Dave Swinbank - a blog about me, web3, my insights, opinions and thoughts.

I touched on Branding and Spaces last time round. And I will come back to Spaces in due course. Thinking about it, I barely touched on all of the aspects of Spaces I wanted to. There is a lot to Spaces and I will drill down into them in more detail. However, today I want to talk about written communication, and some of the things I do that have helped me build a brand image. My images today, some screenshots of some Tweets and pictures of Devon. 

Twitter is a platform built on written content. When it started, and far before I ever used it, it was short format only. 140 characters. It was always designed to capture the moment. To give people a snapshot, either of what is going on in their business/life or in regards to their opinion. Even since it was increased to 280 characters the content, or structure, hasn't massively changed. 

I think it is easy to forget that Twitter was designed to be a snapshot or in the moment. People want to be able to digest information quickly and easily, and to be able to have their own opinion in response. Threads, long form tweets (now available) and videos can lose this at times. And it's something I have been guilty of in the past. 

There are a million different ways to convey the content, or information, you want to. And there are various writing styles. Then you have poetry or rhymes. And don't forget about images and/or videos. With all these different communication styles, based on the written or spoken word. How do you decide how to deliver your content? 

That's for us all to work out. What our individual style is. I wrote about branding a couple of weeks ago (you can read more 

)and as part of that I talked about understanding your values and why that is so important. I also mentioned that one of the ways to do this, is to assess the values of the people you choose to spend your time with. We are very often attracted to like minded individuals. The people you choose to spend your time with, will likely mirror your drivers, ethics, morals and values. 

As you understand what your brand looks like it will help you settle on and then develop a communication style. It may be your natural communication style, or you may choose a specific style, both will develop over time. The more we do something the better we get, normally. And the more we interact with people doing the same thing (anyone on Twitter), the more inspiration and input we have, the more ideas we can pull together to formulate our own individual best practice. 

Some popular communication styles on Twitter are factual/informative (descriptive/objective), controversial (creative/subjective) and personal/personable (creative/subjective). I think the best content creators react to their audiences and adapt their styles as required. For me, Social Media requires this, because is is so in the moment, so relevant to now. Without digging too much into writing styles, I guess I have gone for a more personal style whilst amalgamating lots of other styles alongside that personability. 

Why did I choose this style? I guess you could say this style chose me. When I started to push my Twitter account I thought it was incredibly important to be real, to be as close to myself as I possibly could be without offending people and to treat people like people. A few people have met me in real life now (and more on calls) and I am the same, just maybe have a 'little' more colourful language away from Twitter. This was a deliberate choice, for lots of reasons. The main one is about inclusivity. 

For me, using derogatory, expletive or inflammatory language does not promote inclusivity. It does not promote any level of professionalism. And most importantly using that type of language will push more people away from this space than it will attract (especially parents and children). Since I started building my Twitter account I have become more respected within the NFT scene and a community leader. I am glad that I choose not to fill my Twitter account with my more colourful language. 

My style choose me. What do I mean by that? Knowing the above before I started and knowing what I wanted from this space. I knew I needed to be genuine and real. And what better way to do that than by being true to myself (colourful language aside). I aim to do this by showing my personality where ever possible, by expressing my emotions and feelings, and by aiming to offer input, never trying someone what to do. I support others and use my platform to lift those around me. 

How do you wrap your brand into your writing style? The easiest way is by using emoji's, GIF's and tags. By having a library of these that you use regularly you create a visual representation to go alongside your brand. I have that library of these things and a few phrases that I repeat regularly. I aim to use emoji's that represent me, I think I do. One phrase that has been on my account since day 1 of this journey is 'Big dreams start with little steps'. Branding goes deeper than this of course, but a lot of people will do the above naturally. Having a focus with it creates consistency and a visible representation of your brand on Twitter. 

I am determined to talk about style in more depth! At least my style. I try to mix personal, personable and professional with information, mindfulness and support. Beyond this I focus on being in the moment, encouraging conversation and debate, and replying to the replies to my Tweets (managing DM's is impossible now, don't let that stop you trying or chasing me). I am not ashamed to use my Twitter account to support others with RT's. I am also aware that replies will be even more important and am doing more to reply on other peoples Tweets. 

