A New Chapter

New chapters begin only when old ones end.

Yesterday marked the end of my 6.5 year stint at my now former employer.

Monday will be the start of a new chapter. I'm super stoked. Full of hope. And ready for the new challange.

Confessions

When you extract them from others who've tried so hard not to provide them it feels hella satisfying.

There are tons of snakes out there.

Be careful.

Why Aren't More People Using dApps?

The reality is that there are only around 9k actual dApp users. Therefore we need to assume that the actual demand just doesn't exist (yet) for dApps or that the barriers that existing demand must surmount [to begin using a dApp] in order to satisfy that demand are too great, or some combination of the both.

Personally, I think it's some combination of those two factors. Telling a pre-coiner today they should be using dApps is no different then trying to sell someone from Mozambique ice in the 19th century - both individuals were hypocognitive of the "new" objects and had zero understanding what value they could provide and thus were ignorant to the fact that they should be demanding anything.

To stimulate demand for ice you don't need to explain the science behind freezing water to someone or even make them wait in front of a freezer for water to freeze. Instead you make them an ice cold, thirst quenching beverage. That's a super simple and super quick way of conveying the value and demonstrating the effect of ice all in one gulp.

Same with dApps today. What's the equivalent of making a margarita for dApps? I think it's Cent. Anyone with an email can sign up and provide a response just like the one I've written and vote other responses up or down just like you do on Reddit - and they will receive cold, hard ETH basically right away.

That does a lot of things at once: it quickly makes something that's been impossible possible, it demonstrates the power of this new tech, and it turns pre-coiners into instant *value* hodlers. That is the only tenable value proposition for dApps today imho. As time goes by that will obviously change.

Cent isn't perfect yet by any stretch of the imagination, but some yuge[sic] changes combined with the introduction of state channels will increase the value proposal for users to a ridiculous degree, thus making a cool beverage even tastier and more refreshing.

Every user of Cent can earn real ETH that they can then use on other more advanced dApps so it's beneficial for the whole space. Other dApps don't do that, and if they continue to focus only on their dApp, they'll continue to struggle with broader adoption.

Decentralized Identity Trilema

I've been thinking a lot about decentralized digital identity for a while, and I read an awesome article the other day that gave me a great framework to use and structure my thoughts.

Essentially any decentralized digital identity solution needs to satisfy the following three conditions:

1. Privacy Preserving (i.e. an ID can be acquired without revealing 'real name')
2. Self-sovereign (i.e.  anybody can create and control as many IDs as they wish)
3. Sybil-resistant (i.e. identity is subject to scarcity)

The long and short of the current state of decentralized digital identity solutions is that none of the current proposed solutions satisfy all three of those conditions. The sybil-resistance condition or the current lack of any source of scarcity for human capital is the main road block.

This is where Cent can come into play, I think. Although it hasn't satisfied each condition 100%, it has taken at least a half step towards satisfying them, including sybil-resistance - and all this is the indirect result of actions/designs made for other purposes. So that's pretty cool.

Halways Rong

HR.

Working in HR means you will always be wrong.

Accept it. And then turn your focus back to helping the company put together the best team possible, and make sure they are feeling like at least one person (you) have their backs.

Little things go a long way.

But you'll still always be wrong.

Exitus Acta Probat

For some reason I love Latin mottos. Maybe this has something to do with the outsized meaning they often contain within their compact form factor.

As any regular reader knows, I'm currently working my way through Ron Chernow's biography on George Washington. 

During my reading last night, I came across the Washington family's Latin motto that their coat of arms contains: Exitus Acta Probat.

It means: The outcome justifies the deed. Indeed.

Pro-sourcing

Yesterday as I was reading the comments below Fred's latest post on avc.com, I learned a new term: Pro-sourcing.

Ro Gupta, the CEO of Carmera, coined it to describe the process that reflects the unique needs of his company in terms of crowd-sourcing highly reliable and high quality data.

Pro-sourcing is crowdsourcing, but instead of sourcing data or responses from an indiscriminate crowd, data is sourced from a previously verified group of users so as to ensure quality data/responses.

Limits of Decentralization

If your name is associated with something, that knowledge is a potential central point of failure for that "thing."

As long as the identities of people involved in "decentralized" projects are public knowledge, that is an unavoidable reality.

