Summary

In this conversation, Farez and Jeremiah discuss the performance and predictions for Bitcoin and Ethereum, the potential impact of ETFs on crypto, investing strategies beyond the top two cryptocurrencies, the relationship between crypto and the stock market, and the timeline for crypto growth and adoption. They also touch on the surveillance satellite launched by China and NASA's discovery of exoplanets with possible subsurface oceans. The conversation highlights the pressure of necessity for crypto adoption and the fascination with aliens compared to Bigfoot. In this conversation, Farez FM and Jeremiah discuss various mysteries and unknowns, including UFO sightings, the depths of the ocean, and the intersection of AI and extraterrestrial life. They also touch on the importance of data science, the power of information and data, and the lag time of understanding AGI. The concept of AI alignment and the potential dangers of imperfect AGI are explored. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the complexity of AI alignment research and the importance of social media and thought leadership.

Takeaways

Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen significant growth and are expected to continue performing well, but a major correction may be on the horizon.

Investing in altcoins and shitcoins can be a risky strategy, but it can also lead to significant gains if done carefully and with thorough research.

The potential for ETFs and the integration of AI in the crypto space could drive further adoption and legitimization of cryptocurrencies.

The surveillance satellite launched by China and NASA's discovery of exoplanets with possible subsurface oceans highlight ongoing advancements in space exploration and technology.

The fascination with aliens and the possibility of extraterrestrial life continues to captivate public interest, while interest in Bigfoot has waned in comparison. There are many mysteries and unknowns in the world, including UFO sightings and the depths of the ocean.

The intersection of AI and extraterrestrial life is a fascinating topic, with the possibility that aliens may be monitoring our technological advancements.

Data science plays a crucial role in understanding and analyzing the vast amount of information available to us.

AI alignment is an important area of research to ensure that AI systems act in accordance with human values and objectives.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Catching Up

01:27 Bitcoin and Ethereum Performance

02:53 Predictions and Concerns for Crypto

05:19 The Relationship Between Crypto and the Stock Market

07:52 Expectations for Bitcoin Corrections

09:19 Investing Strategies Beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum

10:44 Investing in Altcoins and Shitcoins

16:48 The Potential of Solana and Ethereum ETFs

19:31 The Impact of AI on Crypto Adoption

23:25 The Narrative and Legitimization of Crypto

27:12 Timeline for Crypto Growth and Adoption

30:07 The Pressure of Necessity for Crypto Adoption

34:00 Surveillance Satellites and Exoplanets

44:09 Chinese Spy Satellite and NASA's Exoplanet Discovery

49:20 The Fascination with Aliens and Bigfoot

53:10 Mysteries of the Earth

54:12 UFO Sightings

55:08 The Unknown Depths of the Ocean

56:04 The Intersection of AI and Extraterrestrial Life

57:02 The Purpose of UFO Sightings

58:14 The Importance of Data Science

59:11 The Power of Information and Data

01:00:11 The Lag Time of Understanding AGI

01:01:10 AI Alignment and Ethical Frameworks

01:02:35 The Concept of AI Alignment

01:03:33 The Potential of AI Systems to Act Independently

01:04:02 True Intelligence and AGI

01:05:00 The Dangers of Imperfect AGI

01:06:26 The Complexity of AI Alignment Research

01:07:25 The Importance of Social Media and Thot Leadership

Sorry about Jeremiah's out of sync video at the end. The podcast tool I was using is clearly not good. Switched to Riverside.FM now.

Episode 10: This conversation is between Narbeh (https://twitter.com/narb_s), Dean (https://twitter.com/dbring1) Jeremiah (https://www.instagram.com/ohmiahbad/), and Farez (https://twitter.com/farezv) recorded in November 2023.

The podcast covers a wide range of topics, including AI, cryptocurrency, the future of work, and the existence of aliens. It begins with the introduction of the participants and how they know each other. The discussion then delves into famous Sams; like Sam Bankman Fraud of FTX and Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI. The participants debate political influence in tech companies, the implications of AI and deepfakes, the future of AI and data security, the ethics of gene editing, and the potential dangers of state-controlled superhumans. 

They also explore the existence of aliens, the possibility of different life forms in the universe, and the potential for AI to discover new physics and mathematics. The podcast further touches on the rise of cryptocurrency and blockchain, the future of Bitcoin and Ethereum, cryptocurrency taxes, and the impact of ETFs on cryptocurrency. 

While none of this is financial advice, the participants also discuss strategies for investing in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency cycles, and investment strategies. The intersection of AI and cryptocurrency is highlighted, emphasizing the potential synergy between the two technologies. 

The episode concludes with a reflection on the future of crypto, expressing excitement about the ongoing developments in the field. The participants also briefly touch on the future of work, specifically the remote versus office debate, and the impact of cryptocurrency on traditional investment models.

Subscribe now

If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing to www.farezv.com, sharing on social media and following Farez.FM wherever you listen to podcasts. As a small beginner creator, your early support is very much appreciated. Thank you!

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Topic #1: Software Engineering Careers

I am interested in Software Engineering Career development because I've been in the industry almost 8 years, nearly half of which has been spent at Warner Bros Discovery. Before that I spent some time at AWS and in the gaming industry in Vancouver, Canada.

And my hope is that over the next 2-3 years, I'll be able to specialize in Data Science or Cybersecurity. The intersection of these is likely to become super important as sophisticated AI tools get utilized by cybercriminals to target non tech savvy individuals.

We're at the beginning of an AI cybersecurity arms race.

Topic #2: Artificial Intelligence

I first got interested in AI when I took Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in college (@UBC) during the upper years of my CS degree (2014-2015). Then with ChatGPT's release in November 2022 and GPT-4's release in March 2023, the world has been obsessed with AI.

Since then, I have learned a lot about the importance of Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, and AI Ethics.

The latter being critical as humans often start using a piece of technology before they fully understand the negative effects of it, especially at scale. We did that with fire, nuclear energy, oil and social media.

Topic #3: Minimalist Productivity

I also have an interest in learning more about productivity.

It's one of those fun rabbit holes I find myself exploring often but have to be mindful as it's often easy to get sucked into "How to do The Thing efficiently" as opposed to just "Doing The Thing" I'm supposed to do.

With second brain tools like Notion, Obsidian, and various note taking apps, learning about "organization" can quickly become overwhelming.

To overcome this, I'd like to explore minimalist productivity.

If any of the above resonates, feel free to reach out!

This episode is from Sept 2022 but is fairly timeless as I mostly discuss the aforementioned broader topics rather than time sensitive news.

On this episode, I speak to my NFT/crypto friend MJ and her friend Greg on Twitter Spaces about the basics of money, blockchain, cryptography and how all that ties into Web3, cryptocurrencies and Non Fungible Tokens. I explain trust-less systems using a real estate transaction and cryptography using a basic shift 1 cypher with Greg's first name. We also talk a bit about The Imitation Game and Alan Turing's early role in cryptography.

Follow MJ on Twitter @virginfty and me @farezv (I don't think Greg is on Twitter).

Twitter: @farezv

Instagram: @farezv

Linkedin: @farezv

TikTok: @farezv.com

Anchor.fm: @farezv

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Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/farezv/message

In this episode my NFT friends Beni (@Benibachi_eth) and Raez (@RAEZARTBAR) join me and we chat the @EZU_XYZ (an NFT project) event with @MagicEden (an NFT marketplace, like @OpenSea & @Coinbase_NFT) in New York City, the next Ethereum upgrade called The Merge which is scheduled for September. Remember, Ethereum goes from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake with The Merge. We also chat about "fake" NFT platforms such as Veve.

Thank you for listening, I’m grateful for your time! Please share this podcast if you find this content useful.

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Introduction

Hello friends, welcome to episode 7 of the Farez.FM podcast. I’m your host Farez Vadsaria, @farezv on the internet.

What the podcast is about

Normally on this podcast, I talk about Web 3 concepts and news in the tech, music, cryptocurrency, NFT, gaming & general pop culture space in a 10-15 minute monologue.

On today’s episode

However, this week I’ve got a special 90 min long Twitter Spaces episode with a few of my NFT friends from the Psychedelics Anonymous and Rebels By Night communities including Rebels co-founder Nass aka @nassyweazy on Twitter.

Apart from being a Rebel by night, Nass is a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z for short) focusing on blockchain security efforts. He worked in a similar capacity at Facebook prior to a16z crypto. Be sure to listen till the end as he shares some insight into various crypto exploits that have occurred including the recent Solana seed phrase compromise caused by a Slope Wallet misconfiguration & the Ronin bridge attack that resulted in the loss of $625 million.

And big thanks to my friends JB, and Junior from the PA community for hopping on and discussing ETH vs SOL in light of Magic Eden’s announcement of launching their service on Ethereum, and finally giving OpenSea a run for its money.

The original plan for this episode was to have my friend @Benibachi_eth come on and chat NFTs since it’s coming up to our 1 year in this space, however he had a family emergency so we’ll have him on another time. I didn’t know during the recording that he had a family emergency by the way, & that’s why we poke fun at him a bit in the beginning.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this jam packed episode. Please subscribe at farezv.com for episode updates straight to your inbox or follow Farez.FM on your favorite podcasting platforms. Thank you for listening!

Introduction

Hello friends, welcome to episode 6 of the Farez.FM podcast. I’m your host Farez Vadsaria, @farezv on the internet.

What the podcast is about

On this podcast, I talk about Web 3 concepts and news in the tech, music, cryptocurrency, gaming & general pop culture space in a few minutes.

On today’s episode

We’ll explore some recent news in light of the recent crypto market crash. If you’re unfamiliar, the Terra Luna crash followed by the Bitcoin sell off, along with general economic strains caused by Federal interest rate bump, Ukraine and Russia war, supply chain constraints as well as a pandemic that doesn’t seem to wanna quit has officially sent the crypto market into the winter.

This term essentially means prices are down, Web3 companies are struggling and everyone’s NFT portfolios have gone from seeing life changing gains to, well just being life changing. Without the gains.

All investment portfolios are on a diet shedding weight. Turns out the Wu Tang Clan was right about C.R.E.A.M. Cash does indeed rule everything around me.

Crypto News

1. OpenSea lays off 20% of its workforce as co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer shared in a tweet. In February, the company had secured an additional $300 million in funding with a valuation of $13.3 billion and was the dominant player in selling NFTs, earning a 2.5 percent commission on every trade. Crypto price crashes have reduced the value of NFTs recently which are even more speculative due to those communities being smaller and more susceptible to volatility.

2. This is in line with other Web3 layoffs with Coinbase laying off 18% of its work force recently in June. Today it’s market share tumbles to less than 3% according to CoinDesk.

   

   

3. Robinhood has been expanding its crypto trading menu with Uniswap being the most recent addition. If you don’t know, Uniswap is a decentralized exchange whereas companies like Robinhood, Voyager, BlockFi, FTX, Gemini and Coinbase (among others) are centralized exchanges. More on how DEXs work in a separate episode. This has resulted in Uniswap’s ERC-20 token UNI to surge 20% in the last day or so. Its market cap is $4.7 billion. Robinhood now offers a total of 13 crypto assets.

4. Gamestop launches it’s NFT Marketplace “to allow gamers, creators, collectors and other community members to buy, sell and trade NFTs. The Company’s NFT marketplace is a non-custodial, Ethereum Layer 2-based marketplace that enables parties to truly own their digital assets, which are represented and secured on the blockchain. The marketplace, which can be accessed at nft.gamestop.com, allows parties to connect to their own digital asset wallets such as the recently launched GameStop Wallet. Over time, the marketplace will expand functionality to encompass additional categories such as Web3 gaming, more creators and other Ethereum environments.” [GameStop]

   

5. Disney expands into Web3 with Polygon as part of it’s accelerator program to help innovate within NFTs, AR and VR using Web3 technologies, causing MATIC to surge in price “almost 21% to just over 69 cents over the last 24 hours.” [CoinDesk]

   

Here’s a great thread by @PuffYatty that covers all companies involved.

1. Flickplay is a web three social app where users can create augmented reality videos. Using their NFTs. This looks pretty cool. It's frog dude, walking around. That's pretty awesome. Imagine if all your NFTs were these incredible 3d models, just walking around, that'd be pretty cool.

2. Next company called Inworld AI creates "our brains for virtual characters". @inworld_ai provides a developer platform for creating AI powered virtual characters for use in the metaverse, AR VR games and virtual worlds.

3. @ObsessVR creates virtual stores for brands. Clients include Coach, Fendi, AT&T, Mattel, NBC and more. I kind of saw this coming. I mean, Walmart has one of their. VR experiences. I think this is going to be the future of e-commerce.

4. And as mentioned Polygon, the most widely used Ethereum L2 for NFTs is also partnered up with Disney.

5. @red6ar has created a patented AR headset used for much more realistic air combat training than traditional flight simulators.

6. Lockerverse. Disney describes Lockerverse as a Web 3 platform that empowers creators and brands to tell culture defining stories, and deliver a unique access and experiences. Very little information can be found about the company besides a 2021 trademark application.

So there you have it. Disney's planning to grow into the Web 3 space and they kind of see where this whole space is going and with the amount of IP they have, it makes sense that they're really expanding the space.

And that is episode 6, a short one, my friends of the Farez.FM podcast. Thank you for tuning in. If you're unfamiliar, I post written transcripts of this podcast on farezv.com, which is my blog slash newsletter. Feel free to go there and subscribe. I also post the video editions to this podcast on YouTube.

