Crypto
- How do you find the things you put in the Weekly Thing?
- How do you create each issue?
- How do you maintain consistency?
- My task template that I use for each week
- The automation that I have created to build each issue
- The overall toolchain that I use to create it
- Specific tactics to maintain sustainability of a long-term project like this
- Todd Van Nurden, Principal Developer Cloud Architect and Mad Scientist, Microsoft Technology Center’s
- Sam Pierson, Chief Technology Officer, Talend
- Tammylynne Jonas, Global CIOGlobal CIO, Donaldson
- Why now? AI has been in the works for a long time. Has there been a technological breakthrough recently?
- How does Generative AI affect how we build software.
- How does Generative AI benefit from these early releases.
- Opportunities technologists see to use this capability in their organizations.
- What are some of the risks to keep an eye on?
- AI as a coach or mentor?
- Easy to parse list of upcoming community events
- No more than three relevant links to news about the tech community
- Community Supporter Highlight, randomly share a bio about one of the community supporters each issue
- Project Highlights from Community Supporters to submit and share a project (personal, hobby, business) that they would like to highlight for everyone
- re(center)ed which provided an opportunity for people to write a message on a piece of wood and then hang it anonymously on the wall. Every few hours the curator would pull them down and burn them in a “pyre”, releasing the sentiment.
- Archive of Collective Memory that allowed you to submit a message via the web that was then turned into an audio loop and played through a wooden wall that you had to put your ear against to hear it.
- Blankets of Ice which had a bedroom set in the middle of the snow with a “quilt” pattern made of colored ice blocks.
- Chapsicle of Love provided marriage service at the event.
- Techno From the Sun was a shanty powered only by solar energy with people DJ’ing techno music inside. You could modify and add to the mix by moving levers and dials on the outside of the shanty.
- On-chain analytics, how close am I to POAP.eth via POAPs?
- Add annotation to each POAP so I can fill out the memory more.
- Notify me of POAP drops “around me”
- Notify me of any POAP Deliveries waiting for me.
- Credit for 1 mainnet migration a month.
- Issue POAP by email address, hide claim codes entirely from everyone.
- Collections/series of POAP.
- Integration with my analytics service, so embed my Phantom Analytics or other tracking code.
- Support for external identifiers in claim codes so I can embed an identifier to my systems.
- Post-claim redirect.
- Additional metadata added to each claim
- White Label claim page
- Design services, POAP specific look
- Priority support, will hit your deadline
- Assistance with claim code distribution
- Everything in POAP Pro.
- 2 Studio events a year included.
- Would need something more.
- PAOP Pro for free
- 1 Studio events a year
- Ways to make claim code management and distribution easier. When I talk with people about distributing POAPs managing the claim codes is always a burden.
- Anti-farming for issuers would be nice. I had one POAP event get completely farmed and I would like to be able to invalidate that event somehow.
- Creating images for POAPs seems like an obvious capability. POAPathon is doing this at small scale. Even for organizations that have their own designers they may want help getting that POAP-look.
- RSS has been around since 1999 and is still one of the most widely supported way to syndicate activity across the web. RSS is used by hundreds of different Feed Readers, which would be great for POAP to support. Equally important are services like IFTTT and Zapier that can take any RSS feed and use that as a trigger for automation. If every event offered an RSS feed of POAP claims, that could be used by event organizers to power a ton of automations when a token is claimed.
- Webhooks would also allow additional integrations with POAP events. Webhooks would be a great middle option between the full POAP API, and something simple like RSS. If you could register one, or even multiple, Webhooks for an event that would be triggered on a claim you could do even more powerful extensions into platforms like Zapier. Additionally this would allow an easy way for app developers to connect to POAP events and claims.
- Creating a POAP event is incredibly simple. You don’t need to even create an account, all you need is an email address. This is great to remove friction but it also means that anyone can create any event. POAP has put significant effort into the curation body and review process to make sure that events meet some basic standards. But there is no way to assert that an event is truly from the organization or event it describes. It would be great to be able to sign the event with your wallet! For example, my Birthday POAP would be more authentic if the event was signed by the thingelstad.eth wallet. This opens up a common set of issues associated with verification, but verifying that events are authentic would make those POAPs more meaningful.
