Hi! I’m Adair, a nerd with a passion for classical music, sovereignty, and permanence of humankind. Today marks the second anniversary of my acquaintance with Howard, my best friend and co-founder. It also commemorates the inception of Abstract Money, a developer-focused platform for the next-generation of decentralized consumer applications. Our journey begins with a serendipitous meeting at Cosmoverse 2021 in Lisbon.
A Cosmic Encounter
At Cosmoverse, Howard was the first human with whom I dared talk (albeit awkwardly) at the conference, where we discovered a mutual obsession with Terra and Luna. LFG! Like many others, this stemmed from the incredibly lucrative “risk-free” yield farming opportunities on Anchor and Mirror (may they rest in peace).
Cosmoverse was my first IRL crypto conference, my roots having been in the EVM space. I ended up in Cosmos due to its truly decentralized ethos which is starkly different from other globalist ecosystems - and shoutout to Cryptocito for highlighting it! On the other side, Howard was CTO at White Whale, a protocol delivering some of the most advanced DeFi products in Cosmos at the time. I was a bit starstruck by him and Sunny to say the least, my professional software experience only having been as a corporate cog.
Bidding Adieu to Big Corporate
At the time, I was part of an amazing team at AWS: a giant corporate structure with startup-like teams and a culture that matched. I loved my team and my autonomy, though the limitations of web2 quickly became glaring. One could have a tremendous impact on customers and profitability, though web2 is not a meritocracy and the cog reaps no rewards from the performance of the engine. I booked a flight to Belgium to work with Howard IRL. Good morning su… cloudshine?
A Problem with Web3
Decentralization is inevitable. Though by definition, decentralization means fragmentation, and this is ever-clear with the development of the Cosmos ecosystem and web3 at large. On Ethereum, everyone is building on the same protocol, hence why collaboration is is incentivized to drive value to that protocol. Cosmos is a different story. Application-specific protocols - read applications - are the basic unit of value-capture, and therefore teams are incentivized to build in silos. Collaboration is secondary as it may lead to others beating your application to market. Every team starts from scratch, makes the same mistakes, and wastes effort!
The Idea
Howard ideated DAO-OS as a modular standard in building CosmWasm applications on Terra, aimed at solving the problems with fragmented development. “DAO” because organizations are the base unit of collaboration, and “OS” as it enables execution of applications and control of data flow. This later became Abstract OS as an homage to the abstraction of OSes. Next up: Abstract Hypervisor?
We unveiled Abstract OS at Cosmoverse 2022 in Medellín as a modular application development platform. Its potential was evident with our victory at the first CosmWasm hackathon with Equilibrium, a cross-chain, auto-balancing portfolio application. However, we weren’t satisfied.
Thinking Bigger
The web3 design space is relatively unexplored. Ethereum is not a global compute platform, and Cosmos has yet to realize its localist vision as the “internet of blockchains.” In comparison to the timeline of computing, it seems that we are in the 1970s with use of “general-purpose” blockchains akin to computer timesharing. It follows that decentralized personal computers, personal virtual machines (VMs) will become more prevalent, with value-creating applications preceding their adoption. The future of computing is self-sovereign.
Abstract is built with the personal VM in mind though if I utter the phrase “personal chain” one more time, Howard's head might explode, ha!
A Holistic Application Platform
Abstract’s vision is to align the incentives between developers and users, forming a symbiotic ecosystem that fosters collaboration. Innovation comes as a natural byproduct.
For developers, Abstract offers a modular approach to building applications. This is reminiscent of microservices in the web2 realm, enhancing scalability and flexibility, while significantly reducing total engineering time. These components can be monetized, providing sustainable income and incentivizing continued maintenance. And when it comes to applications’ go-to-market, Abstract provides a solution for the cold-start problem — that initial hurdle of attracting users to new applications — with its application platform.
On the other hand, Abstract is the end-user’s personal application platform, serving as a portal to a wide variety of consumer applications. It’s an environment where they can directly impact development by providing direct feedback, enabling rapid iteration and improvements.
Technically, Abstract is a Wasm VM-agnostic application layer, using CosmWasm for its robust framework and IBC for seamless interoperability. For the end-users? They just use the apps. Much like the internet, the interchain is abstracted away.
Closing Thoughts
And so why do Howard and I get along so well? Well, anybody that knows me will tell you that my head is always in the clouds. I love everything about the ideation process, diving deeper and deeper and finding new ways to transform our lives. Howard is an incredibly grounding force, with a basis in reality, being highly logical and calculated in his actions.
I’m the ideas man, and Howard is the logic man. And this makes us the absolute perfect co-founder combination.
Cheers.
Adair Kelley
Footnotes
This day also happened to be when and where I met Vanessa Pestritto, now a lifelong friend and beloved mentor.
Howard is also one of the few people on this planet crazy enough to learn programmer dvorak at a casual recommendation.
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