If you are following crypto news on Twitter, you might learn about the new and trendy NFT collection, how another VC fund raised millions of dollars for investing in crypto startups, the latest demise of a poorly designed web3 protocol or articles on how to survive a bear market. You might get the impression that web3 is all about investing, memes and rug pulls.
A Vision for HubCityDAO 2.0
Note: The ideas presented in this article are my own and does not necessarily represent the future of HubCityDAO. Take these ideas just as a thought experiment of what’s possible.
A few weeks ago we released to the public the white paper for HubCityDAO along with a Juicebox project and a governance token called HUB. In a nutshell, HubCityDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) whose main goal is to support the Togolese project HubCity that has been fostering the emergence of smart cities in Africa for more than 10 years. HubCity promotes a bottom-up approach that focuses on empowering local communities through technology and knowledge.
5 Ways to Influence the Value of your ERC20 Token
Creating a new crypto currency is extremely easy. In less than 5 minutes you can create and deploy your very own ERC20 token on Ethereum or any other EVM compatible blockchain. Does it mean that your new token will be competing in market cap with the likes of AXS or GALA? Of course not, your new token is most likely worthless.
How do you make your token valuable? In the words of Peter Thiel, how do you go from 0 to 1? In this article we are going to explore 5 different mechanisms that could help provide value for your token.
NFTs and Decentralized Storage
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.
The Hidden Risks of Owning an NFT
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.
What’s 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.
Decentralized Identity with Proof of Humanity
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.
Infrastructure as Code with AWS CDK
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.
Multi Lambda Development Workflow With Webpack
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.
The Probabilities of Breeding Pure Axies Part 2
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.
The Probabilities of Breeding Pure Axies
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.
Reading Data from the Ronin Sidechain
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.
The Metaverse vs Nation States
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.
Four Ways to Transfer Assets to the Ronin Sidechain
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.
Starting an Axie Breeding Farm
tl;dr;
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.
Axie Infinity, the Money Printing Machine
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.
Axie Infinity and the Power of Blockchain Games
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.
Crypto lending as an alternative to a savings account
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.
Options trading for dummies
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.
Is Bitcoin a currency or an asset?
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.