust to execute transactions.
Append-only: it’s immutable, where nothing can be erased, only added.
One thing to keep in mind though is that blockchain is MUCH larger than just Bitcoin and its digital currency bitcoin. Personally, I’m not very interested in Bitcoin. There’s only so much it can do* and it kinda feels like a dinosaur in the cryptospace. Speaking of fossil fuels, comparing its cryptographic verification mechanism, Bitcoin’s Proof of Work mining uses about 100x more electricity compared to its descendants that use Proof of Stake to verify blocks on the blockchain. But I suppose we have to pay respect to our ancestors. After all, Bitcoin was the first implementation of blockchain.
[*apparently this may all change with Taproot and the lightning network, which may introduce smart contracts!?]
The crypto revolution is coming
OK, let’s take a step back. It kinda sounded like we were talking about a new kind of internet? With value? What’s the big idea? Kinda sounds … like the internet? Yes, but an internet with incentives that drive human behaviour.
Let’s look at some basic examples of this, and how it could transform a few spaces. Possibly even make a difference for you.
i) The Shared Economy
Over the last decade, the so-called shared economy was packaged and sold to us with a cute little ribbon. Finally, a network for peer-to-peer services and an instrument for shared wealth creation and equality! Right!? Not quite. Instead, we saw giants like Uber and AirBnb, not the producer, take the lion's share - all while gathering and monetizing your personal data.
But how could blockchain change this? It cuts out the meddling middle men. Instead of paying something like 25% for a service like UberEats, producers (e.g. restaurants), carriers (e.g. delivery person) and consumers (e.g. your pie hole) transact over much smaller fees through a decentralized platform like Bistroo.* The kicker? No one owns Bistroo. And it’s open-source. Meaning, anyone can copy it and alter it (ie. “fork it”) into something that tailors their needs. Or even compete to create an ever better service.
[* I literally just found out about Bistroo today, so I may not have all the facts right ]
So does this mean the end of UberEats? Probably not. But my rose tinted glasses glimmer. We could see a rise in direct-to-consumer products and Dapps (Decentralized applications) like Bistro built on top of “smart contract” protocols like Ethereum.
Uber will probably be around for some time to come. But it’s possible we’ll see a truer definition of ride sharing, and the shared economy as a whole, come to fruition in the next decade. Perhaps in the future you won’t own a car, but instead own a fraction of a car, and rent it out through smart contracts while you’re not using it. In fact, any asset, physical or digital, could be on the blockchain, available for anyone to buy, share, rent, or loan. Divisible to any extent. Heck, even the shirt off my back. Or a thought in your head. And yes, this idea that everything and anything can be ascribed value and put onto the blockchain is maybe a bit scary. And maybe it's wise to explore the implications :)
But it’s a very powerful concept, which I haven’t come close to understanding. Partly because I still have a poor time understanding the meaning of an asset. But if we think of assets as a means to accomplish any particular goal, then maybe there’s something big at play here. In fact, I’ll put a NODE** here, and we can decide if this is something we should explore in another post.
[ ** I just decided that I’ll create Nodes in these posts, and we can come back and explore these ideas later if they’re interesting]
ii) DeFi (Decentralized Finance)
OK. This post is going on a lot longer than I intended. And it’s hard to talk about DeFi without a basic understanding of Ethereum or Smart Contracts.
Smart Contracts are a piece of code that are built into certain “newer” blockchains, like Ethereum. People often describe them as vending machines. User puts in a coin, enters a command “B1” and voila, they receive an output. In this case, it’s a bag of Doritos. Sounds simple. But here’s the interesting part: imagine these vending machines were ubiquitous, accessible to anyone connected to the internet, containing any asset. And these vending machines weren’t owned by anyone. They just existed. You just had to pay in ether (Ethereum’s token) to use them. That’s how we can pay to use services like our new delivery decentralized version of UberEats.
But this idea extends to the finance world too. And it looks promising. Here’s just a surface level look at how it can solve some real problems:
Banking: 25% of the world’s population is unbanked. That’s a lot of people who can’t access financial tools, like lending, saving, interest and credit. With verified transactions which mimic banks(through peer-to-peer smart contracts) , millions of people could, for example, secure a loan to start their own enterprise and help raise themselves out of poverty. Blockchains solving this? See MakerDao and AAVE.
Land Titlement: News to me, but this is an even bigger problem than the lack of banking. Apparently it’s the number one issue globally in terms of economic mobility, where 70% of the world's population lack legal registration of their land. It’s also about $10 trillion worth wealth locked up. Without land titles, people can’t borrow against it. Blockchain aims to fix this with an immutable record. Blockchains solving this? See Ubiquity.
Remittance: Another biggie. And it’s maybe the biggest scam out there. Apparently the biggest flow of capital from the developed to the developing world (can we still say that?) isn’t foreign aid, it’s remittances. About $550 billion dollars a year in 2019. And what do intermediaries like Western Union charge to send money back home? About 10%. Blockchain? About 2%. Blockchains solving this? I haven’t researched, but basically any cryptocurrency solves this.
OK, but why should I care?
