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Polkadot

Polkadot is a next-generation Blockchain protocol that unites a network of purpose-built Blockchains. Polkadot allows these Blockchains to operate seamlessly together, exchanging data as well as value.

History

On January 11th 2016, Gavin Wood left the Ethereum community and turned his attention towards a new venture. According to Wood, he came up with the idea for Polkadot in the Summer of 2016. At this time, Ethereum 2.0 sharding specs had not yet solidified, so implementation could not occur.

Prompted by developer Marek Kotewicz, Wood began attempts to design a simple sharded version of Ethereum. By October 2016, Wood had written the first draft of the Polkadot whitepaper.

Wood and Parity’s Peter Czaban co-founded the non-profit Web3 Foundation in the Summer of 2017. One of Web3 Foundation’s functions included managing the funds raised in the Polkadot token sale held in October of 2017.

Polkadot launched its testnet in January 2019, and the initial version of Polkadot officially launched in May 2020.

Polkadot aims to be a true multi-chain application environment where functions like cross-chain registries and computation are possible.

Polkadot can transfer this data across public, open, permissionless Blockchains as well as private, permissioned Blockchains.

This makes it possible to build applications that receive permissioned data from a private Blockchain and employs it on a public Blockchain.

Founders

You can find out more about the founders on their about page.

Funding

Polkadot held two token sales and raised approximately $200 million in the process. The Web3 Foundation oversaw the token sale. The Web3 Foundation is a Swiss non-profit Foundation that seeks to facilitate a fully functional and user-friendly decentralized web. The Web3 Foundation received 30% of the funds from the token offerings in order to fund the development of the project.

Technology

Polkadot operates two types of Blockchains, namely the main network known as the relay chain and user-created networks known as parachains. They feed into the relay chain, which is the main Polkadot Blockchain. This means that parachain transactions benefit from the security of the main chain.

The Relay Chain

The Relay Chain network handles the finalization of transactions and deliberately possesses minimal functionality. Smart contracts receive no support on the Relay Chain. Its main responsibility is to coordinate the system as a whole, including parachains.

Parachains

Parachains are custom Blockchains that use the Relay Chain’s computing resources to confirm the accuracy of transactions. Polkadot places no constraints over what parachains are able to achieve. However, they must be able to generate a proof that validators assigned to the parachain can actually validate. Sovereign Blockchains may have their own native cryptoassets and optimize their functionality for specific use-cases.

Bridges

Bridges allow the Polkadot Network to interact with other Blockchains (for example, the Bitcoin and Ethereum Networks).

Consensus Roles

The Polkadot Relay Chain uses a variation of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus called Nominated-Proof-of-Stake (NPoS). This allows anyone who holds DOT to carry out one or more of the consensus roles. DOT is the native token of Polkadot.

  • Validators. They secure the Relay Chain by staking DOTs, validating proofs from collators and participating in consensus with other Validators
  • Nominators. They secure the Relay Chain by selecting trustworthy Validators and staking DOT
  • Collators. They maintain shards by collecting shard transactions from users and produce proofs for Validators
  • Fishermen. They monitor the Polkadot Network and report bad behavior to Validators. Collators (and any parachain full node) can perform the role of fishermen.

Token

The DOT cryptoasset has three distinct purposes. This includes governance over the network, staking and bonding:

  • Governance. Anyone who purchases DOT coins can use their DOTs to propose changes to the network and approve or reject major changes proposed by others.
  • Staking. Game theory incentivizes token holders to behave honestly. Good actors receive rewards whilst bad actors will lose their stake in the network. This ensures the network remains secure at all times.
  • Bonding. The addition of new parachains takes place by bonding tokens. Conversely, the removal of outdated or obsolete parachains occurs by withdrawing bonded tokens.

Conclusion

According to the Polkadot website, the Polkadot runtime environment’s coding is in Rust, C++, and Go with the hope that it will make Polkadot accessible to a wider range of developers. The types of projects using Polkadot include a cloud platform, a browser extension wallet and different types of block explorers.

Cosmos. The Internet of Blockchains

Today I’m taking a deep dive in to Cosmos.

Cosmos makes it easy for developers to build Blockchains and allows these Blockchains to interact with one another.

