On the eve of the latest Solana hackathon I want to take a moment to reflect on why I’ve chosen to spend my time and attention on this ecosystem.
I’ve been working in the “blockchain” space since 2017. I first heard about bitcoin for the first time in 2011 but I didn’t have my first bitcoin “aha” until many years later. I don’t consider myself an “og” but I know a little from passively observing the space and participating professionally.
While bitcoin has always been interesting to me I have never closely aligned with the ideologies that surround the original white paper. The bitcoin community that exists today is even farther from my personal values. That doesn’t mean I don’t think bitcoin has value. It just means I don’t agree that bitcoin fixes the fundamental human issues that many seem to think it does.
Once I started to learn about ethereum I was initially intrigued. But I became very skeptical of the “world computer” claim once cryptokitties showed the limitations of the ethereum network capabilities.
At this point I became bitcoin maximal-ish. Not because I bought into the bitcoin meme but because I was skeptical of ethereum and proof of stake as a path forward. I’m not a computer scientist so I wasn’t technical enough to build a solid argument. I had a lot of confidence in the bitcoin core engineers after monitoring their activity on github and other sites. I did not have the same confidence in ethereum. My thought was if ethereum over promised on scale, could their network security decisions be trusted?
I was both wrong and right. Ethereum continues to struggle with scale and transaction expense. But proof of stake has so far proven secure when implemented by skilled engineers on other blockchains. Obviously scaling initiatives are ongoing for ethereum, but I remain skeptical that scaling will be achieved without introducing a lot of complexity that hinders ongoing progress.
Bitcoin continued to be bitcoin. I saw ethereum DeFi coming and was largely uninterested. I didn’t get it. It seemed pretty byzantine to me. Byzantine as in complex, to be clear. I get DeFi more now. But ethereum started to make me rethink more because it had survived as long as it had. I started to revisit my opinions about proof of stake and considered mechanisms beyond proof of work.
I started sifting through blockchains again. I was looking for something that made sense as a “world computer.” And a team with the proven chops to plan and execute. At some point I remembered an episode of a podcast I heard a couple of years ago. I can’t find the episode online anymore. I think Kevin Rose removed it and put his latest podcast in its place. This dead hosting link is the best reference to it I can find.
I remembered in the interview with Anatoly Yakovenko, hearing someone I could have a beer (and a coffee) with but clearly had significant engineering clout. Anatoly (whom I feel comfortable referring to casually but have never met), was talking about ridiculous numbers when it came to blockchains. Having spent years working with experienced engineers I know it’s pretty hard for them to lie and or speculate about numbers on this order of magnitude.
So to me there were a couple of explanations:
- Anatoly did not have the engineering background he claimed to
- Anatoly had the background but was trying to cash in on a blockchain scam
- Anatoly was just wrong about the potential and it would all break on an incorrect assumption in the specifications.
1 and 2 seemed unlikely because Kevin Rose is an established venture capitalist with some internet celebrity. Both gave him skin in the game such that he would be disincentivized to facilitate outright frauds.
So all that’s left was 3. Solana was the only project I found with some technical legitimacy that claimed such a significant iterative improvement on the current blockchain performance.
I dug in. I consumed every interview, video and article I could find about Solana and it’s team. There were not as many then. But I still heard the coffee and a beer story far too many times. I jumped in the discord as soon as I found it and watched the team discuss and argue about engineering decisions. I saw rigor and skill. I was hooked.
To me Solana more than any other blockchain has the potential to provide the benefits of public blockchains to all people. Not just those technical, early or rich enough to be able to benefit from bitcoin and ethereum.
This is why Solana.
For now, It’s #solanaszn go build something amazing!
If you’re sticking around to ask my opinion on what to build, I would say that DeFi, NFTs, Gaming and Web3 are all compelling but as an ecosystem we should begin reaching beyond the crypto native bubble and bring the value of Solana’s censorship resistant functionality to those who don’t have the time, money or mental energy to be “into crypto.”
When the time is right for me, that is where I’ll be investing my efforts. I encourage you to front-run me.
Follow me on twitter to get my (sometimes cringe) stream of thoughts on bringing Solana to the people and Solana development tips/resources that I learn along the way. I’m also here to help any Solana builder or team, that’s bringing value to the ecosystem, however I can. Feel free to reach out.
Thanks for reading,
Adam
