Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 13th 2021
**Hive.Blog**
At the start of the month, as I summarised my intentions to post daily for all of November, I also took a run through the three social media platforms I would be posting to, these being Read.Cash, Publish0x and Hive.Blog. The first two I found nice and easy to use from the outset and, for one brief day at the start, Hive.Blog seemed pretty straightforward too, after I’d done some research. However, once I got to days two and three, I found things much, much more difficult on Hive and I posted an update to this effect. Well, things have moved on now and I felt it only right and proper to provide a further update.
The initial difference I had to get used to with Hive is that you access it via any one of many apps that act, in effect, as your gateway to the party. Whilst they all do essentially the same job, there are some differences, not the least of which is that some charge and some don’t, and the information on the Hive landing page doesn’t say much about these. You’re left pretty much to yourself. You also have to work out that even once you’ve signed up to one of these gateways, you still need to set up a dedicated wallet, something it took me a couple of days to realise as I initially thought this came with my ecency account.
But then I started to get helpful comments from experienced community members, some pointing me towards detailed how-to guides and outlining some of the core community rules and regs. This proved to be a real boon and greatly helped me on my way.
Perhaps the most helpful thing I learned is that you need something called resource credits in order to be able to do pretty much anything on Hive, be that posting, commenting or replying to comments. This is all part of the pay-to-use approach that underlies the way the platform works. Being new, you have diddly squat resource credits, aside from an initial freebie. There is a faucet you can use but I always found this empty. That leaves you having to call in to an exchange to purchase some coins. These coins you can then convert to Hive Power, which helps replenish your resource credits. Confused yet? You start to see why the platform takes a while to get to grips with.
However, you also earn Hive Power and Hive coins when people start responding to your posts and you get upvoted! Posts earn only for the first seven days and you get paid at the end of this period. Thus, from day seven onwards you start to earn rewards, in the form of Hive coins and Hive Power, which boosts the replenishment rate of your resource credits. Phew!
The long and short of all this is that now I am two weeks in, I am finding that a combination of my initial purchase of coins plus the rewards coming from my posts has finally meant that my resource credits replenish sufficiently each day for me to both post daily as well as comment on other people’s posts and, importantly, reply to the comments I receive on my own posts.
Yep, it’s been quite a lot to learn, but I am there or thereabouts now, the early frustrations have gone and I am slowly building up my profile and engagement levels, so it’s been worth it in the end.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 12th 2021
**Blockchain Time Drain**
It’s been an interesting experience already, writing these daily posts. For one thing, it’s made me realise just how much time I spend deep in the world of the blockchain. As you’ve no doubt discovered for yourself, it can be an alluring, even irresistible, temptation, where one provocative beauty after another flaunts itself on the screen in front of your eyes, leaving you licking your lips and hungry to get to know them better. You read one article about some new project and, before you know it, you’ve read another six and an hour has flown by. Worse still, in the course of researching one project, you see mention of another that also looks tempting, so you sneak off for a quick peek and, there we go again, that’s another half hour gone.
I’ve tried, I honestly have, to exercise some self-control, for example, insisting to myself that I am only allowed to research one project at a time, but it rarely works. I sometimes even find myself trying to justify such detours by telling myself they’re essential for a better understanding of the project I started out researching. Yes, it is, I have to admit, all a big black hole that consumes more of my time than I could ever really justify.
Perhaps, I occasionally ponder, I need to take a break. I really shouldn’t allow myself to get too obsessive. That sort of thing never is good for you. Even collecting socks can, I’m sure, become a sad and unhealthy obsession. (If you should happen to be a collector of socks, I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this). But the problem with taking a break is that, when I return, there will be even more to catch up on! So, I continue on my happy way, telling the rest of the family I’m engaged in important tasks like searching out ideas for birthday presents, better offers for our utility providers or applying crucial Windows updates to the PC (that one is good for a couple of hours each month).
Anyway, I’ve spent enough time writing this post. It’s eating into my research time!