And as always, you can hear the podcast on all your typical podcast platforms. I'm @farezv on the internet. Thank you for listening and you have a good one. Cheers.

Introduction

Hello friends, welcome to episode 5 of the Farez For Me podcast which I will now abbreviate to Farez.FM. See what I did there? I’m really creative. I’m your host Farez Vadsaria, @farezv on the internet.

What the podcast is about

On this podcast, I talk about Web 3 concepts and news in the tech, music, cryptocurrency, gaming & general pop culture space in about 15 minutes.

On today’s episode

We’ll explore what Non Fungible Tokens are. NFTs have taken the world by a storm and are quite disruptive when applied to the right business models.

Concept Explanation

Before we dive in, let’s understand the concept of fungibility. If I gave you a $100 bill as a loan, you owe me a hundred dollars. If you gave me a different $100 bill right back, we’d be even. Unless I specifically want that original $100 due to some inherent value in the bill, the print date or the way it looks or the serial number, our two $100 bills going back and forth are fungible.

Meaning they’re the same. Even though they’re two different bills with unique serial numbers. Barring collector coins and certain old currencies from different countries as they may have historic value, most currencies work this way, in the normal way we use them. They’re interchangeable.

Cryptocurrencies or tokens are also interchangeable. If I send you 1 bitcoin and you send me another bitcoin right back, we’re even as bitcoin is fungible.

Certain blockchains enable the creation of Non Fungible Tokens, or NFTs. For the sake of our conversation here, Ethereum’s NFTs and Solana’s NFTs are on different blockchains with their respective underlying implementation differences, but they conceptually work the same. On this episode we don’t care about the underlying blockchain NFT implementations, just the concept of non fungibility.

NFTs are digital assets that are unique and cannot be replaced by another identical asset. This is in contrast to fungible tokens, which are interchangeable and can be replaced by any other token of the same type. Ethereum's blockchain allows for the creation of NFTs because it supports smart contracts, which enable the implementation of complex rules and logic.

NFTs are unique in that they have traits associated with them, in the case of most NFT projects which are based around animals (such as Bored/Mutant Ape Yacht Club) or humanoid entities (Psychedelics Anonymous or Rebels), these traits might include clothing, masks, necklaces etc. The version 1 of NFTs included traits that are SET in place however, there are multiple market places out there working on interchangeable trait based NFTs.

If you’ve played video games such as Team Fortress 2 or Counter Strike where players have certain cosmetic items such as knives, gun skins and hats; we’ll then you’ve already interacted with NFT esque functionality, except in those video games, those items weren’t powered by blockchains. So item ownership within video games very neatly fit the NFT use case.

Other than video games, NFTs will disrupt several business models because they can be used to represent ownership of real-world assets. For example, NFTs could be used to represent ownership of a piece of art, a collectible, or a ticket to an event. This would enable individuals to sell and trade ownership of these assets without the need for a central authority. As a result, NFTs have the potential to disrupt many industries that rely on central intermediaries.

Examples of NFTs taking over traditional business models

Think of a real estate transaction where there’s a buyer and a seller. In today’s landscape of real estate, there are multiple entities involved in the process of a house sale. And they go through multiple steps before the sale of the house is considered complete.

The buyer has a real estate agent, the seller has one too. Sometimes they’re the same person, but often times they’re not.

1. Once a buyer makes an offer, the two real estate agents discuss the numbers and upon agreement a legal contract is drawn up.

2. The buyer then puts money in escrow, a separate company which ensures that the buyer is serious about buying the house. This amount is like a non-trivial deposit on the house to ensure the buyer isn’t just going around making several offers with no intention to buy the house.

3. Once escrow clears, the buyer applies for or usually has an approval for a mortgage where they put down some percentage, usually 5-20% of the house’s value toward the sale and the rest is put by the bank willing to make a mortgage loan to the buyer based on their credit history, existing debts and income level.

4. This money then goes to the seller. If the seller has a mortgage, this money is first used to pay the seller’s bank and then the rest goes to the seller’s bank account.

5. The buyer and seller’s real estate agents each take a small cut from this transaction. Usually 1-3% of the final price of the house.

6. Then a registration company transfers the title or deed of the house and any land associated with it, over from the seller to the buyer’s name.

7. Once the buyer receives the deed, the house transaction is considered complete.

I might’ve missed a step or two but overall, most real estate is sold in this way. If you notice, the one key component that determines house ownership is the title or the deed. Whomever’s name is on the deed owns that house and the land that it’s built on.

Now imagine if a smart contract waived all these steps using NFTs and fungible tokens like Ethereum or Bitcoin and combined them into a single step, or at most 2-3 steps.

1. Buyer makes an offer on the house to the seller.

2. Money goes from buyer’s wallet, to seller’s

3. The deed or title of the house, in the form of a Non Fungible Token, transfers over from the seller’s wallet to the buyer’s. And that’s it.

All powered by the underlying blockchain, no middle intermediaries taking any cuts. Perhaps a small percentage of the transaction goes to the blockchain for processing the transaction. This would be much smaller than all the aforementioned middle entities such as real estate agents, escrow and registration/title companies etc. taking non trivial amounts of fees for over-seeing the real estate sale.

See how freaking disruptive this is?

Authenticity Certificates

Now let’s apply this to authenticity certificates. When you buy an expensive artifact, whether it’s a Chanel bag, an antique guitar, a painting or jewelry, it comes with a certificate of authenticity.

It’s a document with your name and the serial number of the product specifying that you’ve purchased the original and not a fake. This document proves your ownership and authenticity of the product. This could be replaced with a digital certificate, in the form of an NFT.

Event Tickets

If you’ve gone to an iconic concert, the tickets you purchased for that event could be an NFT.

The great thing about NFTs is that they have value on the secondary market. You could decide to sell those concert tickets a few months or years later as people may be interested in owning a piece of that experience. Especially if they missed out on going to the actual concert.

Non fungible tokens and their underlying blockchains, make this possible.

They provide cryptographic ownership of digital assets and the uniqueness of those assets make them non-fungible.

Myths and Use Cases

Let’s address some common myths around this topic. People say they can right click save as or screenshot your NFT and now they own it. Well to those people I say, I can stand outside your house and take a photo of it and claim it’s mine, but it doesn’t make it mine. Only my name on the deed or title does.

So while people can claim to own your NFT, it’s very easy to prove ownership. If you have Twitter Blue for instance, Twitter’s premium service where you pay $3/month and get to edit tweets and create an NFT profile photo, it’s very easy to verify if your account owns the underlying NFT.

Pretty soon, other social media platforms will implement NFT based profile pictures and they may or may not charge a premium to use that feature, the way Twitter does.

Sure there’s imposters claiming to own your NFT, just like there’s imposters who claim to own authentic Chanel bags and Gibson guitars and Beverly Hills mansions, but do they own it really?

People are smart and they eventually figure out who the true owner is. Besides, most NFT communities and projects gather around utility that a particular NFT provides.

The most version 1 implementation of utility is events and gatherings where you have to prove ownership of the NFT in order to enter. Exclusive events can’t be entered with a copy/pasted screenshot of an NFT.

These events are networking opportunities and spaces where other NFT projects showcase their work and often provide a white list to the existing holders of blue chip projects to enter their projects, which if you’re unfamiliar is a list where you get to mint that new project.

For instance, I was in New York City last week for an entire week going to various NFT events based on the NFTs I had, which included Psychedelics Anonymous’s PA House; a space with multiple events with DJs, networking and talks given by existing holders and popular Web3 personalities such as Nicole Behnam and Kmoney.

I also went to the BubbleWorld party at a rooftop bar called Mr. Purple where I saw Future perform. By owning their BubbleWorld Founder’s Pass NFT.

So while these are early implementations of Non Fungible Tokens, I’m excited to see which business models are disrupted through this novel technology.

We may soon live in a world where all digital goods are considered Non Fungible and powered by blockchains.

Another couple of use cases are really intriguing when it comes to NFTs.

Investor Flip

A massively powerful implementation of NFTs is the concept of a flipped investor. In traditional venture capitalism, you the company founder first raise money through VCs who stake some non-trivial ownership in your company to help you fund the building of your minimum viable product.

Once you’re profitable, or have a liquidity event, such as an Initial Public Offering or sale via acquisition, those VCs first take their cut.

Instead of VCs, you could imagine your customers funding your product almost in a kickstarter like fashion using NFTs. They own a small piece of your company for providing you the initial funding.

Record Label Flip

In the music industry, a record label signs an up and coming artist up front with an advance fee and takes royalties on their work as they create music under their label.

With NFTs, your listeners could directly fund your work and remove the need for exploitative record label executives who only want to profit off your work as opposed to truly support it.

Remember, NFTs have a value on the secondary market. Anyone who at first invested in these VC or record label scenarios in your startup or band, can sell their stake at a fair market price.

These more mature implementations of Non Fungible Tokens require careful planning and some regulation which is lacking in this space.

Outro

That’s episode 5 of Farez.FM. Thank you for listening. As always, I’m grateful for your time. Feel free to leave me questions, comments on farezv.com or voice messages on Anchor. Catch you on the next episode!

Introduction

Hello friends, welcome to the Farez For Me podcast aka newscast aka young man yells into the cloud.

I’m your host Farez Vadsaria, @farezv on the internet. And now, with a dedicated podcast microphone, the Rode PodMic.

What the podcast is about

On this podcast, I talk about Web 3 concepts and news in the tech, music, cryptocurrency, gaming & general pop culture space in about 15 minutes.

On today’s episode

We explore crypto wallets and their two main types. We’ll talk about hardware wallets such as Ledger and software wallets such as MetaMask. We also chat about how websites resolve addresses, the secret sauce known as Domain Name Service (DNS) and it’s crypto equivalent, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS).

Apple is now becoming a bank. Well, not really but close enough and Roku might be acquired by Netflix who is exploring some avenues to save its decreasing subscribe base.

Concept Explanation

A wallet, is a software, hardware, paper, or Crypto Exchange "store" where cryptocurrency is held. Wallets can have multiple crypto accounts associated with them. Wallets can be "hot" (meaning they’re connected to internet) or "cold" like hardware wallets. Cold wallets are not connected to any internet networks and thereby generally non-susceptible to hacks and scams. I say generally because there’s still basic security principles one must follow when using hardware crypto wallets.

MetaMask is one example of a software wallet which can run on a web browser as a plugin, or on mobile phones as an app.

Coinbase Wallet is yet another such wallet with a couple of additional features such as a human readable account name that’s most likely also associated with your Coinbase account underneath the hood.

Please note, this Coinbase Wallet human readable account name is something like @farezv, not farezv.eth which is an Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain. More on ENS domains shortly.

Crypto account addresses have gibberish looking alphanumeric value associated with them. For instance, this is one of my wallet addresses for Ethereum, it reads 0x1bF51ED6cD81dE4449D4Ca3c33822ECC5f3F66a4

Simple to remember right?

If you heard the previous episode, you’ll realize that a wallet address looks like the result of a hash function. In the world of blockchains, wallet addresses and transaction ids all look similar since they are results of hash functions. Different wallet tech has different features such as showing currencies and NFTs on the front end, but on the back end, underneath the hood, a wallet address is just a row on the blockchain database that holds a certain amount of crypto.

A crypto account address is a unique public address on the blockchain for that specific cryptocurrency. My Ethereum address is 0x1bF51ED6cD81dE4449D4Ca3c33822ECC5f3F66a4

Similarly, my Nano cryptocurrency account has a different address and it's nano_3pr9488qndzpaiibk4e9jwcmib5qqpc9wnh4pjjcsfopkahwrjgjeiwmd89p

Wallets have a 1:many relationship with crypto accounts. Meaning if you want to hold 2 crypto currencies, you need to have two different account addresses on that wallet. Crypto exchange accounts "abstract this away" by providing you a single account to see all your crypto from that you sign in using your email but underneath the hood manage all the different accounts for you.

By the way, as someone who works in the authentication space (aka, I work on login software at Discovery+), I can tell you that Web 3 companies using email to login is VERY Web2.

The future of authentication is wallets connected to decentralized apps, aka dApps.

We spoke about dApps in episode 2 regarding decentralization with my ride sharing dApp example.

Why are software wallets vulnerable?

You may have heard a lot about crypto scams and wallets getting drained where people lose their valuable crypto assets such as expensive NFTs. By the way, I have a separate episode I’m preparing to explain Non Fungible Tokens, or NFTs. NFTs can and will disrupt many business models and there’s a lot to cover there, which warrants a separate episode.

These scams happen because software wallets such as MetaMask, or Coinbase Wallet are implemented as browser extensions. Meaning signing for transactions on these wallets is as good as clicking a button which someone can easily do if they have remote access to your computer, or they can install malware using phishing techniques (via scammy emails) or they can redirect you to a legit looking website and get you to click on a button that’s a scammy smart contract.

What is a hardware wallet?

When you create a new wallet, you generate a unique 12, 15 or 24 word seed phrase. This is a list of words that’s the master key so to speak, of your crypto wallet. Depending on the hardware wallet, you may also setup a small PIN to lock the wallet’s day to day usage.

This is different from a password, that your Coinbase account or MetaMask wallet is guarded by. Passwords are good for temporarily restricting access, just like PINs are. Seed phrases lock down the wallet accounts from being installed on any device.