- There is an opportunity to have POAPs for things that are bound to locations instead of times. There is already a POAP Geocaching app in the store and there has been at least a couple experiments like this. That would be a cool capability, but I would also think that POAPs that are well known to collect at locations would be very neat. I would make one for my house that visitors could collect (preferably signed by both thingelstad.eth and knoxave.eth!). Another use case I would love is a POAP for summiting a climb. If you removed time limitations, this would be ideal for restaurants and cafes to have a perpetual POAP you can claim for visiting their location.
- POAP events can currently be minted from a claim code, or reserved using an email address. The email option is a nice intent but it doesn’t do much. You reserve your POAP to mint later, even after the expiration date for the event. But until you mint it you will not show up on the list of token holders, and cannot do anything else. This is an okay feature but it is confusing. People tend to thing they are done after reserving with an email address. POAP should send reminder emails to nudge those that have reserved to move forward with minting. And it would be great for event organizers to be able to see reservations to help people get them minted.
- Better yet would be to have POAP provide a non-custodial wallet for users that don’t have one. This could work very similar to what Reddit has done to get Collectible Avatars working. In Reddit, you can provide your own wallet, or you can let Reddit make one for you. The wallet that it makes is completely real, and you have the choice of letting Reddit store the seed phrase to recover it, or you can manage it on your own. This would be ideal for POAP as well. With this capability you could get rid of the reservation process entirely by creating a wallet and managing it for people. If it is fully capable, like a Reddit wallet, you could even give it an ENS name and add it to a MetaMask or Rainbow if you wanted.
- Sponsoring a contest.
- Submitting a design to a contest.
- Volunteers managing a contest.
- Volunteers sending a newsletter (see below).
- Volunteers hosting a community call.
- Winning a contest is already rewarded with the bounty. Governance tokens should be given equally to any artist that participates in a contest. Winning should not be a factor for governance tokens.
- Community call attendance is already rewarded with POAPs, and that should continue. That rewards engagement, and governance tokens reward contribution. However, a volunteer hosting a community call should be rewarded.
- Encryption has been an open debate for 30 years and is still unsettled. I suspect that crypto will have a similar path. I don’t think we will gain a consensus as a society soon.
- Existing entities with power that is threatened by encryption and crypto will not give it up easily. Progress will be slow and begrudgingly.
- Unfortunately these technologies do get used for nefarious activities. Terrorists do use encryption to protect terrible things, and bad actors do use Bitcoin to get payments.
Hosting Minnebar 17: How to Newsletter
Update: Sorry to say that this session had to be cancelled. We had some travel plans come up and we will only be able to attend Minnebar 17 for half the day. We are still going to do the POAP session though.
I’m going to host a session at Minnebar 17 on How to Newsletter: Lessons from 250 Issues of The Weekly Thing. This is my first time presenting at Minnebar in several years. I’m excited to do it again!
If this is interesting to you, register on the Sessionizer and indicate that you might attend this session.
I have been publishing The Weekly Thing since May of 2017. With 250 issues of the newsletter complete I’m hosting this session to share the common questions that I get about:
Additionally I will be covering:
This session will be focused on the creator and building. We will not be covering marketing, social media, or anything related to newsletter monetization or subscriptions.
Minnebar 17 POAPs
I am excited to share that all attendees to Minnebar 17 will be getting a POAP token! In addition to the traditional t-shirt, there will be a unique claim code given to everyone so that they can claim a permanent collectible from the event. 🎉
What is a POAP? Technically it is an NFT that is issued as a collectible for an event or occasion. It is like a digital version of a sticker or shirt. I’ve collected over 80 of them, see my collection for some examples.
POAP is pronounced “poh-ap”.
Update: Also see the Minnebar 17 StayNftyMpls 612 Series Giveaway!
The POAPs
There will actually be three POAP tokens given at Minnebar 17. 🤩
Attendee: All attendees will be given a claim code when they check in on arrival. Everyone that attends will get one of these.
Presenter: All presenters that sign up via the Sessionizer will have a claim code sent to them.
Organizer: All organizers who help put the event on will have a claim code sent to them.
Any holder of these POAPs will also be eligible to enter into a raffle at no cost to win something special. Stay tuned for more information on that!
I also plan to have my personal You’ve met thingelstad.eth tokens ready for distribution. Ask me for one at the event. 😊
How to get ready?
If you want to get ready ahead of time so that you can claim these easily you can do two things.
First, you need an Ethereum wallet and address. If you don’t have one, I highly recommend using Rainbow on iOS or Android. It is a very well done wallet and is simple to setup and get started with. It is totally free.