That isn't necesaairly a criticism as much as it's a reality and tradeoff. I mean, if you were on the Peepeth team, for example, and some user posted kiddy pron[sic], you wouldn't be able to simply use 'blockchain' as an excuse not to do anything. Just as they do now (since the team is identifiable) they allow for admins to delete such content. And no one can be mad at them for doing that; but that means they can only describe their product as 'censorship resistant' and not 'uncensorable'.

That leads me to believe that the most powerful applications will be developed and released into the wild by anonymous devs. In that situation, any "value" will then accrue exclusively to end users (that may or may not include the original devs, and if it does, no one will be able to distinguish them from other users) so as to limit the liability issues that any dApp dev team faces.

Farewells

I'm nearing the end of the farewell drinking festivals before wrapping up my final week here next week and moving on to the next challenge in life.

It's been much better than I expected. Just great talks, with great people, over amazing food.

Another farewell is on-deck for tonight and I'm really looking forward to it. It's with a dear friend who I've collaborated with closely on several occasions not to mention was a regular lunch mate.

Tonight will be fun, but pray for my liver y'all. #thoughtsAndprayers

Bike Shedding

Meaning: Allocating a disproportionate amount of weight/time spent on a marginal but easy-to-grasp issue while more serious issues are overlooked.

Origin: According to legend, a group or committee that needed to approve plans for a nuclear PP instead came to focus on what materials would be used to build a bike shed instead...

Reading Three Books at a Time

Normally I'm a one book at time kinda guy. Since I'm a completionist that means I wait until I finish one book until I start the next one.

At least that's how I've read books up until now. Recently I've noted that many people seem to read multiple books at a time. USV's Albert Wenger is the only name that comes to mind now, but there's more - trust me ;)

Also I recently received my annual bulk book purhases, and there are a ton of tempting titles just begging to be read. So I've decided it's time for a change.

I am in the middle of reading three titles now: Rene Gerard's 'Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World', Ron Chernow's 'Washington: A Life', and James Surowiecki's 'The Wisdom of Crowds'. All three are incredibly engrossing and interesting.

Gerard's work is where I am concentrating the bulk of my attention and I'm reading it during my morning and evening commutes. As for the latter two, I am reading one to two chapters each before tucking into bed.

So far so good.

Unique Cent Use Cases

1.

New user finds Cent. New user earns crypto on Cent. New user posts a bounty on Cent using said crypto to advertise their gif animating talent. That's the story of Rita aka @gifanimator, a real life gif animator and Centian from Goa, India.

2.

@BrianXV adds "beta tester" to their resume based on the multiple beta tests they engaged in and were paid for on Cent.

Thoughtfulness Aggregator

In my post yesterday, I tried to show that the commenting community at avc.com and Hacker News as well as the increasing adoption of podcasts are proving that thoughtfulness is a small but growing global value.

That said, this "fact" isn't a driving force for those sites or for most people making podcasts (Sam Harris is certainly trying as hard as he can to act as an example of thoughtful living). Thoughtfulness is simply a happy by-product.

In the case of HN, they have gone a little bit further and made thoughtfulness an explict ideal that should guide commenting behavior, but Paul Graham has written many times in his blog how he has tried to set the site up to be as hands off as possible. In other words, beyond a decentralized karma point system, nothing is being done to aggregate, stimulate or otherwise incentivize thoughtful users.

Jimmy Song Tweeted something I found incredibly profound the other day. Speaking about BTC specifically (as he always does), but imo applicable to other crypto as well, he said:

Hacker News defines thoughtfulness or - to be more precise - thoughtful comments as comments that are at once both civil and substantial. To be substantial, according to Graham, means that something should be taught. Teaching is both giving and gifting, or at least that's how Heidegger saw things, and to me at least, Graham and Heidegger are both essentially talking about providing value.

So we have Jimmy talking about how 'hard money' is great at making people give something [of value - in his Tweet that means creative value] to get said hard money on the one hand, and we have Graham on the other hand exhorting users to make thoughtful comments - literally adding creative value

It's precisely at this this intersection of Graham and Jimmy where Cent, that amazing little project I have obsessively written about, has set down roots. Cent takes the power of hard money and is aggregating thoughtful users from around the world. Cent is fundamentally thoughtful in a way that is so profoundly different from anything else the world has ever seen.

And Cent is just getting started.