Having a seed phrase means someone can “resurrect” your wallet on any computer or device and access all your accounts associated with that wallet. That’s why it’s imperative to memorize your seed phrase and minimize written copies of your seed phrase. All written copies must be stored securely in a fire and flood proof manner. DO NOT store any digital copies of your seed phrase. That is as good as a software wallet because now anyone who hacks into your computer can copy your seed phrase.

Storing your seed phrase in an envelope in a bank safety deposit box is about as safe as the next group of Ocean’s 11’s vault breaking ability. If you don’t know, Ocean’s 11 is a movie franchise starring Julia Roberts and 11 men.

Hardware wallets are dedicated devices used to generate and store your seed phrase securely, while allowing you to interact with blockchains and dApps in all of the ways you would normally expect. The Ledger is one such wallet.

In a software wallet, the transaction signing process is clicking a couple of UI buttons in a browser extension or tab. In hardware wallets, signing transactions requires clicking physical buttons of a USB drive looking device.

Now you see where we’re going with this?

Hardware wallets are much better at securing your crypto and NFT assets because unless someone has a gun to your head forcing you to sign transactions, there’s no way a hacker could remotely sign your crypto transactions to steal your assets.

Ledger

Ledger.com offers three models, S, X and S Plus and they’re all equally secure as they share the basic principles of hardware wallets.

They’re smart devices, so they have local versions of Ethereum, Bitcoin and other blockchain dapps (aka decentralized apps) running on them, and they vary in their functionality.

The Ledger Nano S has the smallest local memory and is good for NFTs since you only need a couple of blockchains such as Ethereum or Solana for those. A Nano S can hold a handful of apps and is often sold in a bundle if you’d like to secure your crypto assets across multiple hardware wallets.

If you’re planning to expand your crypto portfolio, you’re better off getting the Nano S Plus or the Nano X as both have storage capability for upto 100 apps and 5500+ crypto assets. Difference being that the Nano X has 8 hours of battery life and has bluetooth capability so you can connect your phone and use the Ledger Live mobile app.

By the way, Ledger isn’t sponsoring me, I just like their products and people need to get educated more and more on crypto wallets as seemingly some of the richest NFT people store their valuable crypto assets on vulnerable hot wallets like MetaMask on their phone or computer.

To summarize, hardware wallets securely store your crypto offline. They keep your crypto protected in a secure chip.

Domain Name Service and Ethereum Name Service

When you type stuff into your browser, like farezv.com for instance, you’re really asking your browser to go fetch the contents of the website farezv.com from where the web server that hosts my website is located.

But where is this web server located and how does the browser know where to look?This is where the Domain Name Service (DNS) comes into play. DNS provides a lookup table that matches human readable web addresses such as google.com and farezv.com to the underlying IP addresses of the web servers where their content is located.

DNS tells your browser where to look.

Similarly, the Ethereum Name Service does that for crypto wallet addresses. Since addresses look like encrypted gibberish (because that’s what they are), it’s hard to talk about them verbally or send them to people via messages as copy/pasting can be risky and sending crypto to the wrong wallet address ensures you’ll lose that money permanently. Remember folks, crypto is decentralized, you can’t complain to anyone to get a refund back.

Hence, Ethereum Name Service provides a nice human readable ethereum domain name to your crypto wallet. Just go on app.ens.domains, login with your wallet and purchase the domain you desire for any number of years.

Keep in mind each domain purchase or renewal transaction charges gas fees so you’re better of buying for a higher number of years.

Not sure what Ethereum gas fees are?

Stay tuned, we’ll go over what that means and how ethereum actually works a couple of episodes later.

In Tech News

1. Apple is a bank now reports The Verge. If you’ve been on the Apple Store app to see what your latest gadget is priced at, you may have seen these monthly installments that you have an option of paying as opposed to the entire purchase price up front.
   
   That feature is available on the Apple Card, which is a credit card built into the iPhone with a few nifty features like virtual cards for your phone and Apple Watch, and higher than average cash back options for certain brands etc. For the Apple Card, Apple utilizes Goldman Sach’s credit check and lending services.

   
   However for Apple’s Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) program, it choses to setup its own subsidiary called Apple Financial LLC to provide lending services and will remain separate from Apple’s main business. Bloomberg reports that Apple Financing doesn’t have its own bank charter (so no, Apple’s technically and legally not a bank).

   Side note, if you’ve seen Season 5 of Billions which is a fantastic TV show, you’ll understand why a bank charter is important. It’s a regulatory document that makes you a legit recession-proof-handout-friendly bank in the eyes of the government.

2. Roku might get bought by Netflix. Roku’s stock was down 55% earlier in 2022 but has seen a 20% rebound last week as there are whispers of a Netflix acquisition. If you recall, Netflix has lost some subscribers and is exploring strategies around an ad based version where Roku’s ad tech comes in handy, as does it’s 60+ million active users.

   
   They’re exploring password sharing crackdowns so you can’t share the same Netflix account with your ex’s ex and their ex plus all your family and a few friends. Netflix is also trying to venture into live sports and recently green lit a Squid Game reality TV series.
   
   With the recent merger of Warner Brothers and Discovery (my employer), Disney’s rising subscriber numbers, great shows like Seal Team and Scorpion on Paramount+ and of course NBC’s Peacock, I’m curious to see stream wars work out.

Outro

And that’s our episode 4, thank you for listening folks. I’m thinking of dedicating a bonus episode for Apple products and for covering the crypto recession we’re going through recently including how we got here as they’re both exciting and interesting to cover.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it on your podcast app. It’ll help the podcast grow. Please also share it on social media and tell your friends and family about it. As always, I’m grateful for your time.

Share

If you have any questions or comments you’d like me to address in a future episode, please leave me a voice note on Anchor.fm/farezv/message.

Follow me on Twitter @farezv. Stay tuned & I’ll see you in the next episode.

Introduction

Hello friends, welcome to episode 3 of the Farez For Me podcast aka newscast aka young man yells into the cloud.

I’m your host Farez Vadsaria, @farezv on the internet.

What the podcast is about

On this podcast I talk about Web 3 concepts, & interesting news; in the tech, music, cryptocurrency, web3, gaming, science & general pop culture space in approximately 15 minutes.

What today’s episode is about

We understand how blockchains work, and their two basic types. We also talk about DAOs, aka Decentralized Autonomous Organizations and why they’re important.

Binance launches in Idaho, Solana goes down…again! And some tech news regarding Meta, Tesla & SpaceX.

What is a Blockchain?

If you've ever seen an accounting ledger, you're already halfway there in your understanding of what a blockchain is. In simple terms, it's a connected list of records. Imagine a growing list of digital records, resembling real a life ledger book, known as blocks that are connected using cryptography.

These blocks each have cryptographic signature associated with another block in the chain, a timestamp, and some transaction data signifying the connectivity of the chain. This cryptographic signature is known as a hash, it's implemented in computer code and is essentially a one-way mathematical algorithm to obfuscate simple information into complex information.

For example, there may be a function f(x) such that if x = hello, f(x) meaning f(hello) may return some value that resembles 0x43a5fc78 (which is some made up gibberish). There's no way for someone who reads 0x43a5fc78 to decode it back to the original message hello. This one-way nature of these hashing algorithms or hash functions as they're commonly known, ensures secure obfuscation of data (in this example, the term "hello"). Applying this same concept to blockchains ensures that each chain of blocks is unchangeable (especially by malicious 3rd parties).

Here’s how it works, from the book Mastering Bitcoin.

Each block within the blockchain is identified by a hash, generated using the SHA256 cryptographic hash algorithm on the header of the block. Each block also references a previous block, known as the parent block, through the “previous block hash” field in the block header. In other words, each block contains the hash of its parent inside its own header. The sequence of hashes linking each block to its parent creates a chain going back all the way to the first block ever created, known as the genesis block.

By the way, hashing is different from encryption. Encryption is two-way. Data obfuscated by encryption can be decrypted to be human readable again whereas hashing is a one way data obfuscation method.

Telephone Game

Think of a game of telephone, where person A whispers something to person B who whispers something to person C, and so on all the way down to person Z.

In real life, people mishear at some point and the message changes. But imagine a perfect communication method where each whisper is clear and person Z actually hears what person A originally said to person B.

Imagine this conversation:
Anna to Bob: Hi Bob, the code word is apples
Bob to Cathy: Hi Cathy, the code word is apples
... and so on
Yasmin to Zoey: Hi Zoey, the code word is apples

If you were a malicious third party, in order to make person Z believe they heard something else (other than the code word is apples), you'd have to ensure person Y heard something else, and for that, person X would've heard something else and so on. Essentially, you'd have to modify the whole chain to mutate the real message.

This is why blockchains are resistant to modification, and essentially a trust-less peer to peer system of record keeping because it's in their very nature to preserve the original transaction data. The ledger or record(s) these blockchains keep, are distributed along various nodes (or people in the above code word is apples example) so that even if some subset of nodes (aka computers) were corrupted in some way, there would be consensus or agreement by the network on what is the true value of any particular record.

Consensus protocols are just methods in which various computers that are part of a blockchain network agree on the information stored on the blockchain. More on consensus protocols in later episodes.

So why is this important?

Haven't we always had cryptography and encryption in some form or another since the World Wars? You're right! But not in the world of finance. Mostly in the world of government/military communication, diplomacy or espionage.

Side note, The Imitation Game is a great movie to watch about cryptography’s role in espionage during WW2 and how it shaped the outcome of the war between Allied forces & the Nazis.

In the world of finance, this application of cryptography in the form of blockchain technology has a tremendous opportunity to disrupt traditional 3rd party trust based financial systems such as banks, and payment processors.

If we have a secure form of paying each other via digital currency such as bitcoin, while ensuring there's no way to mutate or modify (for malicious purposes) a secure blockchain, then we can eliminate a whole host of wealthy high income middle-parties who take advantage of middle and lower income populations. We can provide those who are less fortunate a secure financial identity, prevent theft, fraud, and increase trust in financial systems.

The blockchain was invented by a person (or group of people) using the anonymous name Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to serve as the public transaction ledger of the cryptocurrency bitcoin.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

To date, no one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is!

What problems are we solving?

Blockchains' secure immutable nature ensures transactions in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin aren't falsified like fiat currency such as cash bills and coins may be. It solves the double spending problem, where the same unique token of value (may it be a metal coin, a painting, or a cash bill) is maliciously replicated and spent twice. Once by the true owner of the token, and once by a malicious actor who has successfully replicated that token. This ensures there's no devaluation of the original currency.

Blockchains remove the need for a central entity that manages the ownership of currencies or any resource that specific blockchain is backing. Blockchains can manage assets outside of currencies as well and as a result, they can power different types of applications.

A blockchain is simply defined as the concept of a distributed trust less peer to peer ledger. It just so happens that the first serious implementation of a blockchain is the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

Layer Two Blockchains

Remember those block headers we spoke about earlier? Well, they have a limited bandwidth on the amount of data they can carry. Meaning each block in a blockchain, can only carry a certain limited number of transaction data. This makes blockchains (especially early iterations such as the Bitcoin blockchain) incredibly inefficient.

Enter Layer 2 scaling solutions such as "rollups" on Ethereum and the Lighting Network on top of Bitcoin. We’ll explore Layer 2s in detail in later episodes as how they optimize more transaction volume on their blockchain is a massive rabbit hole.

In simple terms, layer 2 blockchains are scaling solutions on top of layer 1 blockchains. They’re the side streets people redirect to whereas layer 1s are the main highways, which can often get congested with traffic during peak times.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)

Decentralized autonomous organizations aka DAOs are entities that don’t have a central governing, or authoritative figure who makes decisions that the DAO oversees.

Each member of a DAO, generally has an equal say in how the DAO makes governing decisions. This new structure of governance, enabled by tokenized voting on blockchains could change how we think about governments, corporations and that pesky housing committee in your apartment building that won’t let you change the curtains or paint the fence of your house blue.

In Crypto News

• Binance.US launches in Idaho. If you’re surprised by this news, not all cryptocurrency exchanges launch in all states. There are state specific laws that allow certain exchanges to do business in one state but not another. Speaking of crypto laws, I might dedicate an entire episode to states offering favorable crypto laws. There’s 5 of them, but we’ll explore them in a separate episode as there’s a lot there.

• Optimism; a layer 2 blockchain token, not the feeling of optimism, is now listed on Coinbase.

• So is SAND, the native token of the Metaverse play to earn video game The Sandbox. We’ll explore these in detail in later episodes as well.

• Solana had yet another outage, this time for 4 hours. This seems to be a pattern folks. If you remember, Solana had an incredible run up to the top 5 spot right after Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether and Binance Coin back in late summer of 2021. Since then, plagued with outages, the token has dropped in value and is now struggling to stay in the top 10 by market cap.

In Tech News

• Facebook aka Meta’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down after 14 years in her role that transformed the company from a bunch of college kids trying to spy on their crushes into a massive multi-app social and advertising behemoth. Javier Olivan will be taking over as COO this fall. Sandberg wants to focus on philanthropic work, which is rich people for “doing my taxes the smart way and writing books.” She will continue to serve on the board of directors for Meta.