What about you, do you fear you’ve become a blockchain obsessive? Does your partner wonder what you spend your time doing locked in the office/bedroom/cupboard? And, most of all, what are your best excuses for covering up your obsession?
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 11th 2021
**Crypto Island**
Did you know there is such a thing as a crypto project set up to buy an island? This was a new one on me when I stumbled upon an article about it today. Yes, Crypto Island has been set up to buy an island in the Bahamas, which is to be co-owned by anyone who cares to purchase some of their crypto tokens. I know this isn’t the only blockchain based project offering co-ownership of property, but there’s something about the prospect of having a stake in a Caribbean island, one that conjures up thoughts of paying a sun-drenched visit to your own little bit of paradise.
**Polkadot Crowd Loan Auctions Begin**
Of course, I couldn’t let today pass without pointing out that this very day marks the official start of the Polkadot crowd loan auctions, all that has gone before being merely the build-up and pre-pledges.
The well-marketed and immensely popular Acala is our early front-runner but Moonbeam is keeping it within sight. The structure of the auctions is actually rather complex, since there are eight parachains up for grabs but these have themselves been broken up into slots and projects can bid for a complete set (which covers 96 weeks) or any combo of one or more. It will be fascinating to see who wins out and whether or not the prior Kusama auctions are a guide or not.
**Secret Network**
I also managed to find a little time to hunt down some further potential investments in the Cosmos ecosystem and two that caught my eye are Juno and Secret Network. I’ve not had time yet to take much of a look at Juno but I did do a bit of digging into Secret Network.
Secret Network is focused on bringing to Web3.0 some of the same aspects of privacy that we all take for granted in our daily lives already. Currently, the data stored on smart contracts is public, which is a big turn-off for many people and organisations and, thus, limits the extent to which the benefits of decentralisation can be enjoyed by everyone. Secret Network provides a blockchain focused on maintaining privacy, one on which other projects can develop and deploy privacy rich dApps of their own.
There are other similar projects out there, such as Phala in the Polkadot ecosystem, but Secret Network looks to me like an appealing proposition in a space that has considerable potential. As ever, it appears to meet my criteria of real utility, a supportive community, evidence of delivering on its plans and a clear roadmap. I’m still mulling things over, but I suspect this is a project I will choose to back, perhaps by re-directing some of my staking rewards from other projects in the Cosmos ecosystem.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 10th 2021
**Litentry**
OK, we’re talking Polkadot crowd loans again today. I’m nearly fully invested here, so you won’t hear too much more from me on this until the auctions end, though, right now, it has become something of an obsession, I have to admit.
Litentry is a project the name of which is hard to spell correctly and, as for how you pronounce it, I can only guess. Who came up with that one? That aside, it is a project I knew nothing about until recently but the more I’ve looked at it, the more I’ve liked what I’ve seen.
The project summarises itself as being ‘a Decentralized Identity (DID) Aggregation protocol across multiple networks. Litentry provides a secure vehicle through which users manage their identities and dApps obtain the real-time credit/reputation of an identity owner across different blockchains.’
To put that differently, Litentry will allow you to aggregate your identities across Web3.0 in a secure manner, so that you can access products and services more easily. It will also allow you to potentially benefit financially so that, for example, a good credit rating on one site might auto get you a cheaper service or product on another. It also makes it easier for organisations to onboard individuals and to securely verify who they are, such as ensuring individuals do not operate more than one account to take advantage of an airdrop, for example
So, why do I like it enough to back in the crowd loan auctions? Well, we return to my core selection criteria, namely, I am looking for projects with real utility, a solid community, evidence of delivery capability and a clear plan for the future (usually a solid white paper). Litentry meets all of these criteria, so it’s now got a share of my DOT.
**Polkadot Name System**
In the course of researching Litentry, I also encountered Polkadot Name System (PNS), which is an open, decentralized domain name system on the Polkadot blockchain. With PNS, every user will be able to have their own on-chain unique name, which resolves to their crypto wallet, smart contract address, NFT token, URL or IPFS address. The project bills itelf as, ‘the universal passport of Web3 ecosystem.’