Cosmos’ goal is to create an ‘Internet of Blockchains.’ This is a network of Blockchains able to communicate with each other in a decentralized way. Cosmos aims for Blockchains to maintain sovereignty, process transactions quickly and communicate with other Blockchains in the ecosystem.

Cosmos is fostering an ecosystem of networks that can share data and tokens programmatically, with no central party facilitating the activity.

Founders

Cosmos was initially developed by Tendermint creator Jae Kwon.

Jae Kwon is a blockchain software architect and co-founder of Tendermint, and the president of the Interchain Foundation. The Interchain Foundation is (ICF) is a Swiss non-profit foundation that was formed to support the development of Cosmos and the ecosystem that will contribute to the Cosmos Network.

Before Cosmos and Tendermint Kwon worked as a developer at Alexa, and at Yelp where he led the mobile application development team. He also cofounded iDoneThis, a productivity service.

Ethan Buchman is also a co-founder.

Ethan Buchman joined with Jae Kwon to develop Tendermint after they met at the Cryptocurrency Research Group and Crypto-economics Conference in 2015.

Buchman was Vice President of the Interchain Foundation for 4 years.

He is currently CEO of Informal Systems. Informal Systems is a company that specializes in the security of interblockchain protocols.

Technology

The Cosmos network is made up of three layers.

  • Application Layer – Processes transactions and updates the state of the network.
  • Networking Layer – Allows communication between transactions and Blockchains.
  • Consensus Layer – Helps nodes agree on the current state of the system.

To tie all the layers together, Cosmos relies on a set of open-source tools.

The main element of this layered design is the Tendermint BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) engine. This allows developers to build Blockchains without having to code them from scratch.

Tendermint BFT is an algorithm used by the network of computers running the Cosmos software to secure the network, validate transactions and commit blocks to the Blockchain. It connects to applications through a protocol called the Application Blockchain Interface.

Central to Tendermint is Tendermint Core, a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) governance mechanism that keeps the distributed network of computers running Cosmos Hub in sync.

For the participants or validator nodes to power the Blockchain and vote on changes, they need to first stake ATOM. ATOM is the native token of Cosmos.

A node needs to be in the top 100 nodes staking ATOM to become a validator. Voting power depends on the total amount of ATOM staked.

Users can also delegate their tokens to other validators, allocating votes to them while still earning a portion of the block reward.

Validators receive incentives to perform honestly, since users can switch between the validators to whom they delegate ATOM (depending on their voting preferences).

The Cosmos Hub was the first Blockchain that launched on the Cosmos network. It effectively acts as a channel between all the independent Blockchains created within the Cosmos network. These independent Blockchains go by the name of ‘zones.’

Each zone is able to carry out its essential functions on its own. This includes authenticating accounts and transactions, creating and distributing new tokens and executing changes to its own Blockchain.

The Cosmos Hub facilitates interoperability between all the zones within the network by keeping track of their states.

Zones connect to the Cosmos Hub via the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC). This enables information to travel freely and securely between each connected zone.

Once a zone connects to the Cosmos Hub, it is interoperable with every other zone connected to the hub. This means that Blockchains with different applications, validators and consensus mechanisms can exchange data.

The Cosmos team also built the Cosmos Software Development Kit (SDK). This kit enables developers to build Blockchains using the Tendermint consensus algorithm.

Developers can also create plugins to add any additional features they want to have.

Token

ATOM is the native token on the Cosmos network, and it fuels smart contracts. New ATOM coins generate to serve as rewards for network validators every time a block of transactions receives approval.

By owning and staking ATOM, users can vote on network upgrades, with each vote being proportional to the amount of ATOM they stake.

Bitnob Changing Lives in Africa

Africa is adopting crypto at a crazy rate, and so far, Nigeria and Kenya top the charts. In fact, a recent report by reveals they are two of the top 10 countries globally for crypto adoption (Kenya is 5th while Nigeria is 6th). Let’s take a look at a project that is helping to drive this trend, Bitnob.

Based in Nigeria, Bitnob is a platform that makes it easy for individuals and businesses to buy and save Bitcoin. Users access Bitnob through a mobile app that’s available for both Android and iOS. With staggering rates of inflation, Nigerians are always on the lookout for ways to save money, so it’s no surprise that platforms like Bitnob are really taking off.