Thoughtfulness: An Emergent Global Trend

Thoughtfulness has been a key feature of the commenters on avc.com and Hacker News now for around a decade. But their numbers have been relatively tiny compared to the overall readership (I am making an assumption that what's true on avc.com is true on HN, so I could be wrong, but I don't think that's the case).

Podcasts in particular have arisen as the gold standard of thoughtful discourse and conversation, and in my opinion are the single greatest contributing factor to what appears to be the global spread of thoughtfulness. That said, the number of people who listen to podcasts has been growing, but the percentage of people who listen to podcasts regularly is still very low.

I'm not sure I've read or heard anyone speak of thoughtfulness as a trend or trait. I've only seen it mentioned to either describe an individual team's approach to business or as an ideal for how users should behave.

To me though, thoughtfulness appears to be an elevated, evolved philosophy of living. It is the key to all problems, not because it's a solution, but because it allows for the solution to be sought after to begin with, then found, discussed and agreed upon.

Thoughtful people are emerging more and more. And they are impacting many more. But their numbers are still small. Imagine though, what would become possible if something allowed for thoughtful people to create strong bonds *and* encouraged many more people to live thoughtfully...

Re-thinking *Everything*

Nothing is sacred anymore.

'Sacredness' used to denote pockets of culture, groups, or actions that were off limits from thinking and questioning.

The 'sacred' period of human history has thankfully passed us by and hasn't been dominant for centuries, but innumerable relics installed during that period still remain.

Many of those relics, such as the Catholic church for example, continue on relatively unchecked, unchanged and un-thought allowing their negative, rotten elements to continue to wreak havoc on those that are in it's wake.

The solution is not to thoughtlessly exterminate such 'sacred' relics from this world. We can't even be sure that positing that there should be a solution is correct.

Instead, growing and cultivating individual and collective thoughtfulness is the most important counter we can establish to protect ourselves before beginning the process of questioning and re-thinking *everything*.

Why does the Playstation Store Suck?

Let me clarify: Why are the payment options on the Playstation Store so shitty?

I spent way too much time last evening figuring out how to buy a pre-paid card in the Playstation Store, only to have to download some payment app I didn't have, before having to enter in the 12 digit code to seed my digital wallet with funds, before I could finally purchase Battlefield I and a 1 month of Playstation online.

Anyways, it feels great to have surmounted that mountain of a challange. Will vent my frustration in-game sniping noobs.

Identity on the Blockchain

There is an interesting thread on r/ethereum sub-reddit asking what the hell happened to identity on the blockchain. I'll share my reply here:

"As with most things, it seems like projects seeking to be *the* blockchain identity solution are doing too much. And as a result the solutions they're building are too complicated.

Much of the complexity seems to stem from trying to anchor real-name identity onto the blockchain. Imho that is such a complete mis-step.

For anyone that actually uses any dApps today, the wallet they're using to sign Txs with is effectively creating an identity for them already.

With dApps like Cent at https://beta.cent.co users are receiving ETH to reply to bounties. In other words, they're getting paid to work. And their work, if it's good enough to get them paid, is linked to the actual payment they received. As long as they control their private keys, they are the only ones who can prove that particular identity and past work.

Each user's payslip effectively becomes and identity and resume when viewed in that light. That's pretty incredible.

With that realization, there are of course some pretty clear if non-trivial UI tweaks that are needed to make this resume/identity easier to use (e.g. ERC-721 Avatar that carries this info, a way to organize the work attached to the financial meta-data, etc...).

If blockchain identity is approached from this angle, users will be able to get a way more approachable and workable solution way quicker than they will if they wait for solutions from the projects you mentioned. That's my opinion at least."

Anniversaries

Cent turned one today.

One year ago to the day it launched on mainnet.

It's grown into something super special. The promise is overwhelming.

The seed has sprouted. And it's about to branch out in a very, very cool way.

Get ready. We are.

When I Fell Down the Crypto Rabbit Hole

As I've said many times before, my responses to bounties on Cent are basically ready-made blog posts. My response today to a bounty asking how fellow Centians first fell down the proverbial crypto rabbit hole is just another example. I hope you enjoy.

--------------------------

It seems that most people differentiate between when they first heard of crypto versus when they actually fell down the so-called crypto rabbit hole – well, I’m no different.