Since it’s being built for Polkadot and its parachain ecosystem, it means you will be able to bind your identity for each of these parachains to a single name, which will be a whole lot easier to use than a bunch of separate, often more complex, names.
Interestingly, you will also be able to create many sub-names for your domain for example, for the domain Smith you could create John.Smith and Betty.Smith. If you’re the creative type, you could have hours of fun with this!
This is a very new project, so a way to go yet before you can purchase your PNS name but I’m going to follow this one so I can step in quick and buy myself a shiny new name to use in Polkadot land.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
Presearch – Earn free PRE crypto when you search. https://presearch.org/signup?rid=2609069
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 9th 2021
**SubDAO**
A busy day today restricted my time for exploring new blockchain projects and catching up with developments on ones I already support, but I did still manage to find a little time to take a look at another candidate for some of my DOT in the Polkadot parachain auctions.
I realised at the weekend that I’ve already backed a couple of projects in the DeFi space and was about to put some DOT behind another one, which caused me to pause and re-assess. For one thing, there’s more to the blockchain than DeFi projects (not that there’s anything wrong with them) and I really don’t want to go putting all my eggs in one basket.
I’ve also been trying to adhere to an approach that looks for projects that further improve the basic internal wiring of the blockchain. If you like, projects that make the blockchain better. This is good for this brave new world and it’s also likely, in my opinion, to lead to me backing a greater number of winners since successful projects of this sort, once they get established, can end up being very widely used and hard for competitors to shift. On the other hand, DeFi projects come along very frequently and competition is already significant.
One project that fits my criteria for improving the internal wiring is SubDAO, a DAO infrastructure based on Polkadot that allows any decentralized organization to create and manage a DAO. In simple terms, a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation is an organisation with a defined set of rules, that are set out by its members, that are contained within a smart contract. These rules are implemented automatically and so help keep a network safe without the need for human intervention. They might, for example, be used to automatically distribute funds to a new project once approval has been granted by the community.
SubDAO not only provides a service with real utility, it also has an active community, solid backing and a clear roadmap. With all boxes ticked, I have now committed some of my precious DOT to this project in the parachain auctions and wait to see if they end up winning one of those coveted slots.
**Cosmos Ecosystem**
If you’ve read some of my previous posts in this series, you will know I am also a fan of the Cosmos ecosystem, so much so that today I started looking for further projects to back there (Juno, perhaps). I also made the decision to commit more funds to Osmosis and Sentinel, which I will do in stages over the next couple of weeks to reduce the chances of buying at a peak price.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 8th 2021
**Launch Pads**
I’ve been looking more closely at some of the project launch platforms out there with a view to adding one or two to my watch list for potential investments. The first thing to note is just how many of these platforms there are! They seem to be everywhere, which in itself raises an important question, namely how reliable are the platforms themselves? To be fair, they don’t all take the same approach, with some simply acting as little more than listing pages, while others carry out some pretty meaningful due diligence to help ensure they only list quality projects. Nonetheless, you clearly need to take a long, hard look at the platforms themselves.
In truth, I’ve only looked at a few of these platforms so far but a few issues have quickly come to light that are likely to limit my use of them, much to my frustration. Firstly, an overwhelming majority of the projects listed are on Ethereum, this mainly being down to the fact that this has by far the biggest pool of skilled and experienced developers for projects to draw on. Inevitably, this means you are looking at some pretty hefty gas fees both when coughing up your purchase money and, later, when selling out for a hoped-for profit.
I’ve also noticed that some of the platforms require you to buy and hold their own tokens in order to gain access to the launches. I don’t suppose this is necessarily any biggie, except where the amount of money involved becomes significant. With Polkastarter, for example, you are looking at something of the order of $1,500, which is a pretty hefty part of my total available funds.
Finally, the number of hurdles you need to clear to get on board some of the launches is pretty significant. You can be expected to do any combination of the following (and I doubt I’ve listed everything here): join a mailing list; follow on Twitter; Tweet and tag your mates; follow on Medium and Telegram; follow on Facebook; sign up to a white list; paint your fingernails black (OK, I made that one up). Even then, once you’ve got as far as the white list, you are likely to find yourself being asked to complete KYC before, at long last, you’re almost there, only to find a lottery system is used to decide who gets the chance to purchase tokens. Phew!