Cool Features

Not only does Bitnob help people buy and hold Bitcoin, they also release free weekly educational webinars. These webinars teach people how to use Bitnob and everything they need to know about Bitcoin and investing. These webinars play a major part in Bitnob’s mission to help people achieve financial freedom.

Bitnob has some really nifty features including a referral program based on the concept of Ubuntu, a Zulu word that means ‘community.’ According to co-founder Adeolu Akinyemi

 ‘In Africa, we depend on each other, rely on each other and really need each other. It’s a concept called Ubuntu: when we are good, then I am good’

The program is designed to celebrate and reward Bitnob users and encourages them to spread the word about its efforts to lower the barrier to entry to Bitcoin.

With the referral program, users can earn cash rewards when they encourage their family and friends to sign up for Bitnob. To add a further fun twist to the program, there is also a leaderboard where people can earn points for the number of successful referrals they achieve. People on the leaderboard are known as Bitnob Ambassadors, and there are several levels they can attain including Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Ruby, and MVP.

Another interesting feature of Bitnob is that it provides an easy way for users to Dollar-cost average (or DCA) Bitcoin. Dollar-cost averaging is an investment strategy used to reduce the impact of volatility when purchasing high-risk financial assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies. With DCA, you schedule regular purchases at a set amount. Using Bitnob, people can regularly buy as little as $1 worth of Bitcoin. There is also a handy Dollar-cost averaging calculator. This makes it easy for people to work out their earnings based on the current market value.

At present, it’s not possible to buy Bitcoin in Nigeria using a bank account. In February 2021, the Central Bank of Nigeria ordered banks to close the accounts of crypto traders.

However, Bitnob figured out a clever workaround to counter this problem using Ovvar vouchers, which are sort of like mobile phone top-ups. First someone must buy an Ovvar voucher from a vendor, which are apparently common in Nigeria. Once a voucher has been purchased, a code is sent directly to the purchaser’s mobile phone. They then input this code into their Bitnob account, and the money is transferred. Simple right?

Bitnob also offers NobCredit, which allows users to make use of instant crypto-backed loans. With NobCredit, users can take out flexible loans with zero hidden fees or penalties and use their Bitcoin balance as collateral. In this way, Nobcredit allows users to meet urgent financial obligations while continuing to HODL their Bitcoin.

 Lightning News

As if all these cool features weren’t enough Bitnob, recently announced that they had successfully integrated the Lightning Network into their platform. On August 19th 2021, Jack Mallers Tweeted a video of himself sending money from his US bank account to Nigeria using Bitnob and the Lightning Network. The transactions took seconds!

So what does the Lightning Network mean for Bitnob? So through the integration of this revolutionary technology, Bitnob becomes a node within the network. This means it can connect to other Lightning Nodes for processing transactions. As a result, Bitnob users can easily send Bitcoin to other platforms and Bitcoin wallets that have Lightning Network functionality.

The Lightning Network means faster transactions, so Bitnob users can confirm deposits and withdrawals within a few seconds instead of several minutes.

In addition, the Lightning Network allows users to send smaller amounts of money that would not have been possible with the on-chain network due to high fees. This opens Bitnob users up to a new world of possibilities including paying for utilities, buying data, and performing mobile airtime top-ups.

Bitnob is just another example of one of the ingenious crypto projects operating out of Africa. With a large and educated population of young people and rampant financial instability, it’s no wonder why Bitcoin adoption is gaining pace in Africa.

What is AI?

Once you start looking into AI (artificial intelligence) you find that people have mixed views about it. Some believe that AI will cause wide-scale job losses. Some think that AI can solve all the world’s problems. Before we can answer those intense questions we should find out what Artificial Intelligence is and learn about some of its applications in today’s world.

Artificial Intelligence is the idea that machines can do human tasks and improve upon their performance by learning. We’re not talking about futuristic robots like the T-800 rampaging through Los Angeles or HAL in Space Odyssey going rogue against the humans. We’re talking about machines that can carry out tasks by mimicking human reactions. These machines can improve their performance based on the information they receive. Now I say machines, but AI can also be software running on devices. For example chat-bots, FB recognising faces in photos and viewer recommendations on Netflix are examples of AI in action. Granted the software part is not as exciting as a real robot, but these are examples of systems that can learn and adapt.   