• Tesla and SpaceX workers were told to work from the office at least 40 hours a week or quit, in internal memos from Elon Musk. Not sure how this is going to go well, people might quit and work for competitors like Rivian and NASA…ah okay I guess Tesla and SpaceX people are back in the office. But hey, the dude can casually buy Twitter, so what the hell do I know. I only know that I save around 1 to 1.5 hours not having a commute and can spend more time with my family which improves my quality of life, which improves my desire to work for the company that values my quality of life. Funny how that works. But hey, if people go back to work, they start commuting. If they start commuting, they’ll listen to podcasts. So yeah, let’s all go to work, except me.

In Science News

Scientists may have found a way to inject oxygen directly into the blood stream. A lot of injuries and illnesses, such as COVID-19 can cause the human body to struggle for sufficient oxygen that’s needed for our basic survival. In critical cases, patients are put on a ventilator. You know, the device that was in shortage throughout the pandemic.

The scarcity is a problem, in addition to the injury or potential infection that ventilators can cause the lungs. This intravenous oxygen delivery, is a breakthrough technology which can completely change how ventilators are used. Mechanical ventilation of lungs aside, there’s a technique called Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (aka ECMO) where blood is carried outside the body so that oxygen can be mixed in and carbon dioxide taken out. Thanks to this new discovery, oxygen may now be directly added and the patient’s blood can stay where it is!

This can significantly reduce ventilator related lung injury known as refractory hypoxemia, aka a severe lack of oxygen in your arteries. This new technique works by channeling oxygen laden liquid through a number of small nozzles that keep getting smaller until the oxygen bubbles are smaller than red blood cells. They’re then injected directly into the blood stream. Fascinating stuff!

Outro

That’s all folks! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it on social media and tell your friends and family about it! As always, I’m grateful for your time and support.

Share

Leave me a voice note on Anchor.fm and I may include your question or comment in a future episode.

Follow me on Twitter @farezv. Stay tuned & I’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening.

Introduction

Hello friends, welcome to episode 2 of the Farez For Me podcast aka newscast aka young man yells into the cloud.

I’m your host Farez Vadsaria, @farezv on the internet.

What the podcast is about

On this podcast I talk about daily news; in the tech, music, cryptocurrency, web3, gaming & general pop culture space in approximately 15 minutes

What today’s episode is about

We define Web 3 and decentralization and why they’re important for humanity. Coinbase makes some poor hiring choices, and there’s 3D printed ears made from human cells? Let’s get into it!

What is Web 3?

But first we need to understand Web 1 and 2.

Web 1: The first form of the internet, called Web 1.0 was mostly static pages. Content that was informational, and meant to be read. Only serious organizations like governments and universities had websites. Its early life coincides with mine, roughly from 1991 to 2004. People only READ Web 1.

Web 2 started around 2004-5 to well now(ish). People not only read but helped create Web 2.0 with social media networks and content creation platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Twitch.tv for instance. People are now reading and WRITING to aka creating the internet in the Web2 space. But there’s a catch, they don’t own their content. The platforms do, if you read their terms and conditions carefully before you hastily register your account under some pseudonym you think is cool, you will realize they the website you’re posting your cat videos and ice bucket challenges on owns that content.

Let’s think real quick about how we own anything. We require a medium of exchange to trade for goods, usually the currency of the country or continent we reside in. But how do we own things on the internet? Using fiat currencies, such as dollars or rupees results in confusing exchange rate scenarios and these aren’t accepted worldwide. Granted there’s credit cards, but they’re incredibly inefficient. Why they’re inefficient requires a separate episode.

So we need more than just a read and write layer for the internet. We need an ownership layer. A financial layer.

Web 3: Enter the blockchain. This is the underlying infrastructure where you can cryptographically own things on the internet via monetary mediums like cryptocurrencies. Because ownership requires a secure barter system, the un-hackability of blockchains comes in handy via cryptography.

How are blockchains un-hackable?

There’s a lot more to it than we have time for in this episode, but think of a game of telephone. If you whisper something to person A, who then whispers the same to the person next to them, call them B and so on, all the way to the last person in the chain, you expect the last person to hear the same thing person A told person B in the first conversation.

In a real human game of telephone, people often mishear and mis-transcribe down the line.

In blockchains, cryptography ensures this message is always the same as it goes down the chain. This is because, in order for the last person to get the wrong message, the person before it has to, and the one before it and so on. This makes the data on the block-chain (the whispered message in this analogy) IMMUTABLE aka unchangeable.

We’ll go over how blockchains work later but regarding the un-hackability of blockchains, let us dispel myth about crypto scams.

You often hear about crypto scams. Crypto wallets being compromised are the same as bank account credentials or debit card PINs getting compromised. All your money is only as safe as your passwords/pins and in the world of crypto, your private keys. Your master phrase that protects your crypto wallet. More of wallet tech in a separate episode. But basically, don’t click on suspicious links and always be cautious of people trying to gain information when they have no business getting that information.

Most hacks aren’t sophisticated hackers from nation states, but people falling for simple social engineering techniques. Again, there’s a lot here so we’ll have to unpack later in a crypto security focused episode.

Why is Web 3 & decentralization so great?

Web 3.0 will change our world for the better by increasing decentralization, moving the power of computing and data from corporations to the people who own it & dare I say it, making the world a better place [barf] through the token economy.

In order to understand this, let’s clarify where Web2 fell short?

Web 2 helped the first wave of the Creator Economy where the average user was creating content on the internet.

Centralization of data, and network effects helped a handful of corporations such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon grow tremendously. To the point where space travel, an activity of nations, is now being done by a handful of bored billionaires. Some, with dick shaped rockets.

Monopolies around this creation of products, mechanisms and systems that collect your data is a huge reason why people distrust the current form of the web which is largely still in its 2.0 form.

By far the worst of it all though is the ad revenue driven business model, which naturally results in a user engagement at all costs approach to product development. I was guilty of this too. I started a couple of video gaming YouTube channels about a decade ago despite not having a deep interest in the process of YouTubing at the time just for the sake of making some ad dollars.

If you heard episode 1, you know my video gaming YouTube career never went anywhere.

Chamath Palihapitiya, a former executive at Facebook said the following in his criticism of social media networks.

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.”

It seems Web 2.0 exacerbated humanity's core problems. Lack of trust is rampant.

Power of Decentralization and the Token Economy

With leaking data swaying elections (through targeted ad campaigns), misinformation around public health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the general lack of trust that comes with the advertising and user engagement at all costs model of the internet's current affairs, it's safe to say decentralization was a long time coming.

In fact, the term Decentralization "entered written English in the first third of the 1800s" according to Wikipedia.

In the context of the internet, Decentralization refers to moving control and power of informational and commercial systems away from central entities like governments and corporations, to people. People in the sense of computing entities, like personal phones and computers which may be sitting around doing nothing when not being used.

Imagine hailing a cab from Lyft or Uber these days, where the ride pricing for that specific day, month, year, city and neighborhood is decided by a machine learning model. This ML model and code is run on a centralized (albeit distributed) computing entity owned and operated by a corporation when in reality most of the work is done by the driver who's driving you, and their vehicle which is incurring some wear and tear.

In exchange for their services, the driver gets a fee but the centralized computing entity also gets their cut. In some cases, it's a large cut. In most cases, they're exploitative central entities.

Uber and Lyft drivers strike over pay, gig-work conditions

• Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2021.

Enter Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Amongst cryptocurrencies, Ether is second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization.

• Wikipedia

Decentralization, open-source, smart contracts? That's a lot of words, we'll unpack these slowly in separate episodes. For now, just know that smart contract is just a fancy name for code that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.

I like to think of ETH and most cryptocurrency tokens as @CroissantEth on Twitter:

Imagine the same ride sharing transaction where you hail a ride from your decentralized application, that's hosted on a bunch of blockchain servers run by ordinary people like you and me lending their computing power on chain. Here's what happens:

1. You open crypto ride sharing app

2. You hail or Limo or a Toyota Prius (because Climate Change is real yo!)

3. Ride share driver arrives to your pickup location

4. Ride share driver drops you to your destination

5. A small amount of Ethereum automatically goes to the application** based on the parameters of the smart contract, in this case perhaps the distance travelled and how long you used the ride share application for

6. A slightly larger amount of Ethereum goes to the ride share driver, no middle man central entity exploits anyone

   Application in this case is really the ordinary people's wallets, for serving you with computing power for steps 1 and 2, **through whatever spare computing means they might have. Whether it's a spare desktop laptop computer, cell phone, tablet, TV, Roomba or smart fridge.

Now imagine if every application ran this way in a decentralized manner. No middle entities, just the internet. For the people, by the people. Powered by blockchains.

In Tech News

Coinbase, you know our most favorite blue app that only shows the color red these days, has announced a hiring freeze and will rescind certain accepted job offers. This seems to be on par with a lot of hiring slowdowns across various industries, especially the tech sector. Turns out all that crazy growth during the pandemic (thanks to a rise in stay at home Netflix and chill mandates) just isn’t sustainable forever.

Rescinding existing job offers is pretty shitty though, you already budgeted for these roles. Just keep the people! They probably already quit their jobs and some of them are on work visas!

3DBio Therapeutics

In a first clinical trial of this technology, a woman receives a 3D printed ear made from her own cells according to The Verge. Say what?

Yup, a company called 3DBio Therapeutics has successfully transplanted a 3D-printed ear made from human cells onto a woman born with an ear deformity. The process involves taking a biopsy from the patient's ear and pulling out cartilage cells, which are then grown and 3D printed into the shape of an ear.

Damn science; first the COVID vaccines in a few short months, now 3D printed body parts? Always showing off! We’re all thinking about what other parts could be 3D printed right?

Your knees of course!

Alchemy, the popular Web3 SaaS company expands into the Solana ecosystem. That’s great, for when Solana works. Alchemy is a serious powerhouse of a company with a $200 million raise round in February at a $10 billion valuation. For those who don’t know, Alchemy provides a bunch of software to help blockchain developers work faster. Kinda like the AWS of Web3.

The beta version of Alchemy is live on Solana blockchain now with a broader release coming soon.

In Music News

Kendrick Lamar’s new album called Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers is out and I’ve listened to the N95 track but I still need to listen to the rest.

As with all of K-Dot’s music, it’s usually worth a few listens before you really get what’s going on.

Outro

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it on social media or tell your friends and family about it. As always, I’m grateful for your time.

Share

Leave me a voice note on Anchor.fm and I may include your question or comment in a future episode.

Follow me on Twitter @farezv. Stay tuned & I’ll see you in the next episode.

These posts are the transcripts of my podcast episodes. Here is episode 1 on my background & why I started a podcast.

Farez For Me Intro

Hello friends, welcome to the Farez For Me podcast aka newscast aka public service announcement aka young man yells into the cloud.

I’m your host Farez Vadsaria. I’m @farezv on the internet.

About Podcast & Content Format

Welcome to my what-I’ll-try-to-do-daily podcast/newsletter/rant called Farez For Me where I talk about daily news; in the tech, music, cryptocurrency, web3, gaming & general pop culture space in approximately 15 minutes where we maybe end with some music.

That’s why I started this podcast on Anchor.FM so I don’t get sued by record company lawyers. Besides, I’m a trained singer so I can just sing for you if I feel like it.

And I might even try to answer some existential questions on this podcast like, what the hell is the Metaverse? Or is crypto just like magic internet money no one understands? Maybe I’ll even take your questions. We’ll keep the format flexible as I figure this out.

Maybe I should rename this to Farez Fifteen Minutes but that has all kinds of hilarious connotations so we’ll go with Farez For Me.

Purpose

So let’s get the awkward thing out of the way: who am I and why should you listen to me everyday? You already have too many emails, tweets, audiobooks and TikTok dances to consume daily. Since the internet affectionately calls me a nobody, you probably need a good reason to stick around.

So why should you listen to my podcast?

Totally fair question!

My one line podcast pitch is that I can bring some informative entertainment to your daily tech/crypto/web3/pop culture news and since audio is extremely portable, personal and hands free; I wanted to do this in a podcast format. You can do your mundane tasks like folding laundry or doing the dishes while listening to me.

Or I can join you on your post pandemic commute and distract you from the wierdos on that train or bus you’re on.

And while we’re on this journey, I can give you some bite sized news and entertainment so we can all learn something along the way.

Also music. Music is love; music is life.

And I might even invite some friends so we could shoot the shit together. Just kidding, I don’t have any friends.

As for who I am

Well I’m a software engineer with a bit over 6 years of experience and I currently work at Warner Bros Discovery with previous stints at Amazon Web Services & Electronic Arts. Obviously nothing I say here will disclose any proprietary non public information about my current, past or future employers.

I’m currently based in Seattle, WA in the US.

But who am I really?

I’m a proud Canadian. An immigrant from India originally and I was born and raised in Mumbai until I was 14. I speak Hindi and Gujarati fluently & a few weeks after my 14th birthday in early 2006 my parents informed me that we’ll will be embarking on a small journey to a large country known as Canada. I didn’t speak English super well at the time nor did I know how challenging yet rewarding immigration would be. No big deal.

Small fast forward to April 2006, and I land in beautiful British Columbia in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

For a kid who had never sat on a plane even until that point, this was a pretty big culture shock. One that I still reflect on today. Remember folks, this was before Instagram and TikTok; so I had no idea which dances were popular & what brand of detergent I was supposed to eat to get famous. I was just trying to figure out Yahoo & MSN messenger so I could chat with my Indian friends. Remember Yahoo?