So, it’s clearly not a simple matter to take part in these launches, but, that said, I’m not going to let this put me off and will persist with my investigations until I’ve found one or two platforms that I’m happy to work with. Are there ones you would recommend? If so, it would be great to hear in the comments section.
**Music to Cry to**
I have been distracted for some of the time while writing this post by the TV show my wife has been watching in the other room. It’s a run-through of some of the top-performing pop acts of the early 1970s and has included such delightful gems as Jimmy Osmond singing Long Haired Lover From Liverpool and the whole Osmond troupe belting out Crazy Horses. If you’re not familiar with these two songs then don’t blame me if you go looking for the first one on YouTube.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 7th 2021
Here in the northern hemisphere, it’s starting to get cold at night and it’s dark by 5.00 pm, neither of which is great fun. But, hey, there’s always more to explore in the world of the blockchain! Or is there?
**Zen and the Blockchain**
I suspect the suggestion that the world of the blockchain, for now at least, can be Zen is something of a contradiction since it seems to be far, far away from being an oasis of calm and contentment. In fact, it seems to be me to always be a mad-cap, action-packed, mad-house. This can be a great deal of fun, but there are moments when it all becomes a little overwhelming. There are always so many new projects to get excited about, so much more to learn, even about things you thought you had got a decent grip of. And as for keeping up with all those projects you’ve already decided to follow and engage with, well, what can I say?
Somewhat inevitably, after a period of excitable mayhem, you have need for some downtime. A little R&R, when your brain cells can quietly process and bring order to everything you have thrown at them over the course of the preceding days. There is a need to retreat to somewhere quiet and peaceful, preferably well away from any computer, phone or anything else that can connect you to the internet.
Today has been just such a period of quiet reflection and relaxation for me. Ignoring the siren call of my PC and all those promising new projects or updates from those I have befriended already, I put on my walking boots and disappeared after breakfast for a long solo walk out across the open countryside. I can’t claim that it would have ticked many boxes for those who are practitioners of the Zen way of life, but it did ensure I got some exercise, filled my lungs with fresh air and allowed my senses to re-connect with the natural world. It was a joy.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 6th 2021
**Goodbye Fishy Friend**
A quieter day for me today in the land of the blockchain as domestic chores restricted the time I had for other things. One of the fish in our tank died too, which was rather sad, but I guess we all come to an end eventually. Anyway, I did have time to do a little exploration on the web.
**Cosmos Ecosystem**
I have two favourite blockchain ecosystems and I like them both for much the same reasons. One is Polkadot/Kusama and the other is Cosmos. I’ve commented on the former a few times already in this series of posts in relation to the upcoming Polkadot parachain auctions, so I’m going to take the chance today to mention a few things about Cosmos and a couple of my most favoured projects in that world.
First off, I really do have to take my hat off to the enthusiastic and wildly upbeat nature of the folks who contribute to the Cosmos community, they really are an impressive bunch. You can’t help but be drawn into what’s going on there.
Osmosis
Aside from having a holding of ATOM coins, I also have some significant holdings in two other projects, Osmosis and Sentinel. The former is a cross-chain Automated Market Maker DEX that has a fabulous looking and delightfully easy to use interface that’s such a contrast to many other DEX. It’s worth a look even if you don’t intend to use it!
Sentinel
Sentinel is a terrific project, a network of decentralised VPNs, rather than a single centralised VPN, which is the common model. It means any party can set up and run their own DVPN. Looking at what’s on offer, it’s hard to see why anyone would want to use a single centralised VPN, with all the usual drawbacks this brings.
I’m in for the long-term with both Sentinel and Osmosis and look forward to further developments with eager anticipation.
