Starknet Developer Advocate @ StarkWare
In a previous article I showed you the risks of owning an NFT when its assets are stored on a regular server (AWS, Dropbox, etc.). In our story, Bob, the creator of the NFT, was able to play some tricks on Jim, the owner of the NFT, because he had complete control over the server where the assets of the NFT (image and metadata) were stored.
Continue reading “NFTs and Decentralized Storage”
In a previous article I showed you at a high level what an NFT is: an entry on the blockchain that has the information of who owns the image and where the image is located. I depicted that relationship with the image below.
Continue reading “The Hidden Risks of Owning an NFT”
The picture below is an NFT that belongs to a collection called Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and is valued at around $350,000 US dollars and now it’s mine.
Continue reading “What’s an NFT?”
Bots are a big problem in web2 and web3. Tools like reCaptcha can help to stop simpler bots but not the more advanced ones. There are also “farms” where people in poor countries are paid to defeat this mechanisms for some nefarious purpose. Even when a real human is behind the keyboard, the ability to create multiple fake accounts can also be problematic for things like product reviews on Amazon, online harassment or even online voting.
Continue reading “Decentralized Identity with Proof of Humanity”
In a previous article I showed you how to manage multiple lambdas in a mono repo using webpack and how to deploy them to AWS using the CLI. Of course for that deployment command to work the resources had to be previously created on AWS. Behind the curtain I created the lambdas and a REST API using API Gateway to expose those lambdas to client code using the AWS Console (web UI) but I didn’t show you how I did it.
Continue reading “Infrastructure as Code with AWS CDK”
Ideally, a lambda is the glue that ties together a microservice that it’s developed in isolation from other parts of a system and it’s stored and managed in its own repository. Shared functionality between lambdas, if any, might be exposed and consumed as npm packages for further isolation.
Continue reading “Multi Lambda Development Workflow With Webpack”
tl;dr; Using a more realistic probabilistic model that takes into account destructive and neutral mutations, the probability of obtaining at least two 100% pure Aqua offspring from two 100% Aqua parents are 15.21% when bred 2 times, 34.24% when bred 3 times, 51.32% when bred 4 times, 65.14% when bred 5 times, 75.61% when bred 6 times and 83.24% when bred 7 times.
Continue reading “The Probabilities of Breeding Pure Axies Part 2”
tl;dr; The probabilities of obtaining at least two pure offspring when breeding two pure Axies twice is 7.97%, three times 19.41%, four times 31.75%, five times 43.52%, six times 54.09% and seven times 63.2%
Update: A new article is available with a more realistic model and probabilities.
Continue reading “The Probabilities of Breeding Pure Axies”
In order to automate processes related to Axie Infinity I needed to read data from smart contracts deployed to the Ronin sidechain. Because Ronin is an EVM compatible blockchain, the same tools used for Ethereum will work for Ronin. However, you still need three critical things: the URL of a Ronin RPC server, the ABI of the smart contract you want to interact with and the address it was deployed to on Ronin.
Continue reading “Reading Data from the Ronin Sidechain”
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of blockchain games for me is that they might be the embodiment of the metaverse, digital nations with citizens, government, jobs, investment opportunities, policies and even taxes. Granted, the only blockchain game that I have explored so far is Axie Infinity but the more I learn about it the more evident the similarities with nation states become.
Continue reading “The Metaverse vs Nation States”
Updated on September 3rd 2021
To either play or invest in Axie Infinity you will need three types of Assets: ETH, SLP and AXS. ETH is used to purchase Axies from the marketplace while SLP and AXS are ERC20 tokens that are required for breeding them.
Continue reading “Four Ways to Transfer Assets to the Ronin Sidechain”
To start a profitable breeding farm you will need three high purity (>90%) Aqua Axies that have the following body parts: Sponge (back), Risky Fish (mouth), Shoal Star (horns) and Nimo (tail). If purity needs to be sacrificed for affordability do it on the eyes and ears of an Axie.
Update: The research for this article was done previous to Sky Mavis announcing changes in their reward system that had a ripple effect on the Marketplace decreasing the value of some types of Axies.
