So, if you are reading this on or near posting date then chances are you fall into one of two categories: 1. You landed here by extraordinary luck, it was meant to be, and you almost certainly will be leaving before I finish this paragraph; or, 2. You are required to read this in order to grade my submission. Either way, Welcome!
To be clear, this blog will mostly chronicle my journey of learning blockchain technology and my final group project to build a working NFT (non-fungible token) staking game. I have a burning passion to do so, but I do not have much knowledge…yet. If you read my about page then you know that I do not come from a technical background although I have always tinkered with computers and electronics. One thing to know about me is that I am an easy mark for upselling. I want it all. During breaks and lulls in classes I have attempted to learn no less than all of Java, JavaScript, Go, Rust, C, C++, Flutter/Dart, Docker, AWS, Flask, and I am sure several more. My Udemy collection has an embarrassing 122 titles (and growing). The way I see it is that we generally do not have to buy textbooks, so this is my supplemental material.
For our class project, we have our group of three and a good idea of what we want to build which is an NFT staking game similar to Wolf Game on the Ethereum network. Over the long holiday break I became involved with acquiring a variety of NFTs. The tokens that interest me the most are those that have some utility. This can be access to information or events, proof of asset ownership, the ability to play games, etc. What is striking to me is that after ten plus years of having blockchain technology and slightly less for Ethereum and the Ethereum Virtual Machine, and all of the promise these have to improve life in so many ways, that we have not advanced very far.
At this point a lot of people have invested in cryptocurrencies. They stared blankly when people mentioned they ‘mined’ this or that in the early 2010’s, and they laughed when people bought digital money for a few hundred dollars in the mid 2010’s. They quit laughing when those same people sold their digital money for tens of thousands of dollars. Investing in cryptocurrencies takes very little technical knowledge these days. If you can open a stock trading account then you can invest and almost certainly keep the ‘coins’ in an exchange wallet. But the decentralized digital world is much more than that, and only vaguely familiar to the average person in the modern world. It’s one thing to have some digital assets in an exchange wallet, and a much different thing to send thousands of dollars to different wallet addresses, bridge to different blockchains, invest in defi, DAOs, liquidity pools, buy NFTs on various networks, and the list goes on. This takes some knowledge of how to setup and use various apps and technology, and are fraught with peril. Anyone who has anxiously awaited the arrival of valuable assets sent through various networks where one slip and it is gone can tell you all about it. Worse, those that have slipped can give you the agonizing details and it isn’t hard to make those mistakes.
We need to open this world to everyone, and make it as easy and safe as we possibly can. I want to help do that. This is the beginning of my journey.