I think having a regular Tweet format is important. Not a template as such (although it could be called that). I also know it is important to break information up. Go back to my point about Twitter being in the moment, people want it short and snappy. I think you can still to that with more info by breaking up Tweets. Use emoji's or be 'more professional' and use bullet points or paragraph breaks... The options are endless and you will figure out your style. Images help as well. They attract peoples eyes for a moment and that gives your content a higher chance of being read. 

If you Tweet something regularly then you should have a template. I am thinking if you host regular giveaways for example. All of my giveaway Tweets have the same emoji's, format and requirements. In terms of creating brand recognition and in regards to your experience on my Twitter account, consistency is vitally important. I cannot stress this enough. I have skirted around this without saying it in this blog. If you leave with one takeaway today, make it this one. 

The last couple of things for today. These have been important for me considering I use my Twitter account to support others. I lose my Tweets. To help with this I do a couple of things. I keep my Tweets in my bookmarks and I use my pinned Tweet to do what I can to get important things seen. Usually my information tweets. That would normally be a thread, a long form tweet, a giveaway or a Tweet with a link. 

I will often RT one of my Tweets before I go to bed, this makes sure that if someone visits my account, the first three things people see on my Twitter account/feed/page are my profile/bio, my pinned Tweet and then another Tweet I want seen. Another things I will do is half recycle tweets. I don't search for old one's, but I am never ashamed to repeat a message and you shouldn't be either. 

I have made the form for my 30K giveaway celebration. This will be emailed out to my NFT holders soon, hopefully today. It is a limited first come first serve type of thing, and I am excited to support some friends. It may still take a moment to execute so have patience and 

 will be headlining with the incredible funky heart she made above. 

Thank you for reading today, and feel free to try out the share button below! Please bear in mind I am sharing my experience and what works for me may not work for you. It doesn't always work for me! Consistency, thinking about your values and images (inc emoji's/GIF's) are important but not everything. Enjoy your weekend, I will catch you next Friday. 

Brand building with written content on Twitter

A Twitter Mini Series Continued - Issue 38

Trading The Metagame

Companies that try to bring "real-world assets" on-chain -- carbon credits, mortgages, titles, etc. -- are some of the most skeuomorphic and uninteresting uses of crypto. That isn't to say that they aren't useful primitives, but they often present the same level of counterparty risk that exists in web2. Tokenized, tradable treasuries are certainly a cool primitive and allows for regional access arbitrage, but does not provide any unique value. 

The exciting uses of web3 lie in users wanting an unruggable, credibly neutral substrate to build digitally native platforms/communities/etc.

Dan Romero on the best crypto use-cases

Andrey Didovskiy

💎 Digital Asset Investor 🧙‍♂️ Crypto Content Wizard Laser focused on bringing incredible applications to Life 🌟

The most used & abused buzzword of the entire crypto industry has been decentralization.

Many people assume that by default if a project is in the crypto space then it is/must be decentralized.

As history would show us, that is absurd & untrue.

Everything under the sun starts off centralized. (Yes, even bitcoin started with one node).

While it does represent the noble mission of displacing rent-seeking middlemen & nosey governments, its actual meaning has gotten lost in all the chaos of ICO’s, memecoins, gigachads & NFTs.

Intuitively, most people understand the premise of decentralization, the diffusion of power from a single source to many. However, what is commonly overlooked is that decentralization is a subjective spectrum, not a definitive end.

If a network has 1,000 nodes is it decentralized?

If a company has 300 owners/shareholders is it decentralized?

If a government has 3 cabinets is it decentralized?

The truth here is that everyone is right!

Decentralization is a matter of perspective & design.

If a network started with 10 nodes and over the course of a year scaled to 1,000 nodes, then relative to its humble beginnings, it becomes much more decentralized. However, if we ask people that are involved in a network with 15,000 nodes they might say that they don’t agree.

Of course, things get more complicated when we factor in the separation of roles for nodes, where the 10 original nodes retain 50% control & 990 new nodes have the other 50%; then obviously this is not a decentralized network.

Now let’s say that the network has a system whereby over the course of the next few years, the original nodes spread out their control throughout all new nodes; then it's a 

This is a matter that is best explained by the example of DEFI.

Typically, projects will provide a roadmap or in some way address the topic of decentralization. If they do not, then by default they intend on being centralized… And there is nothing wrong with that!

So many individual projects get unfair hatred because they have a small group of owners.