Once you have an address you are ready to go, but if you want to make it even easier you can install the POAP App too. This is also available on iOS and Android. If you configure this with your wallet address you can automatically claim a POAP just by scanning a QR code or tapping an NFC device.
Questions
What is a POAP?
POAP stands for Proof of Attendance Protocol. The POAP website has a good explainer. Functionally they are ERC-721 tokens issued on the Gnosis blockchain. The smart contracts for POAPs have a number of additional applications built around them to add additional utility.
How much does this cost?
Nothing. No funds or crypto are required to collect as many POAPs as you want. All gas fees for minting the POAPs are covered by POAP.
What is the environmental impact?
POAPs are issued on the Gnosis blockchain which uses a proof-of-stake validator mechanism similar to modern Ethereum. As such, it uses minimal power.
Can I sell the POAP?
POAPs are meant to collect and curate memories, not make money. It is strongly discouraged to sell a POAP, but technically you can. As an ERC-721 NFT you can send POAPs from one wallet to another on Gnosis chain. You can also migrate the POAP to Ethereum mainnet, however there is a 0.1 ETH fee for doing that which is largely intended to keep people from attempting to sell them.
Why do some POAP owners have names?
POAPs are held by wallets, and if you buy and configure an Ethereum Name Service name the wallet address can be displayed as a name. If you would like to do this, go to the ENS app and buy your preferred name, remember to set the reverse address lookup, and your name will be shown instead of an address.
If you have other questions, check out the POAP Help Center.
Transferring NFTs in Bulk
After I created additional Ethereum addresses for specific applications, I wanted to move existing assets to align with that.
Ethereum Name Service
Moving ENS names is a special case. The ENS address is itself an NFT, but you cannot just send these to another address. You can move them, but you have to do it in the ENS application. For each of the 21 ENS names I have I did an on-chain transaction to move them to ens.thingelstad.eth. It was easy to do, and even though there was no bulk operation it wasn’t hard to do. Each move incurred some gas fees.
POAPs and NiftyInks
With over 70 POAPs to move I really didn’t want to do these by hand. And with over 730 Nifty Inks it was out of the question to do it by hand. I looked at how to move POAPs and the FAQ recommended uNFT Wallet. I connected my wallet via Gnosis Chain and uNFT Wallet already had the contract address for POAP and Nifty Ink. I was able to move most of my POAPs with one transaction and a second after doing a test. They are now in POAP.thingelstad.eth.
I had never transferred POAPs between accounts and it is interesting that these now show on POAP as have 2 transactions. Some POAP apps like Salsa no longer show the same connections after doing this. I think that is fine, but it is worth noting.
It was less simple with Nifty Ink since I was moving over 730 NFTs. uNFT Wallet refused to even try and move all of them in one go, and there wasn’t a way to select 100 NFTs at a time. So I had to click groups of 60-90 of them and do a transaction each. After doing several of these, there were a handful of stragglers left that I actually used Nifty Ink to send to the other wallet. They are now all in niftyink.thingelstad.eth! 🎨
Thanks uNFT Wallet
There is no way I could have done this without a bulk tool like uNFT Wallet. It was an easy choice to buy one of their Limited Edition supporter NFTs to help support the project.
Isolating Crypto Assets and Access
For the last couple of years I’ve done all of my Ethereum activities using my thingelstad.eth address with the associated identity. I’ve used this for storing value, holding NFTs, collecting POAPs, and everything else. I decided that it was time to create some isolation of access and identity.
I’m still using thingelstad.eth as my primary address and means of authenticating with various services. It also holds a number of my NFTs and crypto assets. But I’ve also now created two activity-specific addresses.
mint.thingelstad.eth is the address that I’m using specifically just to mint NFTs. When you mint NFTs you have to authenticate with a new smart contract and usually provide some form of limited access to your assets. By using a dedicated address just for minting I can limit the risk of a malicious smart contract.
vault.thingelstad.eth is the reverse of the minting address. This address is specifically to hold NFTs or other assets that I have no intent of selling or transferring. This address will never be used to authenticate to any website. All activities here will be done using wallet transfers.
Additionally, I decided to create some specific addresses for applications that I use a lot. This was inspired in part from Vitalik’s conclusion:
That said, it is my view that wallets should start moving toward a more natively multi-address model (eg. creating a new address for each application you interact with could be one option) for other privacy-related reasons as well.