I first heard of BTC sometime back in 2014. At the time a small group of work buddies and I would gather every morning at a café in downtown Gangnam to shoot the shit. One buddy had already bought some BTC (I think because of an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience that Andreas had appeared on) and he managed to get a few others to speculate, but not me. Passive wealth acquisition didn’t much interest me then, and still doesn’t tbh.

By the middle of 2015, most of the original morning coffee group had moved on to the next phases of their lives and careers, but one buddy who invested in BTC at the behest of our mutual friend in 2014 remained. In lieu of morning coffee, we began taking afternoon strolls where we would talk about this or that. I remember one walk on a brisk autumn afternoon in mid-October in particular – that’s when my friend asked me if I’d heard of Ethereum. I hadn’t. And then he mentioned smart contracts.

That started everything. I spent the rest of that afternoon pulling up what articles I could find on Ethereum and smart contracts (smart contracts!!). But before hopping on the company shuttle and heading home for the day, I made the discovery that ultimately ended up pushing me head first down that damned crypto rabbit hole. There was a very striking name that was mentioned across a few separate articles that had caught my eye: that name was Vinay Gupta.

A quick google search of Vinay resulted in a link to an episode he’d done on The Future Thinkers Podcast. I must have listened to that episode at least 6 times before somehow falling asleep. Tbh, I’m not sure I every really woke up. I hope I never do ;)

Hypocognitive

The term 'hypocognitive' refers to that lack of a linguistic or cognitive representation for an object, category or idea that one often experiences when first confronting an "unknown unknown."

It's attributable to Robert Levy.

If you want to use hypocognitive in a sentence, 'to be hypocognitive of...' is an acceptable form to employ the term.

With something like crypto - or Cent - anyone who hasn't gone down the crypto rabbit hole is fundamentally hypocognitive of it. We're essentially selling ice to people from Martinique in the 19th century - they have no concept of frozen water let alone the value of it.

So, we need to market the eff out of it, and educate a whole bunch of people. And that's ok, because, well, can you imagine what the world would be like without ice today?

New Cent Updates - Shipped

Get your butts over to beta.cent.co and check out the two new features we just pushed live.

Now when Centians post a bounty, instead of the bounty being earmarked for distribution to 10 recipients by default, bounty posters now have the ability to set the number of recipients that are eligible to receive a payout from 1 to 100.

And we now have moon mode (i.e. Cent's version of dark or night mode) and it's sexy as hell.

Read a more detailed write up the updates here.

About Last Night

Last night was my farewell thrown for me by my old team.

It was perfect.

And I'm still in bed. Welp.

Values & Behaviors

I read the interview between Stratechery's Ben Thompson and the CEOs of Patreon and Memberful today and the following quote from Patreon's CEO Jack Conte has really stuck with me:

"Also, from a philosophical perspective, our number one core behavior — some companies have values, Patreon has behaviors, we like that word because it’s something you can do — is Put creators first."

Putting behavior ahead of values is a great philosophy. And now I'm distilling down what Cent's core behaviors are.

Token Extensibility

Extensibility. That's a word I've been hearing more and more lately, and I'm sure we'll soon be hearing seemingly all the time in the not too distant future.

Unfortunately it isn't the easiest term in the world to intuit.

Thankfully though crypto has Bryan Flynn, an awesomely clear thinker on all things NFTs, who has in a recent article provided what I think is the best example that clarifies what token extensibility actually is: Access.

"If users obtain a token in their wallet, they can unlock new features or tokens in other dApps. Tokens which were once worth nothing, now are worth the equivalent of whatever feature/token it unlocks."

For example, say you have a CryptoKitty. And say I have a dApp that is looking to attract a bunch of crypto-familiars. Since every CryptoKitty owner is a crypto-familiar, and since ownership is provable, I can provide something of value just for CryptoKitty owners who sign up to my dApp using the ETH address that their CryptoKitty is tied to. That token can then be used as an avatar. And it can be tied to all the work/actions they carry out on the dApp. But they can use it on other dApps too.

We live in amazing times. And things keep getting better and better.

Get You Some...Durian?

So this post is a bit out of the ordinary, but thanks to the fact that our Asa Pacific Region HR Manager 'P' is in Seoul visiting our corporate HQ, I've been able to procure some valuable intelligence.

