Areas of Study

Since 2017, blockchain technology has captured my attention. I have been intermittently doing small dives into the developer ecosystem, just trying to learn the basics and what might be possible. However, there are a few significant highlights that shape how I think about the space, what motivates me to keep learning and playing, and what directs my areas of study.

Getting past finance

I don’t have any background in finance. Don’t get me wrong; I’m following the daily charts, watching mid-cap coins hit top 100, providing DAI/USDC liquidity via Sushi Swap on Polygon, and staking the LP tokens. I love to nerd out about fix-supply BTC vs. burn-rate ETH monetary policies. These are exciting topics, but they are not my area of focus. Although, I appreciate the coming ‘Cambrian explosion’ of different economic and financial systems, I don’t have intuitions about where the financial industries should go or what new products we should build.

In Crypto, I believe this is just the beginning. There are hundreds of use cases worth exploring, but I keep coming back to two topics that strike a chord with me.

NFTs

I connect with the NFT concept in a personal way. I don’t consider myself an ‘artist,’ but I have spent a good chunk of my childhood with a pencil and paper, usually sketching one-off figures and characters. I’ve taken many figure drawing, painting, and design classes. My original career goal was to work as an animator at some digital production studio in Los Angeles, which led me down the path to get my Bachelor of Arts in Animation. Though my career veered away from the visual arts, I had the good fortune to work with some of the most talented creatives in the traditional advertising world.

I know the potential for NFTs extends far beyond dematerializing ownership of digital pictures. As someone who understands ‘creatives,’ the value proposition that NFT technology provides is immediately evident to me. So I’m inquisitive about how functional contract logic can play with token ownership in impactful ways. There are an endless amount of experiments to be done here.

Zero-knowledge proofs

We all take our identity’s very personally. It seems just mentioning the word identity can evoke deep and consequential topics. Some think of the value extracted from your identity when your data is silently collected and sold to pay for ‘free’ services. Others think of the oppression of being reduced to one’s immutable identifying characteristics. Many fear fraud and victimization of a stolen identity.

Being introduced to the concept of zero-knowledge proof was a game-changer for me. To trustlessly prove something is true or false without revealing the underlying information can be an abstract concept for many people, but its application has profound promise. I can’t ignore the potential for this technology to protect us from fraud, give data ownership back to the individual, and nullify discrimination.

I have only vaguely sketched how I think about these two topics. I plan on diving deeper into these topics in the coming months.