I love the idea of wallets automatically associating a unique address with each application. I do this today by using a masked email addresses with Fastmail and passwords managed by 1Password.
ens.thingelstad.eth is the address I’m using to hold my Ethereum Name Service registrations. ENS has built in capability for one address to register a name, and the control of that name to be delegated. So all of my 21 registered ENS names are now owned by this address, and control of them is delegated to thingelstad.eth. The only app that will ever connect to this address is ENS itself, which protects my name registrations from malicious actors.
POAP.thingelstad.eth is an address I’ve made just for collecting POAP tokens. I currently hold 90 different POAP tokens in this address. This allows me to have a specific identity and address just for POAP usage. Most activity for this address is on Gnosis Chain since that is what POAP uses natively.
niftyink.thingelstad.eth is an address just for using Nifty Ink. I’ve collected 736 “inks” on this site and now I have them isolated into an address that I only use for that purpose. 🤩 This is again a way to limit access from a malicious smart contract.
Technically I also have reddit.thingelstad.eth but was created by necessity since Reddit Vaults are managed differently. However, it serves the same pattern as the other application specific addresses.
I minted Cat #2230 of the Ukraine Cats Division. This NFT project is raising funds to help Ukraine defend itself. I think I’ll mint a few more and get a Ukraine Cat Platoon going. 😸🇺🇦
MnTech Leadership Forum: Generative AI
Today I hosted the MnTech Q1 2023 Tech Leadership Forum. The organization is changing the format of this event to have technology leaders run these quarterly forums. I thought it would be fun to focus on the topic that is making so much press lately — Generative AI: Harnessing Disruption into Innovation.
I was lucky enough to get three others to join in the dialog:
Some of the topics discussed:
Since it was an invite only event for members there isn’t a video to share. 😕
Of course there is a POAP for the event! And even more exciting, the POAP is also held by POAP.MnTech.eth which is the first POAP that MnTech is officially producing.
I Adopted Thinking Face Emoji
I ran across this Adopt a Character campaign from the Unicode Consortium and felt like a donation made sense. But what emoji to pick? After thinking through a few I decided Thinking Face. 🤔
This is fun, but I think it would be so much cooler if this program worked by selling NFTs. It has all the right characteristics with Gold and Silver levels being limited, and Bronze being “open editions.” It would be really fun to have this in my wallet as proof of participation.
Extending the Minnestar Community Supporter Program
In a recent conversation with Minnestar Executive Director Maria Boland Ploessl I was very pleased to hear about the amazing growth of the Minnestar Community Supporter program. Community Supporters were something that we launched when I was on the board of Minnestar to create an opportunity for individuals to support Minnebar and Minnedemo, in addition to companies. It was always significant, even on the first year, but it has grown a lot in recent years. The biggest part of that growth has been the structured year-end giving program which I was happy to be a matching supporter of this year.
The growth is awesome, but the program itself hasn’t changed materially since the launch. The primary benefit of being a Community Supporter is that you are guaranteed a ticket to the highly in-demand events that Minnestar hosts. That is a great benefit, but I’ve always wondered what more could be done for this great group of people that are helping support our technology community. Particularly what could be done outside of events.
In my opinion, being a Community Supporter of Minnestar should be table stakes for any technology leader in the region. It should be the most direct way to give back to the technology community we are all part of, and provide meaningful value to the supporter individually. I think supporting the events and community is solid, but the only meaningful value to the individual is a guaranteed ticket.
So what more could be done to grow the program? Some ideas…
Create Connection
People that become Community Supporters are a pretty special and fun group. Creating more connection in that group could be incredibly valuable. This could be done with in two phases.
First, launch an every-other week newsletter just for Community Supporters. This newsletter could include:
The newsletter could be the whole thing, but if there is an increase in engagement a forum for Community Supporters could get traction. I specifically do not mean Slack or Discord. Those are far too high engagement. A platform like Discourse seems much better suited to this. I think Minnestar could benefit from a Discourse like platform for everything, with Community Supporters being a member only section.
Membership
There needs to be more ways to show a persons affiliation with Minnestar, and recognize that support. I’ve been a Minnesota Public Radio member since 1995. How do I know that? My member card says it. I’ve been an Electronic Frontier Foundation member since 2010. It’s on my member card.
First step of this should be to issue an actual Minnestar Community Supporter member card. Cards have to be printed, they expire, etc. There is effort to do this but it gives me something to carry with me and show my membership.