Continue reading “Starting an Axie Breeding Farm”
In this new generation of apps where blockchain meets video games new vehicles for investment arise that use NFTs in a novel way. Axie Infinity has been at the forefront of the movement with a staggering growth of its user base and volume transacted in its marketplace.
In a previous article I did an analysis of Axie Infinity’s blockchain tech stack to understand how robust their technology is before even considering a credible investment opportunity. You can find a link to that article here. Today I’ll focus instead on analyzing its investment potential.
Continue reading “Axie Infinity, the Money Printing Machine”
Updated on August 23rd 2021
These days everyone has already heard about cryptocurrencies and a growing number of people have even purchased assets like bitcoin and ether. But cryptocurrencies are just the tip of the iceberg of what blockchain technologies can do. Last year the biggest news in the space was DeFi and although it’s an interesting space it didn’t drive a significant level of adoption to the blockchain. This year however seems to be the year of the NFTs and in particular, the year of the blockchain games.
Continue reading “Axie Infinity and the Power of Blockchain Games”
One common advice for personal finance is to alway keep 3 to 6 months of salary in a savings account for an emergency. This money has to be liquid and not tied to any investment like stocks, crypto or even a GIC. Just a good old fashioned savings account with enough money in it. The problem is that in the age of money printing interest rates for savings accounts in Canada and the US (and I suspect many advanced economies) are near zero while inflation is picking up. Keeping money in a savings account is a losers game.
Continue reading “Crypto lending as an alternative to a savings account”
Alice is getting into the world of investing and she has her eyes on the company XYZ. The current stock price of that company is $20 but Alice is almost certain that in a few months the stock price will rise to $28 or more so she wants to get in on the action. The problem is that Alice is short on cash, she only has $200 to spare and with that money she could only buy 10 shares. Even if the stock rises to $28 and she sells her 10 shares at that price she will only make a net profit of $80 (10 x $28 – 10 x $20). That’s clearly not enough for her, she wants to find another way to make a bigger profit with her certainty that the stock will soon increase in value.
Continue reading “Options trading for dummies”
There’s an ongoing discussion about the role of Bitcoin that divides people into two camps: those who consider Bitcoin to be a currency and those who consider it to be an asset. The outcome of the discussion has an impact on its price, its correlation to the stock market (where other assets are traded) and government regulations. It is my view that although Bitcoin exhibits all the characteristics of a currency, it is mostly used like an asset (a risky one). But this role might change over time as Bitcoin will likely transition from being treated like an asset to being used like a currency. How do I know that? Because I witnessed the same transition of the US dollar in Venezuela.
Continue reading “Is Bitcoin a currency or an asset?”
Recently I’ve decided to rebalance my investment portfolio but to do it effectively I had to ask myself a hard question: What’s likely to happen in the US economy in 2021 and beyond? This analysis led me to four scenarios with different probabilities of happening: damnation, inflation, reinvention and Japan. The scenario that seems more likely will drive the distribution of my portfolio between risky / high growth assets and safer / low growth ones.
Continue reading “Four scenarios for the US economy: damnation, inflation, reinvention or Japan”
When I was starting my journey to understand this technology I found the literature on the subject dry and the information available online often misleading. I decided to write a simple story to explain Bitcoin’s fundamentals in technology and economics without getting into the weeds. The story itself is free of any technical jargon and I hope it’s accessible to everyone, even if the reader doesn’t have a background in technology. I did add some side notes as the story progressed to connect the dots between the analogy and real life, just in case the reader feels inclined to get deeper into a particular subject.
Continue reading “Bitcoin explained without complicated terms”
Mis familiares y amigos que saben de mi interés por Bitcoin y viendo la rápida apreciación de la moneda, me han empezado a preguntar ¿Cómo funciona Bitcoin? Como buen ingeniero empiezo a explicarles cómo funcionan los algoritmos de hashing, la relación entre la llave pública y privada, la criptografía de curva elíptica, proof-of-work, la “gossip network”, los wallets, etc. Desafortunadamente la mayoría de ellos no trabajan en tecnología y las explicaciones técnicas no son efectivas. En lugar de ayudarlos a entender los termino confundiendo aún más.
Continue reading “[Spanish] ¿Cómo le explicarías el funcionamiento de Bitcoin a un niño?”