Before Canada, when I was growing up in India, I had only travelled to a small rural town in Gujarat where my dad is from and a party state in India called Goa. I only went to Goa once.

Goa is like the Indian version of Florida and California put together; except with Portuguese architecture thrown in for good measure.

Fast fast forward back in Canada, I finished high school and college in Vancouver in 2015. I majored in Computer Science & worked in the gaming industry up North before I was enticed by the political drama and lax tax laws of the United States and so I moved to Seattle, WA when I got a job at Amazon in the spring of 2019.

A cool two hour drive from my hometown of Vancouver. Tech money for the first time…woohoo, I’m no longer poor and I will travel the world in 2020 and beyond.

Like the starter pack of most tech bros, I eventually got into crypto investing, & NFT trading in 2021 and now, well I’m podcasting in 2022. I know, I’m spiraling!

But why a podcast?

Well this isn’t my first foray into content creation. I first started uploading video game content on YouTube more than a decade ago when HDPVRs were still a thing but I stopped after 20-30 videos which I clearly regret now.

If only I dropped out of college and played video games for a living I’d be a multi millionaire right now. Oh well, it’s the immigrant dream to work hard and end up in middle management. So what’s what we’ll do!

Besides I couldn’t tell my parents “Thanks for all the sacrifices mom and dad, but ima dropout because Call of Duty is my duty & Minecraft is my craft” I was taught to take my education seriously, so that’s what I did.

During college, I try many blogging platforms over the years, a gaming photo blog that no one read, a web comic idea that never went anywhere, and recently started a crypto blog on my self hosted ghost site farezv.com, a Substack newsletter at farezv.Substack.com & setup a hash node blog for my engineering writing. But writing is extremely challenging everyday and is much more formal; which doesn’t help me build a relationship with you, the audience as quickly as I’d like.

Podcasting is the next best thing. It’s informal and audio is quick to record & publish. I read a ton of newsletters and Twitter threads through my day and hopefully my audio summaries will help digest them so you don’t have to read all this crap. Seriously I’m badly addicted to Twitter.

As a busy professional & a parent, I’ve found solace in audio books and podcasts so I figured why not put into the world what I get from it.

Besides, podcasting is poised to grow to a $4 billion industry by 2024 according to The Verge & maybe someday I’ll also get a $100 million deal from Spotify. Here’s hoping!

In NFT News

Blockworks reports that Kanye West has filed Yeezy NFT trademarks. So yeah, NFTs are still a scam. Just kidding, more on NFTs and crypto deep dives in later episodes.

I can’t give you everything in episode 1 guys, gotta keep you interested!

If you made it this far, thanks for listening & as I said, this podcast may change its format until I figure out what works best for you and for me. So please share it widely with your mom, dad, siblings, that awkward cousin you haven’t seen since before the pandemic, the weirdo on the bus and anyone else you think might enjoy this.

Follow me on Twitter @farezv. Stay tuned & I’ll see you in the next episode.

Until then, what’s that song about peaches? It goes like. I got my peaches out in Georgia…

We’ll I’ll let Justin do it.

Mientras empiezo otro viaje de blogueo (esta vez serio), he estado reflexionando sobre cómo la Web 3.0 cambiará nuestro mundo para mejor al aumentar la descentralización, trasladar el poder de la informática y los datos de las corporaciones a las personas que poseen es y me atrevo a decirlo, hacer del mundo un lugar mejor a través de la economía simbólica.

Historia

Era demasiado joven para darme cuenta de la existencia y reconocer la importancia de la primera forma de Internet. Los inicios de la Web 1.0 coinciden con los míos, aproximadamente entre 1991 y 2004. Si bien no tuve acceso total a Internet hasta mi inmigración a Canadá en 2006, conocía esta cosa llamada The Net mientras crecía en India durante finales de los 90 y principios de los 2000. Se parecía a esta imagen desde donde estaba sentado en un pequeño apartamento en los suburbios de Mumbai. Excepto que no estaba tan polvoriento.

Internet en ese entonces era solo Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Chain Mail y aplicaciones de chat como Yahoo y MSN Messenger. ¿Recuerdas Yahoo? Todavía existen. Supongo que también había un par de motores de búsqueda.

Archie es una herramienta para indexar archivos FTP, lo que permite a los usuarios identificar archivos específicos más fácilmente. Es considerado el primer buscador de Internet.

- Wikipedia

Mis experiencias fueron bastante limitadas, pero parece que la Web 1.0 consistía en páginas estáticas, interfaces toscas diseñadas específicamente para los informáticos y no para el público en general. En su mayor parte, las personas eran consumidores de Internet en lugar de productores, aparte de unos pocos grupos privilegiados.

Donde la Web 2.0 se quedó corta

Los siguientes años vieron el advenimiento del uso compartido de archivos (¿recuerdan LimeWire?), las redes sociales, la transmisión y la primera ola de la economía del creador donde el usuario promedio creaba contenido en Internet.
La centralización de datos y los efectos de red ayudaron a un puñado de corporaciones como Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft y Amazon a crecer enormemente. Hasta el punto en que los viajes espaciales, una actividad de las naciones, ahora están siendo realizados por un puñado de multimillonarios aburridos.
Los monopolios en torno a esta creación de productos, mecanismos y sistemas que recopilan sus datos es otra razón importante por la que las personas desconfían de la forma actual de la web, que en gran medida aún se encuentra en su forma 2.0.
Sin embargo, lo peor de todo es el modelo comercial impulsado por los ingresos publicitarios, que naturalmente da como resultado un enfoque de participación del usuario a toda costa para el desarrollo de productos. Yo también fui culpable de esto. Comencé un par de canales de YouTube de videojuegos hace aproximadamente una década a pesar de no tener un gran interés en el proceso de YouTube en ese momento solo por ganar algo de dinero publicitario.
Chamath Palihapitiya, ex ejecutivo de Facebook, dijo lo siguiente en su crítica a las redes sociales.

“Los bucles de retroalimentación a corto plazo impulsados ​​por la dopamina que hemos creado están destruyendo el funcionamiento de la sociedad. Sin discurso civil, sin cooperación, desinformación, falsedad”.

Parece que la Web 2.0 exacerbó los problemas centrales de la humanidad. La falta de confianza es rampante.

El poder de la descentralización y la economía de fichas

Con la filtración de datos que influye en las elecciones (a través de campañas publicitarias dirigidas), la desinformación sobre problemas de salud pública durante la pandemia de COVID-19 y la falta de confianza general que viene con el modelo de publicidad y compromiso del usuario a toda costa de los asuntos actuales de Internet, es seguro decir que la descentralización tardó mucho en llegar.
De hecho, el término Descentralización “ingresó al inglés escrito en el primer tercio del siglo XIX”, según Wikipedia.
En el contexto de Internet, la descentralización se refiere a trasladar el control y el poder de los sistemas comerciales y de información de entidades centrales como gobiernos y corporaciones a las personas. Personas en el sentido de entidades informáticas, como teléfonos personales y computadoras que pueden estar sentadas sin hacer nada cuando no se usan.
Imagine tomar un taxi de Lyft o Uber en estos días, donde el precio del viaje para ese día, mes, año, ciudad y vecindario específicos se decide mediante un modelo de aprendizaje automático. Este modelo y código de aprendizaje automático se ejecuta en una entidad informática centralizada (aunque distribuida) que pertenece y es operada por una corporación cuando, en realidad, la mayor parte del trabajo lo realiza el conductor que lo conduce y su vehículo, que sufre cierto desgaste.
A cambio de sus servicios, el conductor recibe una tarifa, pero la entidad informática centralizada también recibe su parte. En algunos casos, es un corte grande. En la mayoría de los casos, son entidades centrales explotadoras.

Los conductores de Uber y Lyft hacen huelga por salarios y condiciones de trabajo
- Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2021.

Ingrese a Etéreo

Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Amongst cryptocurrencies, Ether is second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization.
- Wikipedia

Son muchas palabras, las desglosaremos lentamente en publicaciones separadas. Me gusta pensar en ETH y en la mayoría de los tokens de criptomonedas como CroissantEth en Twitter:

Imagine la misma transacción de viaje compartido en la que recibe un viaje desde su aplicación descentralizada, que está alojada en un grupo de servidores de cadena de bloques administrados por personas comunes como usted y como yo, que prestan su poder de cómputo en cadena. Esto es lo que sucede:

1. Abres la aplicación para compartir viajes con criptomonedas
2. Llamas al taxi, a la limusina o a un Toyota Prius (¡el cambio climático es real!)
3. El conductor del viaje compartido llega a su lugar de recogida
4. El conductor del viaje compartido lo lleva a su destino
5. Una pequeña cantidad de Ethereum va automáticamente a la aplicación** según los parámetros del contrato inteligente, en este caso, tal vez la distancia recorrida y cuánto tiempo usó la aplicación de viajes compartidos.
6. Una cantidad ligeramente mayor de Ethereum va al conductor del viaje compartido, ninguna entidad central intermediaria explota a nadie.

** realmente las billeteras de la gente común, por brindarle potencia informática para los pasos 1 y 2, a través de cualquier medio informático de repuesto que puedan tener. Ya sea una computadora portátil de escritorio de repuesto, un teléfono celular, una tableta, un televisor, un Roomba o una nevera inteligente.

Profundizaremos en el cómo de las cadenas de bloques más adelante, pero la idea clave aquí es que todo esto sucede automáticamente en función del código que se ejecuta en los parámetros aceptados establecidos por el contrato inteligente.
Y el problema de la confianza se resuelve mediante protocolos de consenso de esa cadena de bloques que elimina la necesidad de cualquier sistema de confianza de terceros y depende completamente de los nodos (también conocidos como personas, también conocidos como sus computadoras) que ejecutan el código en un libro mayor distribuido que calcula y rastrea estos transacciones en la cadena. La minería de criptomonedas ocurre de manera similar, específicamente utilizando el protocolo de consenso de Prueba de trabajo.

Visualízalo así.

Ahora imagine si cada transacción se ejecuta de esta manera. Todo, desde el transporte público hasta cómo compra comestibles, negocios inmobiliarios, logística de la cadena de suministro, fusiones y adquisiciones, compra e intercambio de arte digital como tokens no fungibles (NFT) o cualquier vehículo de inversión.
Una cadena de bloques reemplaza cualquier entidad de confianza de terceros y la descentraliza.
La web 3.0 ya está aquí. ¡Gracias por leer esta aventura!

जैसा कि मैंने ब्लॉगिंग की एक और यात्रा शुरू की है (इस बार एक गंभीर), मैं इस पर विचार कर रहा हूं कि कैसे वेब 3.0 विकेंद्रीकरण को बढ़ाकर, कंपनियों से कंप्यूटिंग और डेटा की शक्ति को उन लोगों तक ले जाकर बेहतर के लिए हमारी दुनिया को बदल देगा, जिनके पास स्वामित्व है सांकेतिक अर्थव्यवस्था के माध्यम से दुनिया को एक बेहतर जगह बनाते हुए, मैं यह कहने की हिम्मत करता हूं।

इतिहास

मैं अस्तित्व को महसूस करने और इंटरनेट के पहले रूप के महत्व को पहचानने के लिए बहुत छोटा था। वेब 1.0 का प्रारंभिक जीवन लगभग 1991 से 2004 तक मेरे साथ मेल खाता है। जबकि 2006 में कनाडा में मेरे आप्रवासन तक मुझे पूरी तरह से इंटरनेट तक पहुंच नहीं मिली थी, लेकिन भारत में बड़े होने के दौरान मुझे द नेट नाम की इस चीज़ के बारे में पता था। 90 के दशक के अंत और 2000 के दशक की शुरुआत में। यह तस्वीर कुछ इस तरह दिख रही थी, जहां से मैं उपनगरीय मुंबई के एक छोटे से अपार्टमेंट में बैठा था। सिवाय इसके कि यह उतना धूल भरा नहीं था। तब इंटरनेट सिर्फ हॉटमेल, याहू मेल, चेन मेल और चैट एप्लिकेशन जैसे याहू और एमएसएन मैसेंजर था। याहू याद है? वे अभी भी मौजूद हैं। मुझे लगता है कि कुछ खोज इंजन भी थे।

आर्ची एफ़टीपी अभिलेखागार को अनुक्रमित करने का एक उपकरण है, जिससे उपयोगकर्ता विशिष्ट फाइलों को अधिक आसानी से पहचान सकते हैं। इसे पहला इंटरनेट सर्च इंजन माना जाता है।
- विकिपीडिया

मेरे अनुभव काफी सीमित थे, लेकिन ऐसा लगता है कि वेब 1.0 में स्थिर पृष्ठ शामिल थे, विशेष रूप से कंप्यूटर लोगों के लिए डिज़ाइन किए गए क्लंकी इंटरफेस और बड़े पैमाने पर आम जनता के लिए नहीं। अधिकांश भाग के लिए, कुछ विशेषाधिकार प्राप्त समूहों के अलावा, लोग इसके उत्पादकों के विपरीत इंटरनेट के उपभोक्ता थे।