This should also be extended into the digital world with POAP tokens. There should be a POAP for each year given to community supporters. Over the years, you collect each yearly POAP.
This would also be an opportunity to highlight the work of a local artist and create a uniquely designed card and token each year that isn’t just membership, but something that people feel like collecting.
I’ve been a Community Supporter member since the program started, but I have no idea how long that has been!
Input & Direction
Community Supporters as a group could be given the opportunity to have input on Minnestar activities. As a group votes could be taken. Thought would have to be given on what the votes are on. There is a Minnestar Board and various committees, and they should continue to do what they do. But there could be decisions that the community supporters are asked to give a vote on.
I had long thought that it would be really great for one of the Minnestar board seats to be a Community Supporter seat. In this case, the Community Supporters would elect amongst themselves one member that would represent them on the board. This could be facilitated via the forum above, with members raising their hands to serve and make their case followed by an official voting period.
This would lend itself exceptionally well to a Minnestar DAO, with membership gated via the Community Supporter POAP that you receive each year.
Ecosystem Benefits
It would be interesting to explore ways that other organizations in the technology community may want to extend benefit to Community Supporters of Minnestar. This is one of the key reasons to create Membership with a card and a token. Perhaps Twin Cities Startup Week would offer some unique opportunity. Or Tech.MN give a discount on membership. Or early access to certain events.
This would require that Minnestar reach out to have conversations around this with other events, and require proof of being a Community Supporter without access to Minnestar resources. I think this could work, and may be welcome from other organizations as well.
Art Shanty Projects
We went to the Art Shanty Projects on Lake Harriet today. Tammy has been to this many times, but it was my first. I do like events like this that make for fun days in the cold of winter. The Shanties themselves were very cool. Notable highlights:
I was left wanting to have a Shanty next year that distributed a POAP and allowed people to record a memory of the event in some way. 🤔
Echo Forest Launch
Today is the launch of Echo Forest. This NFT project has Minneapolis connections being led by Brooks Clifford and Matt Benesch.
I minted two Wolf Healers, 18 and 19. I really dig the artwork and I’m excited to see how the utility evolves. Plus it is a great opportunity to be involved in a local project.
POAP Family
The new POAP Family feature is a cool way to see what POAPs people share between events. I looked at holders of my 50th Birthday POAP and I was surprised to see that there were 7 Cryptog’s HODLER’s who had my birthday POAP. The biggest were 13 of the 34 that also had my 51st Birthday POAP.
This kind of graph analysis of POAPs is an interesting extension and a way to build connection.
POAP as a Business
POAP is more than just a fun crypto product, it is also a business. I put some brief thoughts together on what I thought would be a POAP product that I would pay for as both a collector and an issuer.
As a POAP collector, I would want to pay a relatively small monthly fee to be able to get cool information about my collection and display it well.
POAP Collector - $3/mo
Now, changing hats to the issuer side there are a whole different set of things. What if we just kept everything as is, but added a new POAP Pro level.
POAP Pro - $20/mo
I think you could then have a service to provide a “full service” experience for the issuer.
POAP Studio - $500/event, require Pro subscription
And then you could turn both the Pro and Studio option into a subscription offering.
POAP for Business - $100/mo or $1,000/yr
And lastly, I think non-profits could be a really great avenue to get the word out about POAP. Aligning with non-profits would reach a very solid set of organizations that could benefit from POAP, and be a wonderful brand alignment with POAP itself. Make it super cheap or free for non-profits to use advanced POAP Pro and Studio capabilities.
POAP for Non-Profits - $20/mo or FREE
POAP Extensions
I was pondering cool things that POAPs could have and three ideas came to mind.
POAPs with Backs!
POAPs are a bit like challenge coins, and physical coins have a front and a back. Why not support two images for POAPs so they have a front and a back. This would be cool to flip them around and see the other side. It could be a whole new place to have creative imagery!
POAP Collections
I’ve gotten a few POAPs that are officially part of a collection. The Ethereum Merge and POAPathon Krampus PAOPs are examples of this. It would be cool if there was an official collection that these were part of and that was part of the event pages. You could even unlock a collection POAP when you have all the POAPs in that collection. Some groups do that now but it is manual.
Unique POAPs
I would love to get a POAP every time we do an escape room. But it would be even cooler if my specific instance of that POAP had additional data like the time it took for us to escape, how many clues we used, and our team name. If an issuer could add one off metadata to a specific claim code it could unlock a ton of use cases.