So it sounds like there’s a lot that blockchain can solve globally. But maybe you already have a bank account, or can apply for credit, and heck, maybe you’re happy paying high fees for UberEats and AirBnb. So why should you care about blockchain? Short answer, I’m not positive. For now. Personally, I can see how it could improve a few things I’ve been interested in. And, a large part of my infatuation with blockchain is imagining how it could play into many of my personal interests and pursuits. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but all the projects I’ve loved developing over the last decade or so, have been about bringing people together, to use our collective power to grow and create something together. Including this newsletter, hopefully ;)
Cheese moment. I get really excited about collaboration. When humans have come together, we’ve accomplished some cool stuff. From building magnificent pyramids to flying to the moon. (And you’re like wait, weren’t the pyramids built by forced labour? Perhaps. But there is consensus among scientists that maybe that wasn’t the case). NODE: I’d like to explore the topic of collaboration.
Let’s look at some of my pet projects to see how (I’ve also shared more at the bottom):
How can I build a community that crowdfunds random acts of kindness, and follows a set protocols? What about creating a tool that allows ANYONE to make their own version of a Dollar Collective with their own networks (like school classrooms, choir groups or soccer teams, etc.)
Enter DAOs, like DaoMaker which allow for governance on the blockchain.NODE: I’d like to explore the world of DAOs. For a good read, check out Not Boring on DAOs.
How can I personally fund small, local projects around me (through a swipe of a thumb, like Tinder) without paying ridiculous fees?
Use LUNA to handle small micro payments. Think Visa, but for web 3.0.
Noodler
Can I be compensated for my time put into researching and writing a newsletter? What about everyone who adds value? Publish on Mirror. Wait, why am I using Substack then? I will switch to Mirror at some point. And what about my readers? Shouldn’t they be rewarded for giving me their attention?
Use the browser Brave and earn Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) just for your attention and simply browsing the web.
Right, OK. Sounds like maybe Dan sees value in crypto, but how will web 3.0 impact you?
We can look at some other examples….
How do I know the eggs that I’m buying are from a local, organic farmer? Or that my Sunday in August wine isn’t being counterfeited? (Apparently this is a big issue. Not for Sunday in August, but for wines in general). Try using a supply-chain blockchain like VeChain
How does the buyer and receiver know the price of delivery based on other real world data? Use an oracle like ChainLink
My business uses a Decentralized-application but how will my blockchain speak to other Dapps on the blockchain? See The Graph
What if I want to sell my used item to another buyer and verify its origins? Enter Lukso
What if I want to buy property without paying high broker fees? Try smart contracts.
What if I don't have all the capital required to own property? Own it with others using smart contracts on the blockchain. (OK I don't know what exists for this yet).
I have an asset X, that I only use once a month. What if I could loan my X, or, what if I could sell part of my X to an investor. What if I could sell my X, and rent X when I need it. Blockchain.
The opportunities are endless. There are thousands of cryptocurrencies solving many real problems out there. And I’m genuinely curious if in the future we’ll have multiple blockchains for each problem, or if somehow Bitcoin maximalists (who think one coin can do it all) are correct in their thinking. (Is that what they really think? NODE).
Never Break the Chain
Begin outro music plz.
This was supposed to be a post about hope and blockchain. I hope for a lot of things. I hope this post finds you, and piques your interest about the crypto-verse. I hope we see a greater adoption of blockchain and a rise in prosperity. I also hope that the further we wiggle down this wormhole, I’ll find more ways to collaborate and create something meaningful with you guys.
*Oh… and funny timing to be talking about hope and blockchain. As I write this, bitcoin’s price (which sorta acts like the benchmark for all other cryptos out there) just plummeted over 50%, from about an all time high of $64k to $31k. But, hey, I’m in it for the tech ; )
RESOURCES
Not Boring newsletter. Full of great weekly happenings in web3.0
Other personal projects that could benefit from the chain:
Apollo, Voyager, Icarus
How do you create a transparent and trustless ETF rocket ship for networks to invest in cryptos together?
I’m not sure there is anything out there yet. But I’d like to build a Dapp for the next bull run :)
How can I store and send time-delayed content on the internet, way into the future?
Turns out permanent file storage is very complicated problem. Use Arweave to permanently store your files forever, across a secure distributed network.
Think DropBox, but for web 3.0.
How can I create computer generated memes or comics with basic theories of humour and AI?
Let your program talk to other AI networks using AGI Singularity Net. Think AI, but a network of them learning from each other.
How can I make a living off making digital content?
Mint an NFT with OpenSeas, built on top of the Ethereum network.
How do I make a living off my video tutorials and reviews?
Put in on Theta. OK, ok… YouTube has been great for creators, but YouTube takes a large piece of the pie. Plus, why not get rewarded for watching videos?
How do you protect original creators and prevent leechers like FuckJerry from profiting from your work?
Put your digital content and IP on the blockchain first, perhaps as an NFT with Tezos.
I want an online shop to help sell my art, but I don’t want to have to pay for a service when it’s not being used.
Ha ok. I actually don’t know how blockchain would solve this. But at least instead of paying Square 2% (or whatever it is) on every sale, what about paying 0.01% with LUNA?