जहां वेब 2.0 कम हो गया

अगले कुछ वर्षों में फ़ाइल साझाकरण (लाइमवायर याद रखें?), सोशल मीडिया, स्ट्रीमिंग और निर्माता अर्थव्यवस्था की पहली लहर का आगमन हुआ जहां औसत उपयोगकर्ता इंटरनेट पर सामग्री बना रहा था। डेटा के केंद्रीकरण, और नेटवर्क प्रभावों ने Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft और Amazon जैसे मुट्ठी भर निगमों को जबरदस्त रूप से विकसित करने में मदद की। इस हद तक कि अंतरिक्ष यात्रा, राष्ट्रों की एक गतिविधि, अब मुट्ठी भर ऊबड़-खाबड़ अरबपतियों द्वारा की जा रही है। उत्पादों, तंत्रों और प्रणालियों के इस निर्माण के इर्द-गिर्द एकाधिकार जो आपका डेटा एकत्र करते हैं, एक और बड़ा कारण है कि लोग वेब के वर्तमान स्वरूप पर अविश्वास करते हैं जो कि अभी भी 2.0 रूप में है। अब तक का सबसे खराब विज्ञापन राजस्व संचालित व्यवसाय मॉडल है, जो स्वाभाविक रूप से उत्पाद विकास के लिए हर कीमत पर उपयोगकर्ता की व्यस्तता का परिणाम है। मैं भी इसका दोषी था। मैंने लगभग एक दशक पहले कुछ वीडियो गेमिंग YouTube चैनल शुरू किए थे, जबकि उस समय YouTube की प्रक्रिया में गहरी रुचि नहीं होने के बावजूद, केवल कुछ विज्ञापन डॉलर बनाने के लिए। फेसबुक के एक पूर्व कार्यकारी चमथ पालीहिपतिया ने सोशल मीडिया नेटवर्क की अपनी आलोचना में निम्नलिखित कहा।

"अल्पकालिक, डोपामाइन-संचालित फीडबैक लूप जो हमने बनाए हैं, वे नष्ट कर रहे हैं कि समाज कैसे काम करता है। कोई नागरिक प्रवचन नहीं, कोई सहयोग नहीं, गलत सूचना, अविश्वास। ”

ऐसा लगता है कि वेब 2.0 ने मानवता की मूल समस्याओं को बढ़ा दिया है। भरोसे की कमी चरम पर है।

विकेंद्रीकरण की शक्ति और सांकेतिक अर्थव्यवस्था

लीक हुए डेटा चुनावों (लक्षित विज्ञापन अभियानों के माध्यम से), COVID-19 महामारी के दौरान सार्वजनिक स्वास्थ्य के मुद्दों के बारे में गलत सूचना, और इंटरनेट के करंट अफेयर्स के हर कीमत पर विज्ञापन और उपयोगकर्ता जुड़ाव के साथ आने वाले विश्वास की सामान्य कमी के साथ, यह सुरक्षित है कहने के लिए विकेंद्रीकरण एक लंबा समय आ रहा था।

वास्तव में, विकेंद्रीकरण शब्द "1800 के दशक के पहले तीसरे में लिखित अंग्रेजी में प्रवेश किया" विकिपीडिया के अनुसार।

इंटरनेट के संदर्भ में, विकेंद्रीकरण का तात्पर्य सूचना और वाणिज्यिक प्रणालियों के नियंत्रण और शक्ति को सरकारों और निगमों जैसी केंद्रीय संस्थाओं से दूर लोगों तक ले जाना है। कंप्यूटिंग संस्थाओं के अर्थ में लोग, जैसे व्यक्तिगत फोन और कंप्यूटर, जो उपयोग में न होने पर कुछ भी नहीं करने के लिए बैठे हो सकते हैं।

कल्पना कीजिए कि आप इन दिनों Lyft या Uber से कैब ले रहे हैं, जहाँ उस विशिष्ट दिन, महीने, वर्ष, शहर और पड़ोस के लिए सवारी मूल्य निर्धारण मशीन लर्निंग मॉडल द्वारा तय किया जाता है। यह एमएल मॉडल और कोड एक निगम द्वारा स्वामित्व और संचालित एक केंद्रीकृत (यद्यपि वितरित) कंप्यूटिंग इकाई पर चलाया जाता है, जब वास्तव में अधिकांश काम उस ड्राइवर द्वारा किया जाता है जो आपको चला रहा है, और उनका वाहन जो कुछ टूट-फूट रहा है।

उनकी सेवाओं के बदले में, ड्राइवर को शुल्क मिलता है लेकिन केंद्रीकृत कंप्यूटिंग इकाई को भी उनकी कटौती मिलती है। कुछ मामलों में, यह एक बड़ी कटौती है। ज्यादातर मामलों में, वे शोषक केंद्रीय संस्थाएं हैं।

वेतन, काम की शर्तों को लेकर Uber और Lyft के ड्राइवरों की हड़ताल
- Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2021.

एथेरियम दर्ज करें

एथेरियम स्मार्ट अनुबंध कार्यक्षमता के साथ एक विकेन्द्रीकृत, ओपन-सोर्स ब्लॉकचेन है। ईथर मंच की मूल क्रिप्टोक्यूरेंसी है। क्रिप्टोकरेंसी में, ईथर बाजार पूंजीकरण में बिटकॉइन के बाद दूसरे स्थान पर है।
- विकिपीडिया

यह बहुत सारे शब्द हैं, हम इन्हें अलग-अलग पोस्ट में धीरे-धीरे अनपैक करेंगे। मैं ट्विटर पर ईटीएच और अधिकांश क्रिप्टोकुरेंसी टोकन को क्रॉइसेंटएथ के रूप में सोचना पसंद करता हूं:

उसी सवारी साझाकरण लेनदेन की कल्पना करें जहां आप अपने विकेन्द्रीकृत एप्लिकेशन से सवारी करते हैं, जो कि आपके और मेरे जैसे सामान्य लोगों द्वारा श्रृंखला पर अपनी कंप्यूटिंग शक्ति उधार देने वाले ब्लॉकचैन सर्वरों के एक समूह पर होस्ट किया जाता है। यहाँ क्या होता है:

1. आप क्रिप्टो राइड शेयरिंग ऐप खोलें

2. आप कैब या लिमो या टोयोटा प्रियस की जय हो (जलवायु परिवर्तन वास्तविक है!)

3. राइड शेयर ड्राइवर आपके पिकअप स्थान पर आता है

4. राइड शेयर ड्राइवर आपको आपकी मंजिल तक ले जाता है

5. स्मार्ट अनुबंध के मापदंडों के आधार पर एथेरियम की एक छोटी राशि स्वचालित रूप से एप्लिकेशन में जाती है, इस मामले में शायद दूरी तय की गई है और आपने कितनी देर तक राइड शेयर एप्लिकेशन का उपयोग किया है

6. इथेरियम की थोड़ी बड़ी राशि राइड शेयर ड्राइवर के पास जाती है, कोई भी बिचौलिया केंद्रीय इकाई किसी का शोषण नहीं करती है

**वास्तव में आम लोगों के पर्स, चरण 1 और 2 के लिए कंप्यूटिंग शक्ति के साथ आपकी सेवा करने के लिए, चाहे उनके पास जो भी अतिरिक्त कंप्यूटिंग साधन हों। चाहे वह एक अतिरिक्त डेस्कटॉप लैपटॉप कंप्यूटर, सेल फोन, टैबलेट, टीवी, रूमबा या स्मार्ट फ्रिज हो।

हम बाद में ब्लॉकचेन के बारे में गहराई से जानेंगे, लेकिन यहां मुख्य अंतर्दृष्टि यह है कि यह सब स्वचालित रूप से कोड के आधार पर होता है जो स्मार्ट अनुबंध द्वारा निर्धारित स्वीकृत मापदंडों पर चलता है। और ट्रस्ट की समस्या उस ब्लॉकचेन के सर्वसम्मति प्रोटोकॉल द्वारा हल की जाती है जो किसी तीसरे पक्ष के ट्रस्ट सिस्टम की आवश्यकता को हटा देती है और पूरी तरह से नोड्स (उर्फ लोग, उर्फ उनके कंप्यूटर) पर निर्भर करती है जो एक वितरित लेज़र पर कोड चलाते हैं जो इनकी गणना और ट्रैक करता है। श्रृंखला पर लेनदेन। क्रिप्टोक्यूरेंसी खनन एक समान तरीके से होता है, विशेष रूप से प्रूफ ऑफ वर्क सर्वसम्मति प्रोटोकॉल का उपयोग करते हुए। इसे इस तरह देखें। अब कल्पना कीजिए कि क्या हर लेन-देन इस तरह से चलता है। सार्वजनिक परिवहन से लेकर आप किराने का सामान कैसे खरीदते हैं, रियल एस्टेट सौदों तक, चेन लॉजिस्टिक्स की आपूर्ति करने के लिए, विलय और अधिग्रहण के लिए, डिजिटल कला की खरीद और विनिमय जैसे गैर-परिवर्तनीय टोकन (एनएफटी) या किसी भी निवेश वाहन के लिए। एक ब्लॉक चेन किसी तीसरे पक्ष की ट्रस्ट इकाई की जगह लेती है और इसे विकेंद्रीकृत करती है। वेब 3.0 यहाँ है। इस साहसिक कार्य को पढ़ने के लिए धन्यवाद!

So my grand plan for farezv.com is to be able to provide crypto, NFT, blockchain, Metaverse & general (financial) tech commentary as I navigate my software engineering career past it's 6th year and into the 7th. In order to make this as accessible as possible, I've decided to translate the blog in multiple languages, starting with Hindi and Spanish as the minimum viable translation product.

As a native speaker of Hindi and a student of Spanish (thank you Grades 10-11, Narcos & Despacito), I thought these were good starting points before I expand to other languages. Primarily as I live & work in the United States as a Canadian citizen and North America has a large Hindi and Spanish speaking population who could benefit from this monkey picture trading blockchain investing degeneracy that is my life.

Translation Options

If you're not familiar with Zapier.com, it's a fantastic automated workflow setup tool such that it can automate the following steps (amongst many others) one after the other based on event driven triggers:

1. Write blog post

2. Share blog post on social media

3. Translate blog post

4. Post translated blog post

Translate by Zapier

So our trusty automation tool has a built in translation service but it doesn't seem like it can offer a realistic solution for regular blog translations as it's limited to 1000 characters.

EasyTranslate

Then there's EasyTranslate.com which seems to be a mix of AI based and human translation services with a Freemium model that I was frankly wasn't willing to pay yet.

I'm an engineer right, let's build something! Plus I'm cheap so I'll pay for something but only once I've exhausted/evaluated all (inexpensive yet time consuming) options first.

Then again, I'm not done with the Google stuff yet and I don't know how well it will work so I may just end up using EasyTranslate or a mish mash of tools at the end. We'll see.

Enter Google Cloud

Okay brace yourselves, we're going to get technical.

My goal is to have a simple work flow as follows,

1. Write blog post or page in English

2. Share on social media

For each language I decide to expand my blog translations to, repeat steps 1 and 2 as automagically as possible.

Simple right? It should be. It's 2022, AI and robots are here. And I'm lazy.

Step 0 - Google Cloud Translation Home

Check out the Google Cloud Translation home page. I assume you don't live under a rock and have a Google account. If not, create one!

Best part is, as of right now, GCP is providing $300 in free credits without the pesky auto-billing that most subscription services enforce so you can play around with their cloud platform.

Once you're past the initial billing screens & successfully logged in, you'll see the Google Cloud Platform Console with the Cloud Translation v3 API tutorial on the right.

Clicking on Dashboard gets us here. Google has multiple translation products. One seems to be a custom train-it-yourself approach to language model building with AutoML Translation. Whatever that means. Nice try marketing department!

The other is the the pre-trained Cloud Translation API. We'll be focusing on the latter in this post.

I'm gonna go with Python in this example as it's less verbose than Java which is what I'm formally trained in. Also informally trained in these days with all those reactive paradigms in Java ugh. You also have Golang and NodeJS options if you prefer.

Step 2 - Enable Cloud Translation API

Create an application

We need something to talk to the Google Cloud Translation API. That something is our Python program (or any language you prefer).

Here's what it looks like.

The cloud shell editor in full screen is cool. I had no idea we could type programs directly into web browsers now. Damn these young kids and their chai latte at your doorstep and pay for it with an NFT while dancing on TikTok engineering world.

Ignore me. I'm just an old man yelling at a Cloud shell.

Now we come to the best part of software engineering. Copy pasting from Google, literally.

Step 3 - Set up authentication

To call the Cloud Translation API, your application needs to authenticate its identity to the Cloud Translation service and obtain authorization to perform tasks.

Create a service account to authenticate your API requests:

gcloud iam service-accounts create \
    translation-quickstart \
    --project hybrid-shine-350808

You might see the following error message.

ERROR: (gcloud.iam.service-accounts.create) You do not currently have an active account selected.
Please run:

  $ gcloud auth login

to obtain new credentials.

If you have already logged in with a different account:

    $ gcloud config set account ACCOUNT

Running that last line should get you past it.

farezvad@cloudshell:~ (hybrid-shine-350808)$ gcloud config set account ACCOUNTUpdated property [core/account].

Grant your service account the Cloud Translation API User role:

gcloud projects \
    add-iam-policy-binding \
    hybrid-shine-350808 \
    --member='serviceAccount:translation-quickstart@hybrid-shine-350808.iam.gserviceaccount.com' \
    --role='roles/cloudtranslate.user'

I got this error

ERROR: (gcloud.projects.add-iam-policy-binding) Your current active account [ACCOUNT] does not have any valid credentials

If you run into issues, use gcloud auth list and gcloud config list to see which accounts are setup.