This brings me to the question: what is the difference between Artificial intelligence and robotics? Strictly speaking, these are two separate fields. Robotics is a technology branch that deals with physical robots — programmable machines designed to perform a series of tasks. On the other hand, AI involves developing programs to complete tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence. However, the two fields can overlap to create artificially intelligent robots!

History of AI

Alan Turing, back in the 1950s was talking about “thinking machines” and he is usually credited with the origin of the idea of AI. A few years later John McCarthy first used the term “artificial intelligence” to describe machines that could think autonomously. He described the concept as “getting a computer to do things which, when done by people, are said to involve intelligence.”

So the idea of AI isn’t a new thing and over the decade scientists have argued over the terms “thinking”, “intelligence,” and what “fully autonomous” is. 

AI has made many advances in recent years. The ability of AI systems to incorporate intentionality, intelligence, and adaptability in their algorithms has come on leaps and bounds. Rather than being mechanistic or deterministic in how machines operate, AI software can learn and incorporate real-world experience in its decision making.

The Different Types of AI

The four artificial intelligence types are reactive machines, limited memory, Theory of Mind, and self-aware. These AI types are hierarchical, the most simple level requires basic functioning, and the most advanced level is all-knowing.

The simplest types of AI systems are reactive. They can’t learn from experiences or form memories. Reactive machines react to some inputs with some output. The system perceives the world directly and acts on what they see. Self-driving cars are an example of limited memory AI. They make immediate decisions using data from the recent past. They use sensors to identify steep roads, traffic signals, and civilians crossing the streets. 

In Psychology, the “theory of mind” refers to the ability to attribute mental state — beliefs, intent, desires, emotion, knowledge — to oneself and others. An AI system with the Theory of Mind would understand that humans have thoughts, feelings, and expectations for how to be treated. That way, it can adjust its response accordingly. We have not gotten to the Theory of Mind stage in AI yet so yelling angrily at Google maps isn’t going to change its output!

The next stage in AI is to build self-aware machines. Self-aware machines, in theory, could form representations of themselves. It is an extension and advancement of the Theory of Mind AI. However, this is movie and comic book territory. Self-aware machines don’t exist at the moment.

Examples of AI in Action

We have already mentioned chatbots and social Text editors which are a form of AI. There are others that you may be familiar with. Grammarly detects spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes. It suggests corrections and gives information on readability and plagiarism alerts. This is all made possible by Natural Language Processing or NLP algorithms. Another example of AI is digital assistants. Siri was the first digital assistant and since then many others have been developed. Digital assistants are adaptive and can analyze user preferences, habits, and schedules. They can organize and plan actions such as reminders, prompts, and schedules. Smart home devices   

Many smart home devices use AI to make life easier for users. Smart- thermostats use our daily habits and heating/cooling preferences to adjust home temperatures. Smart refrigerators can create shopping lists based on the content on the shelves.    

Summary

This article is only a very brief introduction to AI. Its purpose is to show that AI is not just in the realm of sci-fi. But, that it exists and aids us in our daily lives. 

 

 

The Graph Will it be The Google of Blockchains

 

Today I took a deep-dive into an interesting project called The Graph.

The Graph is a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data from Blockchains. The Graph indexes Blockchain data from networks like Ethereum and Filecoin, and data is subsequently grouped into open APIs called subgraphs that anyone can query.

History

The Graph started in late 2017 through the efforts of a group of software engineers who had become frustrated as a result of the lack of tooling in the Ethereum Ecosystem. The absence of tools made building decentralized applications significantly more difficult. The Graph went live in December 2020.

Purpose

The Graph’s mission encompasses helping developers to utilize relevant data to increase the efficiency of their decentralized applications. Instead of developing and operating proprietary indexing servers, users can take advantage of The Graph Network. With The Graph, endpoints pose queries via GraphQL. GraphQL is a widely-used language originally created by Facebook to gather data for users’ news feeds.

How Does it Work

The Graph Network functions by aggregating data through the Graph Nodes. These continuously scan network blocks and smart contracts for new information.

When an application adds data to the Blockchain through smart contracts, the Graph Node adds the data from these new blocks to its appropriate Subgraphs.