Cosmostarter
One recent little downer in the Cosmos space concerned Cosmostarter. Being a life-long investor, I am naturally drawn to taking an interest in blockchain-related launchpads, so found Cosmostarter, which has recently opened its doors on Cosmos, of great interest. Getting in early on a project like this could be very rewarding and I had been wondering how to finance such an investment as I went about finding out more about the project, only to discover that its CSMS token lives on the Ethereum blockchain. Ugh. I was so disappointed. Given the current level of ETH gas fees, I’m simply not interested in projects that have tokens living there. Really spoilt my day, did that.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 5th 2021
**Polkadot Crowd Loans**
And they’re off! Yes, they’ve started accepting contributions for some of the projects seeking to win a slot in the Polkadot ecosystem through the crowdloan auctions. It looks like being a hell of a few weeks.
Happily for me, I’d already made my final decisions as to which projects I want to support with my limited supply of DOT and worked out which option to take in backing these. Parallel and Astar are offering various incentives to take part via their platforms and, whilst I won’t use them for all the projects I support, I will use them for a few.
There are bonuses to work out, referral links to consider and, importantly, reminding yourself that your DOT will be tied up for as many as 96 weeks, even if, in some cases, you will get a fluid token in exchange. In fact, the fluid tokens you can get, such as Astar’s eDOT, are an interesting and welcome addition, but I suspect I will play it safe with these, not wanting to risk a more adventurous approach that leads to my being out of pocket when the time comes to exchange my eDOT for DOT. I’m likely to go for simple staking, assuming it is available.
It’s been interesting to see how some of the projects, such as Acala, have been incredibly successful at building their communities and levels of interest in the lead up to these auctions, which has shown in how quickly they have already secured a lot of backing in the form of committed DOT. I wonder if some of the other projects might be wondering if they too shouldn’t have put more effort into their community building and marketing.
Anyway, today I committed to supporting Acala, Astar and Moonbeam. Delighted with the last one as I was too late on the scene to get a piece of Moonriver over on Kusama. I will be following this up with another four projects over the coming days.
If you plan on committing DOT to Acala and want to pick up a 10% bonus then feel free to use my referral link here. https://acala.network/acala/join-acala/0x6adf10d17a81f526687ad4a80d57106f614c5b77b66a671acd5e0870c1b0ef3
**Twitter**
As for the ongoing issue of keeping up with the vast stream of posts on my Twitter feed, I’ve partially solved that problem through the simple expedient of unfollowing a few people. Obvious, really!
**Nodle**
Must admit, I hadn’t heard of Nodle until I stumbled upon it this evening. If you don’t already know, it’s part of the rapidly growing Internet of Things ecosystem and has been around for a little while. It makes use of our mobile phones to build and maintain a huge network that picks up and passes on data that businesses want to collect and analyse from a vast array of devices.
Having previously established that where I live, in a rural location, the earnings from Helium are tiny, I wondered what sort of opportunities might be found with Nodle. In fact, it didn’t take long to work out that earnings won’t be great, but I like the idea of joining this particular party and even small earnings accumulate over time, so I installed their app on my mobile and will now sit back and see what happens. Time to plan for a posh overseas holiday for me and my wife?
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 4th 2021
**RevenueCoin**
I’ve been looking more closely at RevenueCoin today after taking a quick peek a couple of weeks ago. It’s an interesting proposition. The project will back promising early-stage businesses in return for these committing to handing over up to 10% of their revenues each year, which are then used to buy back and burn RVC tokens, which is expected to push up the price.
In theory, I’ve no issue with this business model but there are some questions I’d want answered before committing any funds:
The approach relies on the project team and their advisers making good choices when it comes to the businesses they propose to back (subject to a token holder vote). I know from having been an investor myself for several decades (as well as what the industry stats show) that this is no easy task, even for skilled and experienced people. How well-positioned are they to make these choices?
Some of the businesses that get backed will go under. How might this impact on the value and price of the token, especially if they are an established business making large contributions to the pool each year?
Will these businesses really continue to hand over 10% each year, forever? That’s a heck of a drain on their financial resources.