Your Gmail email login is NOT a Google Cloud Service account.

farezvad@cloudshell:~ (hybrid-shine-350808)$ gcloud iam service-accounts create translation-quickstart --project hybrid-shine-350808
Created service account [translation-quickstart].
farezvad@cloudshell:~ (hybrid-shine-350808)$ 
farezvad@cloudshell:~ (hybrid-shine-350808)$ 
farezvad@cloudshell:~ (hybrid-shine-350808)$ gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding hybrid-shine-350808 --member='serviceAccount:translation-quickstart@hybrid-shine-350808.iam.gserviceaccount.com' --role='roles/cloudtranslate.user'
Updated IAM policy for project [hybrid-shine-350808].
bindings:
- members:
  - serviceAccount:translation-quickstart@hybrid-shine-350808.iam.gserviceaccount.com
  role: roles/cloudtranslate.user
- members:
  - user:farezvad@gmail.com
  role: roles/owner
etag: BwXfbsdsHVo=
version: 1

Create a service account key:

gcloud iam service-accounts keys \
    create key.json --iam-account \
    translation-quickstart@hybrid-shine-350808.iam.gserviceaccount.com

This should fill out your key.json file located in the project folder just on the left of the terminal. Obviously I have modified the values below so as to not expose my private keys.

{
  "type": "service_account",
  "project_id": "hybrid-shine-350808",
  "private_key_id": "some more gibberish text that I've changed",
  "private_key": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\GIANT FREAKING TEXT BLOB GENERATED HERE BUT DON'T SHARE THIS WITH ANYONE\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n",
  "client_email": "translation-quickstart@hybrid-shine-350808.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
  "client_id": "100000000000000000001",
  "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
  "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
  "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
  "client_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/robot/v1/metadata/x509/translation-quickstart%40hybrid-shine-350808.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
}

Set the key as your default credentials:

export \ GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=key.json

Next, we call the Translation API from our application. But first, we need to write some Python. Yaaay snakes!

Step 4 - Calling the Cloud Translation API

Install Cloud Translation Client Library

pip3 install google-cloud-translate

Open up app.py and import this package from google.cloud import translate

Final file looks like this, but you'll need to replace project_id with your project name.

GREAT SUCCESS!

farezvad@cloudshell:~ (hybrid-shine-350808)$ python3 app.py
Translated text: ¡Hola Mundo!

Check it out, now I'm all set to translate my page as follows.

I can't put the entire article text in the def translate_text(text= param of course but there is a way to translate entire documents. We'll save that for another post. Thanks for reading!

Otherdeeds by farezv

Documenting The Otherside Metaverse by YugaLabs

Hello, welcome to Otherdeeds. By @farezv. This is a newsletter about Navigating The Otherside with on and off chain trends and perhaps development SDK stuff once I get my hands on it. As we enter a new era of the Internet with Web3’s latest craze of cryptographic ownership of digital land, I wanted to start a separate blog for Metaverse content so as to c…

Read more

4 years ago · farezv

First a quick primer,

What is Otherside?

Here’s the answer from YugaLabs themselves.

Short answer: it’s a massively multiplayer mega-game world with blockchain and NFT driven economics.

What are Otherdeeds?

An Otherdeed enables you to claim a plot of land when Otherside launches. It’s like owning a digital “land title” document signifying land ownership in this Metaverse.

How “digital ownership” works through cryptography and NFTs will be covered separately.

How is this land distributed?

From their official website Otherside.xyz,

There will be a total of 200,000 Otherdeeds. The first 100,000 Otherdeeds are available on April 30, 2022. The second 100,000 Otherdeeds will be exclusively rewarded to Voyagers who hold Otherdeeds and contribute to the development of Otherside.

YugaLabs has a history of rewarding existing holders of their flagship NFTs, such as Bored Ape & Mutant Ape Yacht Club members. As a result, they’ve allocated the following percentages of land to various groups.

We’ll explore how these different types of land fit into the Otherside metaverse, but you’re probably wondering how we’ll interact with this massive video game world.

What will our Otherside characters look like?

Existing NFT holders within the YugaLabs roster will get playable characters of their NFTs.

For everyone else, there’s MasterCard. Ha!

We can develop our own characters via the Software Development Kit (SDK) that will be coming soon. As a software engineer with several years of experience in the gaming industry, I’ve signed up for this SDK and am looking forward to documenting my experiences on this blog!

Different types of land as “Sediments”

There are 5 types of sediments in The Otherside (at least at the moment). These are their breakdowns.

1. Biogenic Swamp (10,000 plots): Claimable by Bored Ape Yacht Club owners.

2. Chemical Goo (20,000 plots): Claimable by Mutant Ape Yacht Club owners.

3. Rainbow Atmos (22,000 plots)

4. Cosmic Dream (23,000 plots)

5. Infinite Expanse (25,000 plots)

Plot types 3-5 were sold out in the public mint but all sediment plot types are available on the secondary market such as OpenSea or LooksRare.

Be sure to checkout the rarity before buying. There’s some good deals out there!

For instance, in LooksRare, you can see the rarity link to RaritySniper.com.

Websites such as nftnerds.ai offer powerful tools that allow you to quickly buy (aka “snipe” as we call it in the NFT space) good deals based on the underlying metadata (such as land type, rarity etc.).

We’ll do a deep dive on NFTNerds.ai another time.

So why does land sediment matter?

Like any NFT collection, scarcity determines price. With an NFT collection that’s based on digital land , it makes sense that the land has various attributes. The most obvious property for real estate being “Location, Location, Location!”

You might wonder, why does the location of my “digital land” matter? Isn’t it just a giant video game world? We’ll get to this shortly.

In the case of Otherside, one such land attribute is based on the geological concept of sediment. Aka the underlying foundational material that the land sits on.

Here are some examples of the 5 different Sediment types:

Biogenic Swamp

Chemical Goo

Rainbow Atmos

Infinite Expanse

Cosmic Dream

YugaLabs has done something very clever by introducing Sediments as one of the primary rarity drivers of their land based NFTs.

Another being environments. But let’s cover that in the next post!

It seems like every web2 company is transforming themselves into a web3 company these days. First Facebook rebranded itself as "Meta" and now Square is "Block.”

In this post, I examine why this is such an important change and what it means for the future of personal computing.

The Great Leap

We first had big clunky desktop computers, which had limited and serious business, or scientific use cases. Eventually this paved the way for laptops followed by ultra powerful pocket computers which helped pave the Web 2.0 revolution where the average internet user could not only consume, but also help create the internet. These creations were/are owned by centralized companies though.

Each step of the way, we have seen an exponential increase in computing power and graphical rendering. This is all thanks to Moore's Law which states that "the number of transistors on a chip will double every 18 months."

We are now entering an era where mobile chips can handle the same advanced graphical computations as powerful desktop chips have been doing for quite some time.

All with the same or lower power usage than desktop chips thanks to System on Chip (SoC) architectural advancements (aka simpler instruction sets). And with machine learning, augmented and virtual reality becoming more widespread by the day, it is easy to imagine a future without phones! That's right. No phones; just virtual reality glasses!

More on this below.

The Ownership Layer

The popularity of blockchains in the last few years have introduced the concept of an ownership layer with the internet where users not only consume and create the internet, but now own their piece(s) through cryptography.  This ownership layer is where all the action will happen in the future.

Every time in history that computing power has increased, two things have happened: (i) professionals who use it become better at what they do, creating a new wave of experiences and companies; and (ii) widespread access to everyone through portable technology like smartphones, and tablets. The average person can use them to do things they never could before!

For instance, I’m typing this blog post on my iPad mini using an AI assisted text editor called Jarvis, which wouldn’t be possible a decade or so ago. At least not with the same level of ease.

The ownership layer is where we can track the ownership of digital assets in a secure and transparent manner on distributed ledgers know as blockchains.

This is a big deal because it solves the trust problem that has been inherent in online centralized systems. For example, when you buy something from Amazon, you are trusting them to not only keep your credit card information safe but also to not lose or sell your item after you have paid for it.

With blockchains and the ownership layer, that trust is solved through consensus mechanisms guaranteeing the safety and validity of your digital assets. With this layer in place, it becomes much easier for companies to create new types of digital experiences that go beyond what is possible with current Web 2.0 technologies. Facebook's rebrand to Meta and Square's rebrand to Block are both attempts by these companies to stake their claim in this new ownership layer.

Socializing inside a virtual or augmented reality world is a natural transition from the current Web 2.0 implementations of social media apps like Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Instagram.

By rebranding themselves as "Meta" and "Block", they are signalling that they are ready to provide the foundational infrastructure for the next wave of internet innovation.

Adios SmartPhones

In the not so distant future, we can expect to primarily be interfacing with sleek head mounted displays, such as the Rayban glasses Facebook released recently or future versions of Oculus. Or the non clunky future Google Glass esque products, such as Apple’s glasses will be the primary driver of this wave of adoption (just as the iPhone changed the game for smartphones).

Instead of using a phone to navigate your way through the Metaverse, you will use glasses with built in screens. These devices require powerful chipsets to process all the data coming from sensors which are tracking biofeedback about ourselves and others around us (e.g., retinal movements, depth perception, LIDAR, object recognition etc.).

Facebook’s Reality Labs (FRL) has been working on this kind of tech for quite some time now and the Covid-19 pandemic has fueled the need for immersive online experiences.

With slick, always-on computing devices on our noses, like a pair of Smart VR glasses, we’ll be embarking on the next generation of “living with the internet” except we’ll be living inside the internet.

The Metaverse is Virtually Real

In this world, Facebook will be the backbone provider of social experiences and interactions just as Google is for search today. This vision is what has driven Facebook to rebrand itself as “Meta". And Square aka "Block"-chain companies will provide the financial infeastructure.  

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are two key technologies that will make all this possible.

The smartphone will soon become an antiquated device, with its limited rectangular real estate. With VR/AR, the whole world becomes your digital real estate.

This has the possibility of turning every neighbourhood into Times Square. But just for those wearing the AR/VR glasses.

I'm excited for what the future holds and I hope you are too!

So I built a ridiculous $3800 custom Windows PC in March 2021 (with a Ryzen 9 5900x CPU & an Nvidia RTX 3090 GPU), and I was looking for a way to passively generate income from it using crypto mining to justify the cost of this purchase. Especially as I wasn't going to be using the computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Mining cryptocurrency is only possible for cryptocurrencies that implement the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus protocol. In simple terms, this means that your Graphics Processing Unit (aka video card or GPU for short) performs certain computations, and in return you get rewarded with small amounts of crypto for lending your computation power to the blockchain. This is what makes public blockchains truly decentralized.

In this post, I talk about:
1. Why I started mining Ethereum (ETH)
2. Crypto Mining Basics (Definitions)
3. How to mine using ethermine.org, lolMiner, and a software crypto wallet called MetaMask
4. What to do with this mined resource? In this case Ethereum, but generally any other cryptocurrency.
5. What Ethereum's eventual Proof of Stake upgrade (ETH 2.0) means for mining?

Disclaimer: This post is written for newcomers to crypto. Please feel free to skip sections as not every section is mandatory reading. This guide also assumes you have an understanding of your computer's hardware. Please mine crypto at your own risk and verify these steps with multiple sources.

Improper usage of mining hardware can be dangerous, and a potential fire hazard. Please ensure you consult professionals if you've experienced issues with your electrical setup. farezv.com cannot be held liable for any damage/harm caused by your attempt to mine cryptocurrency improperly.

farezv.com uses affiliate links and I may be compensated accordingly.

Why mine Ethereum? Or any other cryptocurrency that uses the Proof of Work consensus model?

If you have an ability to generate income or profit using an asset that constantly increases in value, whereas the underlying cost is fixed, it makes sense to invest more in that asset as you will profit in the long term with that investment.

This is the same reasoning behind buying a house instead of renting (assuming you're planning to stay in that particular location long term) as the money spent on renting is generally lost whereas the cost of a mortgage builds your equity in a property. Since the interest cost is fixed over your mortgage period (typically 15-30 years) and property values generally go up in the long term, paying a mortgage on a house is a good investment.

I live in a county in the USA where the electricity cost is fixed all day (unlike many parts of the country, where the electrical cost varies based on time of day).

I've since made roughly ~0.1 Ethereum (ETH) per month, which comes to ~$340 / month before taking electrical costs into account based on today's Ethereum value. If you do coinmarketcap.com analyses and consider ETH to be a strong competitor to Bitcoin (BTC), then it's fair to assume ETH could grow to 10x it's current value long term. Meaning I would've supplemented my income with ~$3400/month in the long term.

Crypto Mining Basics

A blockchain transaction is some exchange of cryptocurrency between a source wallet and a destination wallet.

Crypto mining essentially involves a simple transaction. A blockchain transaction needs verification on the global ledger, and a miner worker performs the mathematical and cryptographic calculations required to validate such a transaction.

If that was confusing, don't worry! Let's define common crypto mining terms, so we're speaking the same language. Each of these can be a separate post but these short definitions should get us started for now.

A miner is a piece of software that uses underlying mining hardware to mine cryptocurrency. We'll be using lolMiner in this example.

A miner worker is an individual and indivisible hardware unit that performs the act of crypto mining. It's usually a single Graphics Processing Unit (GPU aka video card) running the mining software in order to receive blocks of work to mine.