Once the Graph Node extracts information, four types of user who contribute to organizing data in its protocol become apparent. These users include Indexers, Curators, Delegators and Consumers.

Indexers

Indexers operate nodes within The Graph and stake using GRT tokens. Their main function encompasses indexing relevant subgraphs. Indexers earn rewards for indexing subgraphs and fees for serving queries on those subgraphs. They also set prices for their services. To keep prices in check, Indexers compete with one another.

Curators

Curators use their GRT tokens to signal which subgraphs are worth indexing. Curators generally fall into one of two categories, namely developers that want to ensure that Indexers index their subgraph, or end-users that find a particular subgraph valuable. Curators receive financial incentivizes as they earn rewards proportional to how popular a particular subgraph becomes.

Delegators

Delegators stake their GRT on behalf of Indexers in order to earn a portion of Indexers’ rewards and fees. Delegators do not have to run a Graph Node.

Consumers

Consumers query Indexers and pay them for providing data from different subgraphs. Consumers typically consist of end-users, other web services or middleware.

 Token

The Graph’s native token is GRT. GRT is a work token used to allocate resources in the network. Active Indexers, Curators and Delegators can provide services and earn income from the network. This income is proportional to the amount of work they perform as well as their GRT stake.

The GRT cryptocurrency derives its value from its ability to ensure the successful execution of smart contracts that depend on the The Graph protocol. GRT is the only cryptocurrency used for network operations.

Anyone who owns and stakes GRT tokens can vote on proposals that influence and alter the rules that govern the Graph platform’s use. Delegators assign their voting rights to someone else to vote on their behalf.

GRT is an ERC20 token on the Ethereum Blockchain.

Conclusion

The Graph is an interesting project that has often been called The Google of Blockchain. Interestingly the blockchain game Decentraland accesses The Graph’s information to find land, accessories and collectibles across applications and brings them into their marketplace. Decentraland is the first popular virtual world powered by Blockchain and managed using a DAO. On June 10th 2021, a plot of LAND on Decentraland sold for $704,000, representing the highest amount paid for a plot on the platform!

Lightning Network Explained

Bitcoin is great in many ways. It’s border-less and decentralized. It provides an efficient way to transfer money anywhere in the world without the need for banks. It puts you in charge of your money.

However, despite all these plus points bitcoin does have certain drawbacks.

Transaction speeds can be slow. On average only 7 transactions are processed every second. Compare this to Visa which can process over 65000  transactions per second and you realize just how slow bitcoin transactions are.

Transaction fees can be high. Blocks on the network can only contain 1MB of information. If there are a lot of transactions, miners will process the ones with the highest fees first. If you haven’t paid a high enough fee your transaction could be left waiting for days.

These issues mean that it’s difficult to use bitcoins for micro-payments. Micro-payments are everyday payments such as buying groceries or gas. Using bitcoin to buy your cup of coffee is just not feasible at the moment. You could end up waiting ages until your transaction is confirmed. Your coffee will be cold and the transaction fee may be higher than the price of the coffee!

Lightning Network offers a solution to these problems.

What is Lightning Network

Lightning Network is a second layer solution built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. If the blockchain is the first layer, Lightning Network is the second layer. Lightning Network enables users to send transactions within payment channels that work outside the bitcoin blockchain.

This makes the transactions super quick and much cheaper.

The Benefits of Lightning

Solving Scalability

Bitcoin does have problems with scalability. The more transactions there are, the slower the network becomes.

Back when bitcoin started out there were few transactions usually carried out by passionate enthusiasts. However, bitcoin use has been steadily increasing over the years and at the time of writing, there are roughly 281,727 transactions every 24 hours.

As bitcoin adoption becomes more widespread the number of transactions taking place daily will surge. If the network struggles to cope with an increase in transactions, fees will increase and transactions may not be confirmed for days.

Lightning has the potential to solve these scalability issues by enabling multiple transactions to take place off the main blockchain.

Low Transaction Fees

Bitcoin fees can be very variable and at times can be extremely high. With Lightning, transaction fees are minimal. This means you can carry out small transactions, even as small as one Satoshi! A Satoshi is the smallest unit of bitcoin, it is one hundred millionth of a single bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC)

Faster Transactions

Lightning Network promises fast transaction times. Transactions could be settled in seconds or even instantaneously. If Lightning achieves mass adoption it could provide stiff competition to Visa and Mastercard.