What people miss here is the bigger picture!

Decentralizing a project too early will result in failure. A “faithful” community of people will not have the same vision or technical capabilities that a founder & their team would.

Think about it, who would you rather have build a lending protocol, a team of 10 expert engineers or a group of 2500 scrambled Twitter tweeters? Where would you feel more comfortable putting your money?

Here is the caveat that goes over many people’s heads.

Sure, if a protocol has 5 owners, it is centralized…

If there are 5,000 protocols with 5 owners each, guess what… the projects may not be decentralized, but the industry is!

Decentralization, just like anything else in life, comes with its own set of tradeoffs. In return for having more owners, things get more disorganized, inconsistent & chaotic.

The biggest problem of decentralization is 

Trying to coordinate 5 people is easily doable. Trying to coordinate 15,000 people becomes insanely complex. The amount of communication needed is mind-boggling, there will be people that are unavailable, people that miss the message, or those that just forget. Then those that show up are upset they are forced to be doing all the work, but wait, those that forget to show up get mad that a decision was made without them. This is a never-ending cycle of inefficiency.

Three Phases of Decentralization in Crypto Projects

The starting point of any idea. Here is where all of the most difficult planning, technical & ideological development takes place. It is very easy to identify if a project is centralized based on the activity that is taking place. If it is fundraising, it is centralized. If the code is only partially open, it is centralized. If the top 100 addresses own >90% of the tokens, it is centralized.

This is when a project starts to hand over control from the founding team to its community. Code slowly becomes open source, token balances are more distributed (hello airdrops), & a DAO is established. Typically this is a prolonged process that requires a lot of activity on behalf of interested users. This is not as simple as an airdrop. This requires time, evaluation & proofs of commitment. In spite of everything seeming right, bad actors will always show up & try to take over the network or squeeze out all the profit from the hard-earning community members.

Full decentralization exists only when every element of the project is out of the hands of the original team/founders & the government cannot blame any single party for what happens. We have actually not had a chance to experience this with anything except Bitcoin thus far & have much to learn about how real decentralization will actually materialize itself.

Where to find decentralization in Crypto?

There are 4 general touchpoints that dictate true decentralization:

Just because there are 10,000 nodes on a network, it does not mean the project is decentralized. Here the important factor of a consensus mechanism comes into play. In a Proof-of-work model, where anybody can join or leave at will, 10,000 nodes can be considered decentralized. On the other hand, if it is a delegated proof of stake model, then the node count won’t really matter, because ultimately only a small group of delegates will control the network anyway.

Governance is another slippery subject. While DAO’s are supposed to represent the be-all-end-all structure of organizations, on-chain activity is easy to fake. DAO voting is a mechanism based on token holders, where usually, a 1-to-1 system (one token equals one vote) is implemented. Single entities with huge holdings (whales) can spoof accounts & split up their tokens across a bunch of smaller wallets; ultimately tilting all decisions in their favor. A prominent example of this happened with UniSwap’s UNI token. 

They leverage a sly weighted delegation that prioritizes the wealthy.

Moreover, it has become public knowledge that the prominent VC firm 

& yes, they split them up across multiple wallets.

Things quickly get even more complicated with the introduction of specialized machines. Bitcoin’s POW started off as a simple 1CPU-1Vote system. This system is still in place. However, savvy technologists have found other loopholes by which to break this system & take over control. Hello ASIC (Application-Specific-Integrated-Circuit) miners. While previously it was possible to mine with a simple laptop, now in order to join the network people must acquire expensive machinery. Moreover, they must acquire A LOT of these machines. This is not to say things are good or bad; stronger machines means more robust network security; it just also means that it becomes more difficult for average people to join the network.

As it pertains to the code, it is not as straightforward as it may seem. Yes, it is binary in the sense of whether code is open-sourced or not. Surely, it is important to understand that not just a portion of the code, but all of it must be put into the public domain… But, there is the greater nuance of the ability to push updates. Small groups of developers become gatekeepers to the code. This is important because they serve the important function of protecting the protocols from malicious actors; however, they also cause a bottleneck for testing & innovation. Not bad, just fact.

