BlockchainGandalf

Sometimes in software innovation we end up with concepts that can't be summarized succinctly in the way that a simple targeted app can (think, "it's it's a fitness app for orthodontists", or "it's a dating app for pet cats", as opposed to "it's the cloud" ten years ago).

Blockchain used to be like that too, but we're all starting to settle on a fairly common view as to what it is and how it can be used, even if the concept is still expanding and changing on a yearly basis.

The concept of the Metaverse, on the other hand, is still a shambles. As is this video.

But the former is definitely entertaining, and hopefully the latter is too.

We are starting to see more NFT projects losing significant sums of money - this used to be the preserve of DeFi protocols.

A few days ago a project called "Akutars" managed to inadvertently lock up over 11,000 ETH, worth about $34 million in fiat prices.

There are plenty of analyses as to exactly what went wrong in the code to cause this, so in this video I take a one-level-up view and look at the red flags visible in the code that should have suggested there might be a problem.

This is more useful to future smart contract developers than a line-by-line level analysis which would only apply specifically to the Akutar contract.

The above title is total and utter clickbait.

But it does describe what I talk about in the episode, so perhaps I'll get away with it. Go on, listen to it.

You know you want to know what I think is the most surprising thing about social media marketing, don't you?

In the meantime:

My book: https://mybook.to/moveover

T-shirts: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Thinklair

The Orthoverse: https://orthoverse.io/

On Thursday 24 March someone going by the name of HashArt on OpenSea found an exploit in the Orthoverse NFT contract, allowing the crafting of transactions that allow any NFT in the contract to be moved to any address.

Obviously this is not a good state of affairs. As a result, Richard and I fixed the contract, finally wrote a test suite, corrected other niggling but only cosmetic bugs we'd found, and added artificial scarcity to the contract.

And then we migrated all the existing tokens into the new contract, which turned out to be incredibly painful, and quite expensive ($5000 in gas).

The scarcity thing may sound like an oxymoron for a contract that involves 1.5*10⁴⁸ tokens, but we managed it.

Listen to the episode for a full explanation and other fun Orthoverse stuff.

The  Orthoverse is doomed! But not quite yet.

In a recent interview in Time Magazine Vitalik Buterin expressed disappointment in the fascination and speculation around Bored Apes and other similar projects.

I understand why he feels that way, but this progression is not unexpected. In fact, if there wasn't such speculation,  it would indicate that Ethereum and other blockchain projects were rather limited in their relevance to society as a whole.

Listen to the episode to find out more.

In this epsode, I explain in less than a quarter of an hour what Ethereum is, what gas fees are, what value transfers are, how ether was converted from an inflationary to a deflationary cryptocurrency, and a bunch of other stuff.

It wasn't easy. But then again, nothing in blockchain ever is.

Let me know how I did.

I like collectible and art NFTs as much as the next collectible and art NFT aficionado, but it pays to remember that these tokens have a lot more possibilities than being able to flex to your buddies about the value of your PFP portfolio.  In this episode, I look at an analogy between an object described in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, and the potential that NFTs offer in providing societal utility.  And it's nice and short, so there's no reason not to listen to it.

This is a bit of an odd episode, because I start off with a proof as to why measuring the "energy expenditure per transaction" does not make sense for Bitcoin, and end up talking about the tragedy of the commons, and the psychology behind deciding what it is worth spending energy on.  Nevertheless, I'm going to break the habit of a decade, and talk about blockchain and environmentalism, even if it's in a somewhat oblique manner.

Whenever there is a lot of competition in a given marketplace you have three obvious choices - race to the bottom on prices, differentiate on features, or convert your brand and hence your product into something aspirational.

Price wars result in products with very low margins, and who voluntarily wants to become a potato farmer?

Competing on features is tough in blockchain, because people are having enough trouble understanding vanilla NFT tokens, let alone more esoteric smart contracts.

And creating an aspirational brand involves an equal measure of luck and supreme marketing skills.

In the NFT world there are an awful lot of projects, and more arrive every day. Most of them are effectively copies of previous ones, right down to the marketing and business development strategy that is used. This puts those projects squarely in the domain of relying on luck.

Is there another way? Listen to the episode for a quick primer on marketing and NFT projects to find out.

Social media existed well before the web2 sites of Facebook, Twitter, and their ilk. Not only that, but it was decentralized.

In fact, it started in 1979, and was called USENET. But it was missing the one "secret spice" that modern day social media sites use to turbo-charge user engagement (and subsequently profit from data harvesting and advertising).

Want to know what that secret spice is? Listen to the episode.

I think there's a lesson to be learned from this when we look at what web3  might be, and what its "hidden herb" is going to turn out to be. I have some suspicions and hunches, but I'm not completely sure.

What I am certain about is that in hindsight it's going to seem so obvious most people won't even really notice or appreciate it. They'll just accept it as the new reality without realizing.