The Downside of Lightning

Ease of Use

Bitcoin is not the easiest system for beginners to handle. Lost passphrases, lost passwords, confusing fees and complex addresses are just some of the difficulties faced by new users. Smartphone wallets have made great strides in helping beginners transact with bitcoin. But there are few smartphone apps available to help make lightning easy to use.

Centralization

There are some concerns that well funded nodes with lots of payment channels may become very powerful. These nodes could potentially monopolize the network and cause the system to become more centralized. The complete opposite of what Bitcoin is all about.

Privacy

New research has shown that Lightning Network may have privacy issues. Researchers probed the channels of the network by sending different sized payments. They were able to find the balance held within the channel fairly easily and with no expense incurred.

How Does Lightning Work

Alice and Bob want to send bitcoins to each other. They open a payment channel and deposit bitcoins. This initial transaction is broadcast to the Bitcoin blockchain. Within this channel, they can transfer bitcoins as many times as they want. The transactions are basically a redistribution of the bitcoins within the channel.

When either Alice or Bob want to leave the channel their last transaction is broadcast to the bitcoin blockchain. Alice and Bob could have made limitless transactions within this channel but only 2 transactions are sent to the blockchain.

What if Bob tries to back out of the payment channel without honoring the transactions?

If Bob decides to cheat, his initial deposit gets sent to Alice. This harsh penalty acts as a deterrent against fraud.

The Network Effect

The above example only describes transactions between two parties. What happens if you want to send payment to someone but you don’t want to open a channel with them? This is where the Network effect comes into play.

Alice would like to buy coffee from a coffee shop using bitcoins. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a payment channel set up with the new coffee shop she wants to try out.

Using Lightning Network Alice can transfer bitcoins by jumping through other interconnected payment channels. The only requirement is that the payment channels must have enough bitcoins in them to cover her transaction and the other transactions routing through.

This Network effect makes it possible to send micro-payments throughout the world quickly and cheaply.

In Conclusion

This is a very general overview of Lightning just to give you an idea of its potential. In reality, it is a lot more complex than the way it has been described here. Having said that Lightning Network does have the potential to shake up the existing financial system. It enables money to be sent anywhere in the world without using banks or third parties. It could provide an opportunity for the world’s 1.7 billion unbanked to access financial services.

Lightning Network could also be the catalyst that triggers mass adoption of bitcoin and cryptocurrency. If payments can be made almost instantly, worldwide and without  high fees the argument for using cryptocurrency is extremely compelling.

Lightning Network still has a way to go before it is rolled out completely. At the moment it is still in testing and its adoption has been slow.

However, I am interested in tracking its progress and look forward to seeing its effect on the crypto community.

 

Ivan on Tech’s Webinar a Review

Last week I joined Ivan on Tech’s webinar which was all about stacking sats in the next bull market. For those of you who don’t know Ivan, I recommend that you check him out. I’ll leave some links at the end of this article.

Ivan is an educator. He teaches people all about blockchain. He runs an extremely successful online academy and YouTube channel. He is also an international speaker teaching people throughout the world about blockchain technology.

His style of delivery is extremely dynamic and fast-paced. His enthusiasm for blockchain technology is infectious. The webinar lasted for 4 hours – so that says something about his stamina and passion for his subject!

One thing that impressed me about Ivan’s talk is that he wasn’t afraid to admit to making mistakes. If you have been in crypto for a while you are bound to have made some mistakes. The key to it is don’t repeat those mistakes.

Ivan believes that people make mistakes because they have the wrong:

  • Strategy
  • Information
  • Mindset

Therefore to succeed in this space you need to have a plan and take action.  Ivan suggested that you could become an advisor in your local community, arrange meet-ups, blog, interact on relevant social media and go to conferences.  You don’t have to be a programmer to work within this area.

He made an interesting point that really got my attention was. This whole space is still quite new and you can use this to your advantage.  If you wait until crypto and blockchain become more mainstream you are going to be competing with a lot more people. Now is the time to work out what you want to do in the whole crypto world.

Overall I found the webinar quite inspiring. It encouraged me to dust off this blog and start really thinking about how I can take advantage of the exciting world of blockchain and crypto.