Anyone who knows anything about South East Asia knows that a particular fruit causes a big stink amongst foreigners, but is considered somewhat of a local delicacy. 

Of course I'm talking about durians. And while I haven't had one, when I eventually do (and you best believe I will have it someday) I want to have the best. Luckily P is both a Singaporean Singaporean and a huge fan of durians so I asked her what's the best durian.

Turns out Mountain King durians are. And they aren't cheap at around $30 per kilo. They are also extremely rare and must be sought out (so if some rando near Clarke Quay says they have a Mountain King, chances are it's fake). I'll share one of the two places I was told one could procure this funky bitter delicacy: Serangoon.

Now stick that in your back pocket for when you're next in Singapore and head forth into the glorious day (or evening) ahead.

Not Giving a Fuck Quotient

All jobs come with some amount of bullshit.

That bullshit may come in the form of backward processes, limited R&R, poor leadership/teammates, or some combination of those elements.

For the sake of harmony and in the hopes that the bullshit may be improved, although many people will talk about the bullshit freely with co-workers of the same or lower rank, nearly everyone will avoid speaking directly with their senior managers about the bullshit.

In other words the 'not giving a fuck quotient' of most corporate white collar office employees is quite low. This is probably owing to the average employee's fear of getting fired for "saying something wrong."

But I'm on my way out of a job in a place where the bullshit is unusually shitty. And my 'not giving a fuck quotient' has gone from zero to 100. So I am being very honest with my senior managers about the state of the bullshit.

The surprising thing that shouldn't be surprising, is that many senior managers have been not only receptive, but deeply thankful to me for that level of uninhibited honesty. This is because I'm finally giving voice to frustrations they've been experiencing *too* but haven't been able to seriously address or discuss.

Which makes me think, maybe I should simply continue not giving a fuck, since that appears to actually be the antidote for bullshit.

Reddit vs. Cent

This month I'm focused on getting my Reddit comment karma up.

I'm doing this so my posts to r/ethereum stop getting auto-moderated...

Anyways, as I'm engaging more with Reddit I am noticing how dramatically different it actually is from Cent.

Mainly, from what I can tell, the type of comments that get up-voted the most on Reddit seem to be pithy little one liners, whereas on Cent thoughtful (i.e. civil and substantial) responses that are of a non-trivial length tend to get voted up and thus receive a share of the bounty.

Of course there are many, many thoughtful responses on Reddit too, but they don't seem to get up-voted as much as one would expect. Users can tell, and it seems to be discouraging.

The fact that thoughtful responses get up-voted basically 100% of the time on Cent is therefore quite remarkable, and should be viewed as one of it's greatest strengths.

Cow Intestines

It was a celebration. 

Much was discussed. 

More was consumed. And imbibed.

It was lovely.

Location: Secret.

And it was Written

The dirty ballet of my Korean negotiation has finally come to an end.

Actually it came to a satisfactory end about a week earlier than I had originally earmarked it for - which bodes well for the quality of the team I'll be joining.

I got everything I wanted and then some. Big raise. Check. Multi-year contract. Check. Senior title. Check. Bonus scheme. Check. Maintain all other existing benefits. Check.

So all this is to say I'm going to have a very nice weekend with the wife. Hope everyone is staying cool.

Also, feel free to hit me up if you think you may want someone to help guide you through your next salary nego - it will seriously pay off if you do.

Early Days of Crypto Collectibles

How early is it for crypto collectibles?

This early:

There is still sooo much more that needs to be done to help stimulate adoption.

Serving Through Gifting

Barring any hiccups with the current negotiation I mentioned yesterday, I will be starting the next phase of my career early next month.

Until then I am basically on a month long office vacation.

With all that time in front of a monitor I expect to read the internet about 2~3 times.

Today I read a fantastic Rolling Stone article on Brock Pierce, an enlightened "Hippie King of Crypto." I'd heard the name, but up until today I had no real idea who Brock was.

Well he has quite the story. My favorite quote though from Brock pretty much sums up everything that Brock seems to be: "We’re here in service, and we serve through gifting. We’re here to take our skills – our superpowers – and figure out how to help Puerto Rico, the Earth and the people."

Serving through gifting. Gifting has never been easier with crypto gifts literally taking just a few thumb taps to carry out. Fantastic times. And a fantastic article - you should definitely check it out.