Tokens are a concept that has existed in computer science & distributed systems LONG before the arrival of crypto. In crypto, they are the units of account in a ledger that represent ownership of something. We’ve already spoken that tokens are used for the allocation of voting in DAO functions; but in the economic sense, basic distribution of token balance among wallets is (for now) the best & only way to gauge decentralization. Still, as with the DAO voting, this is almost always spoofed. Not necessarily by whales as an attempt to fake out the community, but as a means to protect themselves in the event of losing wallet access or robbery.

First somebody has an idea. They share this idea with other people. Then those people tell even more people. As network effect would have it, by the time the 1,000,000th person hears the idea, nobody owns it. It belongs to the ethers of society (no pun intended).

I am very pro decentralization, after all, this is how we circumvent shadowy government operations. At the same time, I strongly support the development of new project that are centralized; that is where the innovation happens.

The untold truth about how things actually work

Disambiguating Decentralization

jelca thinks

about mostly fintech, crypto, and other tech-related stuff, but is obsessed with her Westie, murasaki potatoes, her pufferfish, pummelos, oreo ice cream, and cooking.

Tracking how tradfi and defi have been moving into each other's domains. Emphasis on how now is the time for RWA to come on chain, given the macro environment.

Tradfi > Defi: Summer 2020 aka Crypto Bull Market

Integration between TradFi and DeFi mainly happened on the trading front. On-chain trading infrastructure was created to accommodate the volumes e.g. Jump Crypto.

Many products moved on chain leveraging smart contracts and crypto native nonlinear yields such as DOVs (DeFi Option Vaults). Example vaults include Ribbon finance and Antimatter. Retail investors could see option premiums yielding almost 40% of returns. Institutional options market makers would buy vaults of options and sell on exchanges. However, volumes have greatly declined since due to macro reasons.

Companies such as Celsius, Blockfi, Genesis issued almost $50 billion in loans in just one quarter for institutional traders, who paid double digit APYs for liquidity. Of course, we saw these companies also implode… As they deleveraged, it created a liquidity gap in the market and DeFi solutions such as M11 Credit, BlockTower, came to light. They provide direct lending on other businesses such as Maple Finance, to market makers such as Flow Traders, to draw USDC at high single digit % and wETH at mid digit %.

The Shift: Defi > Tradfi. The Holy Grail, Real World Assets. 

As FFR increases, the DeFi spread has dropped significantly. With lower yields, real world players are less interested in investing in Defi. Time for Defi to enter tradfi. This is the best time!

Emerging markets, just as crypto's strongest use case always was. They have the most to gain in terms of efficiency, transparency, and speed. The most suitable assets to tokenize would be stable ones such as ones representing US treasuries. Retail and SME investors could diversify their holdings in this new store of value. Trade finance, private debt, etc. are examples of ones that are very suitable because it is currently very manual and can be packaged together. Thus, smart contracts and automation would bring a lot of value to investors. 

Centrifuge bridges real world assets into Defi in order to lower the cost of capital for SMEs and provide stable uncorrelated yield. It brings the entire structured credit market on chain and provides liquidity providers legal recourse, and is fully collateralized and asset class agnostic. It has a Tinlake product to allow SMEs access to finance by creating pools of loans backed by collateral. The sector is appealing due to the high cost of capital and low default rate. Centrifuge is a PoS blockchain built on Polkadot. Users can bring assets on chain as NFTs. 

Tinlake | Centrifuge | Decentralized Asset Financing

Businesses can originate assets and finance RWAs by tokenizing them into NFTs and using them as collateral. Users can invest in TIN, the junior tranche and high risk/high return token, or DROP, the senior tranche, or yield token with lower defaults and returns. 

Centrifuge launched an RWA market on Aave, so that the Centrifuge RWA token could be used as collateral to borrow USDC. 

Decentralized loan underwriting protocol for anyone to issue loans on chain as an underwriter, with KYC/KYB. Goldfinch relies on its backers (investors who supply USDC to borrower pools) to monitor and provide liquidity. Goldfinch gave funding to a Latam fintech called Divibank ($5

Offers on-chain capital markets. It is owned and governed by TRU holders. Traditional funds can move their lending portfolios on chain. It has portfolios facilitating loans to Latam fintechs, other EMs, and crypto mortgages. 

Launched in 2021, Maple offers undercollateralized loans to big companies like Framework Labs and Alameda (RIP). Maple offers 2 tokens to participate in governance, share in fee revenues, and provide cover.