Premium Features for POAP Issuers
I got this survey to provide some feedback on features for POAP issuers but it didn’t have any comment areas, only quantitative inputs. So I put my comments in a blog post.
Priority Support
This could be valuable and probably only for non-personal use. If it included design assistance as well that could make it more appealing, something akin to POAPathon. If bundled into a “full service” experience I think there are companies that may pay for this.
Event Promotion / Verified Event
I think verification using signatures would be great. I’m not sure what type of verification and promotion this would be, and the devil is in the details here. POAP should avoid the problems that come from things like a “suggested user list”. Also, since POAPs are about attendance, I don’t know that it is useful to get a feed of events I’m not attending.
Collector Messaging
Two-way messaging with people that hold POAPs could be interesting, but it feels odd to do this with POAP versus Discord or Reddit. It feels more likely that you would token-gate a different service for this.
Collector Notifications
One-way messaging to collectors of your POAPs would be great. For sure this would be a really big win. When I’ve explained to people how they can use POAPs at their events nearly everyone wants to use it to communicate and that isn’t possible today.
Custom Page Designs / White Labeling
For non-personal use I think this could be nice if it were relatively easy to do. I’ve done a number of POAPs for different organizations and nobody has asked about this, but if you were doing a lot of them this could make sense.
Post Claim Redirect / User Redirect
A redirect could be nice, but I think it would be sufficient for most use cases to be able to have a event setting for a URL for people to go to after claiming. Would not need to be an automatic redirect. This seems like a nice convenience feature, something similar to what most mailing list platforms do.
Drop Analytics / Drop Reporting
Analytics on events could be interesting, but these features need to all be at the wish of the issuer. I value privacy, and would want my drops to be the same way.
There are two dimensions to this too. One would be extending existing web analytics to the drop pages. That could be very helpful for some issuers.
On-chain analytics have a potential to be much more uniquely interesting. It could be valuable to know what POAP events people are connected to and what NFT projects those same users engage with. I do not like the idea of tracking anything relating to net worth value.
There were three topics that didn’t make this survey that I would also like to see.
POAP Wishlist
POAP (pronounced poe-app) is one of my favorite crypto application. There is a good overview of what POAPs are for. I think POAPs are a great way of capturing memories and events, and potential creating connection and community. I love that they are a crypto app that has no monetary component. I’ve created many POAP events as well as collecting many.
I love how POAP has gown thus far! The growth has been amazing and the organization has continued to create meaning and value. There are three areas that I would like to see POAP extend and wanted to explore in more detail.
Integration Hooks
POAP has an existing API which is great for people looking to create applications using POAPs. However, there is a bigger opportunity for POAP to offer simple integration hooks that could be used by many services and people to extend as they please.
Event Enhancements
POAP events themselves are pretty simple today. They have a summary, image, location (text), a URL, and relevant date information. Events could be enhanced in two material ways: authenticity and different types of events.
Web2/3 Onboarding
POAP is a great way to introduce people to crypto. I have personally introduced well over 100 people to crypto by giving out POAP tokens for various events. I’ve put together a very simple guide for people to claim their first POAP, including setting up a wallet! But more could be done here to make it easier for people.
I’m sure that POAP has a long roadmap and more things to work on than they have time to do. I think it would be great to see enhancements like the above because I think they hit on key areas that would drive POAP growth and adoption.
Enabling integration capabilities would allow POAP issuers to do things like send a Tweet every time a POAP is claimed. Additional authenticity would allow more confidence in POAPs, particularly if POAP Checkout is used to raise funds for a good event. And taking on more of the wallet tasks for users would make onboarding new people to POAP so much easier.
See also POAPathon Future Thoughts.
I’ve tried multiple times to participate in the KZG Ceremony for Ethereum and it times out after hours of waiting. The wait time is 10,143 minutes right now (7 days)!
POAPathon Future Thoughts
On the December 30th POAPathon Community Call there was a request for feedback on where POAPathon should go in 2023. I thought about it and here are my thoughts.
First some background. POAPathon is a community driven organization that facilitates design contests for people that need an image for a POAP event. I love creating POAP events, but I lack the design skills to create great images. I’ve used POAPathon a few times to get amazing images for my events. The process, collaboration, and results are great.