What happens if one of these businesses is bought out? Does the new owner have to take on the commitment? If not, that’s a potential loss of revenue to the project. Also, who gets the cash from the buyer, does it go to the token pool?
It seems to me that RevenueCoin is, at heart, a fund manager, selecting and supporting companies to back, although there are plans to bring additional use cases to the table for the token. Overall, I’m unsure about this one right now so I’m going to mull it over for a while until I make a decision.
**Polkadot Parachain Auctions - Acala**
As I mentioned yesterday, things are building rapidly to some sort of crescendo here as the start date for the parachain auctions approaches on Nov 11th. Acala have now issued details of their incentives, rewards and bonus info and I’ve been looking at the different options for taking part in their crowdloan (affiliate link here). https://acala.network/acala/join-acala/0x6adf10d17a81f526687ad4a80d57106f614c5b77b66a671acd5e0870c1b0ef3f
They are one of the projects to offer an option that, whilst seeing your underlying DOT tied up for 96 weeks, provides you with liquidity by issuing a matched token (LCDOT) as well as their own core token (ACA). I need to check out the use cases for the LCDOT but I like this option, because of the ongoing liquidity it provides, so plan to take this route to supporting the project.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 3rd 2021
Blimey, it’s day three. I can see already that before I reach the end of the month I am going to be getting worried about what presents to buy my wife for Christmas, but that’s another thing altogether. Back to the world of the blockchain we go…
**Hive.Blog**
Well, didn’t I just jump the gun in declaring Hive.blog to be pretty straightforward to use! True, it was easy enough to set up an account and to write and post my first post, but after that, well, let’s say there’s a pretty big learning curve involved.
I had to get to grips with something called resource credits and understand how important it is not to let these run dry. Then I had to work out how to purchase some Hive tokens and get them added to my account. And then there was more to learn and more and, well, you get the idea. In fact, despite having spent several hours upfront learning about the platform, I have today spent many more hours doing a whole lot more learning and it’s fair to say I’ve concluded the platform is anything other than straightforward to use.
To be honest, I can’t imagine I would have started using Hive in the first place if I’d known how complex it all is. I thought getting used to the much newer Subsocial was tricky but Hive.Blog makes it look like a walk in the park by comparison. But I’m committed now and not wanting all that effort to go to waste so it’s onwards and upwards.
**Polkadot Parachain Auctions**
You’re going to be hearing more about these from me throughout the month I’m writing these posts. The Polkadot/Kusama ecosystem is one I love the look of. A great two-part project in its own right, we’re also seeing some fantastic projects coming on stream to make use of this fabulous cross-chain infrastructure. There are so many top-notch projects it’s hard to keep up.
But they all need a slot on which to offer their wares and, right now, things seem to be building up to some sort of crescendo as we work our way to the Nov 11th launch date for the parachain slot auctions.
It now looks like projects will be able to start accepting DOT staking from tomorrow, so I need to make sure I’ve decided which ones I want to support and how much I want to stake. I also need to decide how I am going to do this because there are some really impressive options appearing, such as those from Equilibrium and Parallel, which give you either additional bonuses or provide you with some form of ongoing liquidity while the underlying DOT are tied up.
I mentioned Moonbeam yesterday and other projects I part like are Acala, Astar, Bit.Country and Phala. Like I said, there’s a lot to keep up with right now!
**Twitter**
Oh, and, as usual, I’ve been busy catching up with the Twitter feed. Is there some way of picking up from where you left off last time without having to manually scan back through dozens of posts trying to remember the last one you read? That’s a right pain.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 2nd 2021
**Social Media on the Blockchain**
One of the hats I wear is that of a writer, which means I am always on the lookout for new ways to share my words, so I am naturally fascinated by the new social media platforms that have been emerging over the last couple of years or so. Some of these are built on a blockchain and are aiming to bring a less censorship driven and more egalitarian approach to things (suspect that might turn out to be more tricky than people are hoping). What’s more, some have introduced their own tokens, providing a means for creators to get paid for sharing their content. Interesting, thinks I…
The ones I have been looking at recently are Uhive, ReadCash, Subsocial, Publish0x and HiveBlog. There are others on my list, but I’ve not had the time to get to these just yet.