The rate at which a miner worker mines crypto currency is measured with a hash rate, typically mega hash per second (Mh/s) or giga hash per second (Gh/s). Each piece of hardware (in this case a GPU) consumes some energy to do the mining, in the form of electricity measured in watts.

Mining efficiency is a measure of how high a miner worker's hash rate is compared to its wattage requirement to maintain that hash rate. This efficiency is typically measured in mega hash per second per watt (Mh/s/watt) or giga hash per second per watt (Gh/s/watt). The higher this number is the better. In other words, we want to maximize the hash rate (mine more crypto blocks per unit of time) and minimize the power draw of the underlying mining hardware (thereby reducing our electricity costs).

A wallet, is a software, hardware, paper, or Crypto Exchange "store" where cryptocurrency is held. Wallets can have multiple crypto accounts associated with them. Wallets can be "hot" (connected to internet) or "cold" like hardware wallets. Cold wallets are not connected to any internet networks (and thereby generally non-susceptible to hacks). MetaMask is one example of a software wallet which can run on a web browser as a plugin, or on mobile phones as an app.

A crypto currency exchange is where you buy and trade cryptocurrencies, such as Coinbase, Voyager, Blockfi, Gemini, Binance, Robinhood etc. There are centralized (CEXs) and decentralized (DEXs) exchanges.

A crypto account address is a unique public address on the blockchain for that specific cryptocurrency. My Ethereum address is 0x1bF51ED6cD81dE4449D4Ca3c33822ECC5f3F66a4
Similarly, my Nano cryptocurrency account has a different address and it's nano_3pr9488qndzpaiibk4e9jwcmib5qqpc9wnh4pjjcsfopkahwrjgjeiwmd89p

Wallets have a 1:many relationship with crypto accounts. Meaning if you want to hold 2 crypto currencies, you need to have two different wallet addresses. Crypto exchange accounts "abstract this away" by providing you a single account to see all your crypto from.

A mining pool is a group of miners collectively mining a cryptocurrency on a blockchain. Ethermine.org is an example of a mining pool. Mining on a pool usually reduces the complexity of mining setup.

Crypto Wallet, Miner Software and Mining Pool Setup

Now that we understand the basic concepts of crypto currency mining, let's explore the actual steps required to set up a miner.

1. Create Wallet by Installing MetaMask

The first step is to install MetaMask on Chrome (as a browser plugin). Once setup, you can always sync your wallet with your phone using the iOS or Android app.

Once installed, click Get Started

Click New Wallet. Alternatively, if you've already setup your wallet, you could import it using the Secret Recovery Phrase also known as Seed Phrase.

Be extremely careful with your seed phrase. It's the master key to your crypto wallet. The password step below is to sync your wallet across client applications such as a web browser (like Chrome), iOS or Android apps. If you forget your password, you can still recover your wallet with your seed phrase.

If someone finds your seed phrase, your password secrecy won't help you as they could sync your wallet on their client, and transfer all your crypto out thereby compromising your wallet and rendering it useless.

Please note, once your crypto has left your wallet, whether on accident or on purpose, there's no reverting it back. The world of crypto is decentralized and unregulated at the moment. There are no refunds!

Create a strong password. This can be used to sync your wallet across devices (iOS, Android, Web Browsers).

The next screen screen shows you the generated Secret Backup/Recovery Phrase with aforementioned warnings. The following screen asks you to verify your backup phrase by clicking on the words that appear in the phrase in order. For obvious reasons, I'll skip sharing the screenshots for these two steps.

Congratulations! Now you can use your MetaMask wallet to mine and exchange crypto! You should now have a public crypto wallet account address that resembles something like 0x1bF51ED6cD81dE4449D4Ca3c33822ECC5f3F66a4. This address can be shared publicly because this is how you send and receive payments.

2. Setup Miner Software

We'll be using lolMiner as mentioned above, directly from their GitHub url https://github.com/lolliedieb/lolminer-releases/releases. Please be aware that there are a lot of phishing websites and scam artists that pretend to be legitimate miners and use your hardware to mine crypto for their own wallets.

Please always use miners from the official project url and verify using multiple sources to ensure your crypto and hardware resources are not vulnerable to malicious actors.

In fact, please double check the url for the miner above is correct from another blog, YouTube video or a public forum such as reddit.com/r/ethermining to ensure we have it right!

Having said that, please recognize that mining software is considered intrusive by most anti virus software. So you'll have to add an exception in your anti virus software or firewall settings for any miner software you attempt to use.

Download lolMiner's latest version (in this case version 1.33 Win64.zip for Windows)

Navigate to your downloaded .zip file and right click on it. Click Extract All and then Extract in the built in Windows extract tool pop up window. Navigate inside the folder and you'll see .bat files (pronounced batch files) starting with mine_.

If you don't see file extensions in Windows Explorer, you'll need to enable it in your file explorer options. Click on your Windows key / Cortana Search Bar / Start Menu (depending on what you call it), and type File Explorer Options in the search menu. Hit Enter and navigate to the View tab. Uncheck the box that says Hide extensions for known file types. You should now see file extensions in Windows Explorer.

3. Mining Pool Setup

Navigate to Ethermine.org

Click on Start Mining

We typically want to connect to geographically closest server to minimize round trip time (RTT) between our computer and the mining pool server.

RTT is a computer networking concept. It determines the total time it takes for a network packet to travel from your computer (referred to as a client computer), to a server computer, and back. This two-way trip is also referred to as latency.

Best mining performance requires a GPU with over 4 gigabytes of video ram (VRAM). However, if your video card has exactly 4GB of VRAM, please use the mine_eth_4g.bat file.

Otherwise, right click the mine_eth.bat file and click Edit. Files with extensions .bat in Windows have a special significance. These batch files can be used to execute programs. Therefore, the built in Windows anti virus program Microsoft Defender will try to warn you against using this file as it was downloaded from the internet. This is why we stressed the importance of being extremely careful when downloading mining software. Click More info and Run anyway.

That should open the batch file. Add the following values to the file based on the server closest to your location.

@echo off

setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
set url=http://127.0.0.1:4444
set file=lolMiner.json
set tmpfile=Perfomance.json

Rem #################################
Rem ## Begin of user-editable part ##
Rem #################################

set "POOL=us2.ethermine.org:4444"
set "WALLET=0x1bF51ED6cD81dE4449D4Ca3c33822ECC5f3F66a4.lolMinerWorker"										

Rem #################################
Rem ##  End of user-editable part  ##
Rem #################################

:loop
lolMiner.exe --algo ETHASH --pool !POOL! --user !WALLET! --watchdog exit
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 42 (
	timeout 10
	goto loop
)

pause

Please double check your WALLET address to ensure you're not wasting your computing resources. Save the file with File -> Save or press CTRL+S.

Double click on the batch file you just saved, and viola! Your miner has started mining Ethereum!

Your mining speed may vary depending on the temperature of your GPU, how hot/cold your environment is and sometimes, even the quality of the chip specific to your GPU.

Each New job received: line specifies a new transaction that your miner is using the GPU to perform Proof of Work calculations on. Every few minutes, you'll see a summary in blue text showing your speed, pool, best share, power consumption and mining efficiency.

Navigating to the following link with YOUR WALLET ADDRESS filled in will help you visualize your profits https://ethermine.org/miners/YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS/dashboard

Clicking on the Payouts tab will show your payout statistics and a record of your past payouts.

Congratulations! You now have passive Ethereum mining income!

What to do with this mined Ethereum?

You can use your collected Ethereum on MetaMask to swap with other coins or transfer it to an interest earning exchange account (such as Voyager) or stake it for interest in Coinbase. More on that later!

Plug in your hash values on whattomine.com to predict your payouts for different cryptocurrencies.

Ethereum 2.0 (Proof of Stake)

Ethereum's current widespread ecosystem relies on the Proof of Work consensus model whereas there are efforts underway to move to a Proof of Stake model. This means that Ethereum will no longer be mineable once the upgrade is complete in it's entirety. But fear not!

The next #Ethereum network upgrade, London, is coming.

Learn more about EIP-1559 and other changes, and get ready by upgrading those nodes! 🦄https://t.co/90coW9QMHP

— Ethereum (@ethereum) July 15, 2021

There are plenty of other cryptocurrencies that rely on Proof of Work that you could mine such as ERGO and Raven Coin. More on those later!

You could also keep earning interest on your mined Ethereum by staking it. Staking cryptocurrencies is quite a deep topic so please stay tuned for more!

As I begin yet another journey of blogging (this time a serious one), I've been reflecting on how Web 3.0 will change our world for the better by increasing decentralization, moving the power of computing and data from corporations to the people who own it & dare I say it, making the world a better place through the token economy.

History

I was too young to realize the existence, and recognize the significance of the first form of the internet. Web 1.0's early life coincides with mine, roughly from 1991 to 2004. While I didn't fully get access to the internet until my immigration to Canada in 2006, I was aware of this thing called The Net while growing up in India during the late 90s and early 2000s. It looked something like this image from where I was sitting in a small apartment in suburban Mumbai. Except it wasn't as dusty.

The internet back then was just Hotmail, Yahoo mail, chain mail and chat applications like Yahoo & MSN messenger. Remember Yahoo? They still exist. I guess there were a couple of search engines too.

Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing users to more easily identify specific files. It is considered the first Internet search engine.

• Wikipedia

My experiences were fairly limited, but it seems Web 1.0 consisted of static pages, clunky interfaces specifically designed for computer people and not the general public at large. For the most part, people were consumers of the internet as opposed to producers of it, apart from a few privileged groups.

Where Web 2.0 fell short

The next few years saw the advent of file sharing (remember LimeWire?), social media, streaming and the first wave of the Creator Economy where the average user was creating content on the internet.

Centralization of data, and network effects helped a handful of corporations such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon grow tremendously. To the point where space travel, an activity of nations, is now being done by a handful of bored billionaires.

Monopolies around this creation of products, mechanisms and systems that collect your data is another massive reason why people distrust the current form of the web which is largely still in its 2.0 form.

By far the worst of it all though is the ad revenue driven business model, which naturally results in a user engagement at all costs approach to product development. I was guilty of this too. I started a couple of video gaming YouTube channels about a decade ago despite not having a deep interest in the process of Youtubing at the time just for the sake of making some ad dollars.

Chamath Palihapitiya, a former executive at Facebook said the following in his criticism of social media networks.

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.”

It seems Web 2.0 exacerbated humanity's core problems. Lack of trust is rampant.

Power of Decentralization and the Token Economy

With leaking data swaying elections (through targeted ad campaigns), misinformation around public health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the general lack of trust that comes with the advertising and user engagement at all costs model of the internet's current affairs, it's safe to say decentralization was a long time coming.

In fact, the term Decentralization "entered written English in the first third of the 1800s" according to Wikipedia.

In the context of the internet, Decentralization refers to moving control and power of informational and commercial systems away from central entities like governments and corporations, to people. People in the sense of computing entities, like personal phones and computers which may be sitting around doing nothing when not being used.

Imagine hailing a cab from Lyft or Uber these days, where the ride pricing for that specific day, month, year, city and neighbourhood is decided by a machine learning model. This ML model and code is run on a centralized (albeit distributed) computing entity owned and operated by a corporation when in reality most of the work is done by the driver who's driving you, and their vehicle which is incurring some wear and tear.

In exchange for their services, the driver gets a fee but the centralized computing entity also gets their cut. In some cases, it's a large cut. In most cases, they're exploitative central entities.

Uber and Lyft drivers strike over pay, gig-work conditions

• Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2021.

Enter Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Amongst cryptocurrencies, Ether is second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization.

• Wikipedia

That's a lot of words, we'll unpack these slowly in separate posts. I like to think of ETH and most cryptocurrency tokens as CroissantEth on Twitter:

Imagine the same ride sharing transaction where you hail a ride from your decentralized application, that's hosted on a bunch of blockchain servers run by ordinary people like you and me lending their computing power on chain. Here's what happens:

1. You open crypto ride sharing app

2. You hail the cab or Limo or a Toyota Prius (Climate Change is real yo!)

3. Ride share driver arrives to your pickup location

4. Ride share driver drops you to your destination

5. A small amount of Ethereum automatically goes to the application** based on the parameters of the smart contract, in this case perhaps the distance travelled and how long you used the ride share application for

6. A slightly larger amount of Ethereum goes to the ride share driver, no middle man central entity exploits anyone

**really the ordinary people's wallets, for serving you with computing power for steps 1 and 2, through whatever spare computing means they might have. Whether it's a spare desktop laptop computer, cell phone, tablet, TV, Roomba or smart fridge.

via GIPHY

We'll dive deep into the how of blockchains later but the key insight here is that this all happens automagically based on code that runs on accepted parameters that are set by the smart contract.

And the problem of trust is solved by consensus protocols of that blockchain which removes the need for any third party trust system and entirely relies on the nodes (aka people, aka their computers) that run the code on a distributed ledger that calculates and tracks these transactions on the chain. Cryptocurrency mining happens in a similar way, specifically using the Proof of Work consensus protocol.

Visualize it like this.

Now imagine if every transaction runs this way. Everything from public transit, to how you buy groceries, to real estate deals, to supply chain logistics, to mergers and acquisitions, to the purchase and exchange of digital art like Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) or any investment vehicle.

A block chain replaces any third party trust entity and decentralizes it.

Web 3.0 is here. Thank you for reading this adventure!