My journey in web3(yet)
I got introduced to crypto like everybody else from the news and media about how it was a pump and dump scheme to get rich quick and one day I was strolling around in the local library when I hit upon a book with quite a catchy title and was a bit taken aback because the subject on which the book was written had moistly been a big matter of debate and had received a bad name but still I thought of giving it a go, "The blockchain revolution" was the book that brought a total mind shift and really made me rethink about the way I thought about technology and its impact on the world and even more about how it could change it. It affected me a lot but one of the things I thought after reading the book was that the idea of a decentralized future was still a future and would take quite a long time and that I won’t be able to make a change if I put my time into it just now. I had wanted to write code to make a change and have some fun but blockchain didn’t seem the right place until one day. Read more about it in startup and tech books about how this could potentially have a game-changer impact though I had bought the idea it still seemed pretty far off because the blockchain and distributed computing were so abstract concepts to me that it seemed to have been invented about a few years ago to my little mind. I pushed the idea thinking that what would a 16-year-old sitting in a library in a small city of India could do? It just seemed too absurd to me that we could maybe have a decentralized network of money in the hands of every individual on earth and even if we could what help would I be of anyway? So I kept exploring still having the vision of Satoshi and Vitalik at the back of my head to be opened and expanded by the people I would meet and had no idea of how profoundly my daily life and thinking was going to change just in a couple of weeks.
My fellow builders and me ideating on how to build regen resources
I had recently become a Civics unplugged fellow and was soaking all the international vibes and meeting cool people when one of the co-founders of CU reached out to me for a quick chat. It was probably one of my first 1:1 chats with someone who I hadn't met before, and it had a huge impact on me. The founder's name was Gary Sheng who wanted my thoughts on the idea of forming a dao, having read the Blockchain revolution just a week ago I was all over the idea and had a hard time sleeping that day because of the ideas that were popping my mind. It felt that maybe I could be a part of the “Blockchain revolution” and maybe even add value to this world. I had never let so empowered and inspired. Its one of the best feelings that you could maybe make something up and have an impact or “your dent on the universe”.
One day I was chatting in the Dream DAO discord and said that it would be cool to have an ens and a person named Kapslap asked for my eth address and I shared it without any thoughts. I was tinkering by looking at NFTs and was quite new to the world and though of minting one for free, when the metamask came up I was surprised that the transaction was going through even though I had never added money to my eth wallet so I went ahead just to later find out that Jared aka Kapslap had just airdropped me $200 worth of Ethereum which was just crazy because I didn’t know him personally and he trusted some random kid on the internet with money which is a good amount here in India. Embarrassed that I had spent a hundred dollars on gas fee, I apologized and thanked and said that I would buy the ens once the gas fee subsides, only to my amazement to get more ethereum so I could buy my ethereum Domain right away. It was a wild experience being trusted by someone I had just met, It made me open to new possibilities and engage more because I had a stake in the ecosystem.
I started reading more books and meeting cool new people at the Dream DAO which I think was one of the best things I did in 2021. Tinkered with solidity and learned not just the tech but the economical and societal aspects of this revolutionary tech. I was intrigued that most of the books I had read made clear "code is the rule" and how code is central to the blockchain, but it wasn’t quite true. Blockchain/web3 isn’t just code, it's the people and their interactions. We are not building a decentralized internet for an AI, it’s for us Humans.
The dream dao has been central to my web3 journey till now and I think will be for quite a while because it’s my family and home on the Internet where I spend the majority of my time outside my studies. We will be launching our explorer's program next month, which is the highlight of our community. I wouldn't have even thought that I would be inspired by so many awesome people. I learned hard work from Gary Sheng, regen cryptonomics from Kevin owocki and curiosity from QZ, and probably the most from my fellow builders at the dream dao and the web3 community.
I had come to web3 looking to learn about the tech but have found something more meaningful and inspirational- the people and their optimism. It’s the optimism that keeps everyone going to make the world a better place and make a change. I have spent some time learning about tokenomics and the defi systems, which has been a blast. Learning about how these systems work is one of the most rewarding activities. I would have never thought that dao governance and community formation could be so knowledge-rich, for the first time realized that Humans are some of the best resources to learn from. Though it’s not always so easy to blend into communities you may wanna be a part of but you just need time and patience.
One of the hardest things about being a youngling in the world of web3 is that there is so much to do and learn that it’s overwhelming all the time but it’s what drives me and the people looking to do something good. Talking to young folks through Dream and Padawan DAO has led me to thoughts I would have never been exposed to else. If it had not been for the people in these great communities, I probably wouldn’t have been writing about blockchain.
Would love to give a shout-out to people whom I haven’t talked about above and who had a big influence on me- Jae-Hee bae for being the kindest and funniest |
Arman for always being there | TIM for always saying gotcha while working together | Ash for being one of the hardest working people | Saf for always helping me out and sharing his great insights
PS: Thank you dear reader once again, and welcome if you're new! Due to my exams and studies, I had not been regular but try my best from now on! I
I have been learning a lot about how people collaborate by being part of awesome communities, which is just on another level .
if you wanna give your gratitude and show a token of appreciation, feel free to buy me a book because books are the places where I get most of my ideas from!
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/madhavgoyal or airdrop me tokens at madhavg.eth