Crypto
Forays into blockchain, NFTs and POAPs live here. I write about minting POAP tokens at family events, celebrating Ethereum’s 10‑year anniversary by creating an NFT and even using monitoring services to keep my POAP feeds up and running.
- 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.
- Vote for Lower Reserve Price to 0.10 ETH
- Vote for Dot as engineering resident
- Vote against Marketing Outreach Pilot
- Vote for Brook: DAO Operator
POAP 6200232 at Joe's BONKalicious Bday.
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.
POAP 6177735 at Jamie Thingelstad's 51st Birthday.
POAP 6160261 at Proof of Attention Protocol - Test .
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?
***
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.
POAP 6154076 at Cabin Christmas 2022.
POAP 6152200 at Kickin' it with Krampus #3.
POAP 6152199 at Kickin' it with Krampus #2.
POAP 6152193 at Kickin' it with Krampus #1.
Find Unique Addresses for Multiple POAP Events
How do you get a list of unique addresses that have claimed any set of POAPs?
Each POAP event allows you to download a CSV file that has the addresses that claimed it, along with other data. Download all the CSV files into a directory. Now, assuming you are on Unix-like system, the rest is pretty easy.
First put all the CSVs together in one file. The download from POAP is missing a trailing newline, so loop in the shell.
for file in *.csv; do
for> cat $file >> combined.csv
for> echo "" >> combined.csv
for> done
Now lets spit the second column, the address, into another file. awk does this well.
awk -F "\"*,\"*" '{print $2}' combined.csv > addresses.txt
Now the classic sort and uniq combination will give us what we want.
cat addresses.txt| sort | uniq > addresses-uniq.txt
And you have your list!
I’ve created 27 POAP events that have had 630 tokens claimed from 354 unique addresses. Art for 4 of them from Poapathon. I 💚 POAP! Pretty cool!
PS: I’m planning a fun surprise for those 354 people. 😊🎁
Crypto in Three Words
While driving around on some errands I was yammering about something crypto related with the family. This is when they patiently listen a bit, and then change the subject back to something else when I leave a break in the conversation.
This time though my break was met with a question from my daughter. “Dad, describe crypto in three words or less.” I’m going to ignore the presumed verbosity in limiting me to three words. I decided to embrace the challenge.
I thought for a bit and hit on the three words:
Common Digital Ownership
I suspect that these are not the three words that everyone would come up with. So, let me give some context.
Digital
Let’s start in the middle. It is very clear that the digital world is continuing to grow in significance for our lives. Certainly the amount of time we spend online has increased significantly over the last decade. But that is just the beginning. Nearly every part of our life now involves some form of digital interaction. We do our banking digitally. We watch nearly all of our entertainment and news digitally. We keep track of our favorite sports digitally. We book our restaurant reservations, haircuts, Doctor visits, and everything else digitally.
With every passing day the digital world becomes increasingly important to everything we do. In fact, many of us now have a digital identity that is part of our overall identity.
In short, we need to care and pay attention to our digital experiences.
Ownership
As digital becomes an ever increasing part of our life there are concepts that are obvious in the real world but are very complicated in the digital world. Ownership is one of those.
Since the beginning of computing, technology has made it increasingly cheaper to make perfect copies of anything. In fact, so cheap that we could consider it free. If I have a song or a photo, I can make copies forever for nearly no cost.
In the real world we like to say that “possession is 9/10ths of the law”. Mostly, if I physically have an object, more than likely I own it as well. This is patently not true in the digital world.
I could have an application, an image, a song, or any number of different things that I have gotten digitally but not own any of them. However, ownership is still important, particularly as more of our life happens online.
There have been workarounds. When we buy software now we get a long string of random characters that is a license key for us to use that software. That is a form of asserting ownership. I could embed into the IPTC and EXIF metadata for a photo a copyright statement to assert ownership. But none of these have the same qualities of actually possessing something, like if I have a hammer in my house. It is almost certainly my hammer. Or my neighbor is missing a hammer.
Crypto gives us a means of asserting, verifying, and proving ownership. In fact, enables the first digital asset that cannot be copied at any cost.
This ownership could be of anything. It could prove that you own some Bitcoin or Ethereum. It could prove that you own an NFT that represents the right to use a piece of software. It could be a certificate that proves you have a degree from a certain college. It could be the literal digital file for a song that you have ownership of. It could be a POAP that proves you were at my cabin one summer.
I believe that being able to own things, and transfer that ownership, is an important feature of our digital world.
Common
The first word is last because I want to first establish that the digital world is critically important, and then second that ownership is an important feature of the world that should be represented in that digital world.
It could be argued that we have this feature already. In fact, if I login to the iTunes Store and buy a DRM-free song, I have ownership of that song. Or at least I do as long as iTunes agrees with me. If I buy an eBook on Amazon I think I sort of own that book, although I really don’t since they have recalled books that people have purchased.
I believe it is vitally important that we have a way of owning digital assets that is independent of corporations and governments, relying on something akin to “the commons” as much as possible.
Common wasn’t the first world that came to mind here. First was “decentralized” which I think is a fine word, but it is a how more than a why. Plus it’s a $5 technical word that most people will scratch their heads about. Yes decentralized is important, but more important is that it is decentralized in “the commons”, meaning average people running average infrastructure to make this service work.
The other word I liked was “public”. I think that works well too, but I worry about potential interpretation as a government service. Ownership must be done without corporations, non-profits, the government, or any other finite “entity”.
Important to “common” is the legitimacy that comes along with it. There is a common argument that critics of crypto make, that blockchains are just a database, and a bad one at that. Blockchain isn’t a database, because it has legitimacy as a feature. A database only gets legitimacy from the organization that runs it, companies or governments. For us to have ownership that is more akin to the hammer being in my house, it needs to be legitimate and owned as a common capability.
✧✧✧
Common Digital Ownership
This is the foundational argument that I would make for crypto. There are a near infinite number of things that can be built on Common Digital Ownership, but the core is simple. We shouldn’t rely on corporations or governments granting us the right to own digital things. We need to be able to create, own, share, transfer, and sell things completely on our own in the digital space. Just like we can in real life right now.
LilNouns DAO Votes
Time for some LilNouns voting.
I wasn’t supporting of having a price floor of any kind, so I’m voting for the reduction of the reserve price, but ultimately don’t believe there should be a reserve.