This portrait was painted in oil on Arches paper. Nikola Tesla lived from 1856-1943. He was a prolific inventor best known for his work on alternating current.
Last night, I dreamed that I was in in the bedroom of my childhood home. My mom was at the door. "All these people are outside waiting for you and you're sleeping," she said.
I found this dream somewhat perplexing. In real life, no one is waiting for me and I'm wide awake. Or so it seems. I'm open to becoming more awake, and to the idea that there's something better for me to be doing. But what would that even look like?
Today at the coffee shop, I had a good conversation with @kommienezuspadt about the crypto space. Both of us work in this space on the creative side of things. Mostly, this is great. But neither of us are thrilled with how the corporate world is beginning to impinge upon creativity in the crypto world.
I had another good chat with a friend yesterday about EOS and the direction it seems to be heading in. This friend is an investor, so his take on things was a little different. His priorities involved growth in both the ecosystem and the token price. Specifically, he was concerned about how far behind EOS appeared to be in terms of DeFi development.
The recently-created EOS Network Foundation (ENF) may solve the problem of sluggish ecosystem growth. In fact, I'm confident that it will. But there are deeper issues that we in the EOS community haven't yet addressed successfully. These are the issues of culture and accessibility.
In terms of culture, the professionalization of EOS is alienating to many early adopters. Decentralized networks are designed to cut out middlemen, but middlemen are proliferating in the EOS space. This is inevitable to some extent, as organizational structures form to solve problems of communication and operational efficiency. But we're dealing with next-generation tech. Shouldn't we also be creating the conditions for next-generation organizational structures to emerge?
More important than this in terms of culture, EOS has a problem with knowledge gatekeeping. When I was trying to create the EOS version of my @rstory token, I didn't find the EOS community to be at all supportive. The creation of custom tokens is a feature that ships with EOSIO. It's not some fringe use case for the tech. But the process ended up taking weeks. When my inquiries were answered at all, the community provided me with wrong information, delivered in a condescending manner. In the end, I had to pay a company hundreds of dollars to create my token and they couldn't even complete the task. I had to perform the final steps myself.
If a guy like me can't easily create a custom token on EOS, that's a big problem. And it's a bigger problem that the EOS community was totally unhelpful in this process. My belief is that everyone involved in EOS is creating infrastructure for a better future. But if simple things like custom token creation are made difficult or impossible by knowledge gatekeepers, are we really creating a better future?
This experience starkly contrasts my experience working in a professional capacity with the EOS community. Everyone I've worked with in this capacity has been great. Which made it all the more surprising that I ran into information roadblocks when pursuing my little project. It felt like I was being discouraged from contributing to the space. That kind of discouragement is toxic to new development.
Related to the issue of culture is the issue of accessibility. This begins with the ability to create an EOS account. Is this process simple and easy? Nope. It's absurdly complex for lay persons. I recently had to create a new EOS account for a relative because they just plain couldn't figure out how to create a new account after hours of trying. Hours! A WAX Cloud Wallet account takes two clicks to create and then it's done. WTF is wrong with the EOS community that the account creation problem hasn't been solved yet?
In my opinion, this is a pivotal moment for EOS. The ENF has just formed, Eden is about to hold its first major election, and projects like Pomelo are ramping up to feed real growth in the ecosystem. So now is the time to identify and solve problems in the space, before they get baked into EOS' future. I'd like to see the culture improve and the ecosystem become more accessible. These aren't unachievable goals. They're the bare minimum of what needs to happen.
Read my novels:
- One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
Check out the comic I wrote:
- Finney Vol 1 Immutable Journey is available as a free e-comic.