Some POAPathon designed events I’ve done include:
Magic Pines Summer of 2022
by kavishsethi
Jamie Thingelstad’s 51st Birthday
by designatum.eth
TeamSPS 2022 Kubb Tournament
by InsertGenericArtName
POAPathon DAO
Creating a DAO for POAPathon would enable two important functions:
Treasury for the DAO to fund programs, strategy, and execution.
To fund the treasury some percentage of all bounties should be directed to the DAO. POAPathon is providing direct value by creating this marketplace, and directing some of those funds into the treasury to be used by the DAO is best for the overall health of the community.
Governance tokens to enable decisions making.
Governance tokens have no monetary value and should never be bought or sold. These tokens would be distributed for actions done in the DAO. Examples would include:
There is likely a broad list of additional activities that could be rewarded with governance tokens, but there are two activities that should not be:
Serious thought would need to be given to governance token amounts for each activity. Fortunately POAPathan has been doing nearly all of these things for a year or more, and that historical set of activities could be used to model what the amounts should be. Future changes to reward amounts could be handled via a DAO vote.
Lastly, the DAO should be run on Gnosis Chain in recognition that POAPs are distributed on Gnosis Chain. (Disclosure: I am a Gnosis Chain validator.)
Contests On-chain
Today contests are created via a survey, USDC is sent to POAPathon, and the Contest Managers (POAPathon volunteers) are trusted to setup the contests and distribute the funds. To further embrace a trustless approach, contests could be moved to a smart contract and executed on-chain.
When a contest is created the USDC would be sent to a contract. That contract would then manage the distribution. Some percentage would be sent to the DAO immediately after the contest is approved. The remainder would be sent to the addresses of the winners.
There are a lot of options here. It would be ideal if the smart contract knew what artists had submitted art for the contest, and could even handle distributing governance tokens rewarding them for participating. The contest requester could then select the winners from a list of participating artists.
This would require development efforts that may go beyond the scope of volunteer engagement. If so, the DAO treasury could be used to fund the development of this.
Other Stuff
Focus on just POAPs. The POAPathon website suggests a variety of design services via contest (PFP, Logos), but POAP is right there in the name and focusing on just that use case may create more opportunity.
Email newsletter. Discord is great, but is only useful for very engaged community members. A newsletter that highlights the contests, selected artists, and more could be very compelling. This is a way to stay connected and broaden the reach of POAPathon. POAP has This week in POAP for example.
Give out more POAPs. POAPathon distributes a POAP for each Community Call. It would be cool to give a POAP for submitting a contest, and winning contests. I’ve created five contests now but there is no record of that outside of Discord history. I’d love to have a POAP from POAPathon showing that.
Closer connection with POAP itself. POAPathon could be part of the POAP process. There seems to be no mention of POAPathon on the POAP website that I could easily find. Getting in this flow of requests would help make sure there are enough contests to have a thriving community.
Polarizing Technology: Encryption and Crypto
The fury and vitriol towards crypto is strong. People use words like “hate” and you can feel the emotion in their voice. I’ve had friends suggest that I must hate the environment if I support crypto. Or even that they thought I was “too smart” for crypto. Many suggest that blockchains are “just a database”, but I’ve never seen people yelling at each other, dismissing opinions, and ultimately even losing friends because they liked a database!
This made me wonder, is this unique to crypto? What else in technology might be so polarizing and carry so much emotional energy with it?
Then I realized that crypto isn’t alone. Encryption has a similar polarizing affect. And as I explored that hypothesis, I clearly also saw that the entities that find these technologies threatening use very similar tactics to attack them.
Encryption
Ways to encrypt data have been around for as long as we’ve written things down. Famous hardware devices like the Enigma machine were key tools to successful war operations. Modern technology has made encryption more sophisticated and even more difficult to defeat.
In 1991 Phil Zimmerman wrote Pretty Good Privacy or PGP. PGP was the first widely available implementation of the incredibly secure public-key cryptography. After Zimmerman created PGP he shared the source code online, triggering the US Government to open an investigation into Zimmerman and PGP for potential violations of the Arms Export Control Act. For obvious reasons, the US Government doesn’t want encryption technology that it cannot defeat to be in the hands of other entities. Five years later the US Government dropped its investigation into Zimmerman with no indictment.
The early history of the Electronic Frontier Foundation also involved encryption. In 1995 they represented the defendant in Bernstein v. United States. Similar to Zimmerman, Bernstein wanted to publish the source code of his encryption software. After four years we had a landmark ruling that determined that software source code was speech, and is thus protected by the First Amendment.