I’m looking for two things when assessing these platforms, namely somewhere I can grow my readership and some means of being paid for my content. Ideally, when it comes to being paid it will be in the form of crypto.
**ReadCash**
I’ve spent a fair bit of time getting to grips with ReadCash and so far things look positive. It seems to have a good size community, with plenty of blockchain enthusiasts, a rewards mechanism and a decent enough editing tool. Well, I obviously liked what I found because here I am, writing this series of posts!
**Subsocial**
I have also been experimenting with Subsocial, which runs on the Polkadot blockchain and styles itself as the next all-in-one generation of blockchain-based social networks. It’s still early days for these folk so no big surprise their user base isn’t any too sizeable right now. Having posted a couple of items and commented on a couple more, I can see it’s going to take some getting used to, being charged to do all these things. On the other hand, I’m definitely attracted to the facility to set up and offer your readership subscriptions. Things are quite different on Subsocial and I definitely need to spend more time on the platform getting to know more about it.
And that's just the first two! I know I’m going to learn more about the pros and cons of all these platforms over time and I’ll return with more in-depth thoughts on them at some point in the future.
**Twitter Feed**
Apart from exploring these new social media sites, I’ve spent ages of my precious time catching up on the Twitter feed. So much useful content from the world of the blockchain gets posted here and I try to check in at least once a day, but on this occasion, I left it for three days! So many incredibly enthusiastic blockchain communities on Twitter. They’re a joy.
**Moonbeam**
Finally, I managed to find a little time to take a closer look at the Moonbeam project on Polkadot. I’ve been trying to focus my attention on projects that offer both real utility and interest me personally. This one does and it’s one I aim to support in the upcoming Polkadot parachain auctions, which seem to be building up a frenzied head of steam right now. Got myself pre-registered for their auction crowdfund, so good to go.
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Diary of a Blockchain Fan - November 1st 2021 Update
Where Do I Begin?
It all started in-between jobs earlier this year when I found myself with the time to spare to dig deeper into the world of the blockchain and all things crypto, something I had until then only nibbled at. I suppose it appealed to me for a number of reasons. I’ve worked in I.T. for a long time, so the tech aspect of it all had a natural appeal. I’ve also been an investor for even longer and it soon became clear there are a heck of a lot of opportunities for making money here. And, finally, there was the definite sense of something totally new happening; something that could bring about a material change in the world. How could I resist?
So, I got my head down and consumed vast amounts of information, getting up to speed with the terminology, the leading projects, the best places to find information and stay up to date and adapting to the community-focused nature of this new world. At times I was hoovering up so much new information it felt like my head might go pop.
Of course, I’m still learning and there are new projects and developments appearing on the scene every day, so there is no chance of ever reaching some sort of end. However, I did eventually reach a point where I felt I had a solid understanding of things. I also found myself starting to focus on projects and developments that were of particular interest to me and this has been the basis for what I’ve spent much of my time on since then.
For the past couple of months, I have more or less divided my time spent on all things crypto into two parts. One is spent staying up-to-date with those projects that especially interest me, whilst the other is focused on searching out and learning about things that are new to me. A heady cocktail that can, on a particularly busy day, leave you with something of a hangover, but I’m not complaining.
I eventually started scribbling down notes about the things I’d been looking at. It helped me keep track when there is so much going on in this space. Looking at those recently, I thought it would be interesting and, maybe, amusing to start writing these down in more of a diary format, every day, and it’s these diary entries I plan on sharing with you for the rest of this month, as a bit of an experiment. You’ll just have to let me know if you like it or find it useful for nothing better than helping you get off to sleep!
Until tomorrow…
**Renaissance Man**
**Why this Diary?**
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
**The Usual Disclaimer**
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.
Nice to Meet You
I'm new around here so wanted to take a moment to say hello. I am a lover of books, fan of all things crypto, investor, gardener and life-long learner.
@RenaissanceMan
