Thursday, September 29, 2022

The nomad, the future and what we are today.

Somehow we today are interconnected and deeply rooted with our belief systems. The reach of these connections extend our abilities to be someone with a lot of validation (perhaps as difficult creating a tomb).
I spend my time thinking a lot about what makes these Decentralised Autonomous Organisations so successful and valuable. Sure they create impact (so did private limited organisations) but it's not just that. This is not about expanding internet to become a better version of itself by allowing expanse of it swallow through the metaverse, it is actually about going back right to tight knit communities taking care of each other. Given how easy it has become to move from place to place (unless you require US Visa, xD), our growing individualistic lifestyle and transience nature of economic volatility required us to create instruments which can move faster with much easier and public reputation systems. This need for transparency and trust is a growing consumer concern, too often than not we have seen products on shelves with harmful ingredients, medicines/products that want to upsell with disregard for potential sideeffects. Some believe that we are in the worst phase of human evolution with a disregard for nature and a know-it-all human attitude. Others believe that this is the most prosperous time for humanity and we would transcend to solve the issues that are plaguing us without the need of uprooting our daily lives. This dichotomy may be a dividing factor amongst many in future. 

When we look at last 50 years of humanity the changes that are paraded as wildly successful such as providing cheap electricity, better mobility of goods, better healthcare and medicines, faster pace of living has led to consequences so devastating that we are yet to suffer through the actual outcomes of it. This ignorance of things will move as it did because of inertia or humans inability to comprehend situations until they actually take place would probably leave us wondering how could we miss such obvious signs which are both a result of society's lack of tight knit communities and growing disbalance of natural resources. This may look like a bleak future but I am sure of witnessing some aspect of it in my lifetime. 

When we looked earlier times, sure the changes took time to come into effect but information also travelled slower, this allowed adoption in a non cult manner to masser audience. The idea of belief systems had little or no importance but soon that might change on the internet with growing community and community oriented online presence. Allowing impact and mission driven communities to work on issues that they struggle with collectively is a great cause to be focused and can solve lot of issues if allowed to collaborate a manner which reveals information best suited to the member (anonymous as well)!

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

The Polygon Fellowship Experience

Imagine a bunch of highly passionate and brightest folks in one room and solving the most difficult problems of web3 ecosystem! You might say that "hey, hackathons exist, right!!", well that's true but what if the experience was 2 months of building something! That's what polygon fellowship exactly was! 


The people

Clearly what stood out for me was the people I got to interact with, I had discussions on 'Cosmos Ecosystem vs other Layer 1s" for quite a long time and was able to have insights that I did not have before. Everyone were nice and did not make one feel left out during a conversation, but had a great ordeal of patience to explain and often at times argue in order to make a point. This collaborative nature and perhaps the passion for the ecosystem was what made the fellowship stood out. It's crazy how easily we bonded together and became friends.  I still feel nothing beats in person communication. Digital is great as ease of communication but it does not replaces the in person interactions that one can pull through. 

The Workshops

The second biggest takeway for the fellows during the fellowship was the sessions we had. Some of the things that they said infused so much passion and inspiration in us as a team. We truly had a great time of learning from some of the highly technical CXOs which gave the talk themselves. We also had an opportunity to interact with the OG "Sandeep Nailwal" and ask him questions which was the icing on a cake, especially to people who are very new to the ecosystem. 

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The Retreat

All the fellows stayed at "The Paul" Bangalore which had amazing facilities provided to all the fellows. The food was finger licking delicious and stay was really comfortable with all the amenities.   The rooms were suites and left the fellows wondering if it can get better than this, and it did with the actual workshops and the ideas / discussions that happened about how as an ecosystem we can grow. The entire atmosphere was filled with a lot of optimism and positivity as compared to how web3/crypto gets looked upon by some of more traditional and orthodox institutions. 

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The Online and Mentors

The mentors we connected with, we had long discussions on how we can take our solutions forward from business perspective and do more with our work. We learnt more on how the current ecosystem works and the rational of ideas from not just tech perspective but marketing and business as well. I cam to know of other avenues notably 'Polygon Grants', and different DAOs. This further motivated me to be part of such an exclusive group. 

Overall the event was extremely well organised by Devfolio and I have said so multiple times to my friends that nothing of this sort has been done not just in Indian blockchain scene but Indian tech scene altogether. I am extremely grateful to the devfolio team for selecting me as candidature and further enabling my belief.