It is worth noting that the Bernstein v. United States ruling was one of the cases referenced by Apple when it refused to hack the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone.
Encryption is now used widely, and necessary to provide hundreds of secure services. Every modern phone has dozens of encryption routines in it, many that just operate in the background so that if someone stole your device, your private information would be protected.
But should private citizens be able to use encryption that is so secure that nobody else access it? Even law enforcement? Even the US Government? Even after 30 years public opinion on this is still not settled. It absolutely makes law enforcement harder when all communication between parties is encrypted, but it has immense benefit to the privacy of those individuals.
I firmly believe that we have a right to encrypt data in a way that no other entity can ever access it. The same way that I cannot be compelled to share a secret I have memorized, I have the right to have digital information that is completely secure and private to me.
However, there are many people who disagree completely. Many feel strongly that law enforcement particularly should have a backdoor to get into encrypted data. Many believe that Apple should have hacked those terrorist phones and retrieved information for the FBI. The government itself continues to fight for this with. In 1993 we had the Clipper Chip, but the battle continues.
Encryption itself challenges power. It allows normal people to do something that beforehand only governments or corporations could. The power to access secret information is a big one. Those that previously held that capability exclusively are not going to let it go easily. And that is why the FBI steps in to sue Apple when the time is right.
There are two wedges that are used to argue why encryption should not be allowed for regular individuals: terrorism and protecting children. Horrible topics to be sure, but they are the most effective at swaying public opinion against encryption. The next time an established entity with power makes a legal claim that encryption must have a backdoor, look for those two topics.
If we had a Digital Bill of Rights, I would include encryption as one of the first.
Crypto
Crypto, blockchain, cryptocurrencies — this technology has many similarities to encryption. First, let me clarify that while encryption and cryptography play a key role in crypto, it is a completely different solution and set of use cases. There could be no crypto without cryptography, but the application of crypto is not about protecting secrets.
Very similar to encryption though, crypto takes an activity that was previously the exclusive domain of powerful entities and makes it accessible to many. You could not have created a currency that could be trusted by millions without crypto. I can assert ownership of many digital assets without the benefit of any company or government entity, thanks to crypto.
Crypto allows individuals to store and exchange things of value completely on their own, common digital ownership.
The Bitcoin Whitepaper written in 2008, and then launched in 2009 was in many ways like Zimmerman’s publishing of PGP in 1991. The technology was furthered significantly when Ethereum launched in 2015, allowing completely new use cases to be created. Similar to encryption, in the crypto world we now have dozens of technology solutions and thousands of applications built on top of that. But the fundamental ethos is about storing and transferring value between people, directly without a company or government in the middle.
The efficiency benefits of blockchain are incredibly enticing, and like encryption it is possible for existing entities that control power to use these technologies internally to get benefit. The crypto version of a government backdoor is a US Digital Currency, run on a private and controlled blockchain.
Imagine if the FBI published an encryption tool. Would you use it?
Depending on when you start the clock with crypto we are between 7 and 14 years into the same kind of debate that we have been having with encryption. Should groups of people on their own be able to store and transfer value without any tools from the Government? Many smart, educated, and well-meaning people will have different views on this. It is important that a government can control their own currency. It is also important that a government have legal domain over certain forms of ownership. But personally I don’t believe those are blanket needs, and I see a great opportunity for technology to enable new capabilities here.
To fight off crypto there are two narratives that have developed. The first is that crypto supports fraud & crime. The second is environmental destruction. It is true that almost all Ransomware takes payment in Bitcoin, and the energy footprint of a proof-of-work blockchain is enormous. However, Bitcoin has also enabled people with no access to banking systems to store and transmit value. And while the energy footprint for Bitcoin is high, the gold industry certainly has a large energy footprint too. What amount of energy is acceptable for a digital reserve currency of the world to use?
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This thought exercise was helpful for me to add some context and perspective to these two debates. I hadn’t previously connected the encryption debate that I’ve observed and supported for years with what I was seeing in crypto. Connecting them in this way draws a couple of conclusions:
I’ve been validating the Gnosis Chain for about three months now. I’m running 32 validators. Gnosis made the transition to using proof-of-stake. The validators generate about 0.4 mGNO a day, or about $1.09, a 14% annual yield. On average my 32 validators propose 4 to 5 blocks a day, with a maximum of 10. There are currently 109,386 validators.