Oracles are bridges between blockchains and the real world. Oracles are key to RWAs to facilitate proper and timely communication between on chain and off chain events. 

Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network. It is known as one of the most reliable, and proves core infrastructure for on-chain RWAs. For example, it helps verify that assets exists off chain and their values. It potentially could also verify collaterals, and share data on weather, etc. 

Is a decentralized credit protocol to connect traditional and crypto accounts. It offers decentralized credit reports as NFTs. It has 10k+ data sources across 70+ countries and has many tradfi integrations.

Circle issues USDC, a multi chain stablecoin backed by US dollars. It offers a Circle Yield product, and is overcollateralized against borrowers' BTC. 

It charges significantly lower rates than credit risk premiums for high quality bonds and has become increasingly more attractive given rising rates. Real world players are borrowing on MakerDAO to seek yield.

MakerDAO issues DAI, which is an Ethereum backed stablecoin backed by both crypto and RWA pools. Users can mint DAI by depositing assets as collateral (overcollateralized though). When loans are issued, DAI is minted. At repayment, DAI is destroyed. 

MakerDAO started off partnering with Centrifuge in 2020, and then has since onboarded many other RWA pool originators such as New Silver, Huntingdon Valley Bank, and Societe Generale. 

MakerDAO's RWA balance grew to 681 million DAI in January, up from 640 million in December and up from ~$335mm in November 2022. 4 lending pools are from Centrifuge, with collateral including loans to RE investors, revenue based financing assets, freight, etc. another is 6s Capital, that lends to RE developers, Huntingdon Valley Bank, and Societe Generale, a French bank.

RWA at its finest.

The latest MakerDAO Real-World Asset Report has been published by the Strategic Finance Core Unit!

How is the +$600 million MakerDAO RWA balance doing?

Let's investigate ↓ https://t.co/VzxwQgRb6I

Let's look into MakerDAO's RWA pools a bit closer. 

500 million Dai vault collateralized by short term US Treasury ETFs. 70% collateral is allocated to treasuries maturing <1 year.  

Through this implementation, MakerDAO currently holds ~$501 million worth of US treasury short-term bonds ETFs, up from an initial ~$497 million allocation. In January, the investment contributed ~$2.1 million in yield to MakerDAO.

100mm Dai loan participation facility with a public commercial bank. Expected 3% net yield annally. 

As of the end of January, the mentioned loans contributed 695,174 DAI of life-to-date fees to MakerDAO.

4 revolving credit facilities totaling 150mm Dai debt ceiling, collateralized by asset backed facilities, forward flow agreements, loans, structured credit.

With Blocktower as the arranger, four RWA Maker Vaults have minted over 40 million DAI to fund senior secured, real-world credit assets. As of the end of January, the mentioned vaults contributed 79,731 DAI of life-to-date fees to Maker.

Maker’s earliest attempts in the RWA space. 6s Capital (commercial real estate including Tesla), New Silver (real estate mortgages), ConsolFreight, Harbor Trade Credit, Fortunafi. 34mm Dai issued against this collateral, mostly in 6s and New Silver.

In 2021, Societe Generale via SG-Forge (investment arm) raised $20mm in DAI to refinance their on-chain covered bond issuance. They used AAA rated bonds representing housing mortgages, with 0% interest as collateral. SG-Forge then borrowed Dai, swapped to fiat, and transferred to Societe Generale. 

Historically capital was pretty cheap and didn't make sense to invest in defi. However due to monetary policy, crypto explosions, we've been seeing literally negative defi spreads, thus incentivizing real world assets to be put on chain to gain yield. I expect RWA innovation to accelerate and their assets to outperform in bearish conditions as they retain their cash flows due to the RWA's predetermined loan agreements. RWA will be an exciting driver of defi innovation to come.

https://forum.makerdao.com/t/real-world-asset-report-2022-12/19413

https://aqua-hollow-alpaca-520.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/QmUgJVqdws4MRfjcfvgKCoKVDxYoqgVLZjSyZN1Jcup7Qf

https://ngc.fund/post/defi-meets-tradfi-the-integration-and-challenges-faced

https://medium.com/centrifuge/rwa-market-the-aave-market-for-real-world-assets-goes-live-48976b984dde

https://research.thetie.io/real-world-assets/

https://docsend.com/view/u53utyp2j4ycg7r6

https://medium.com/bankless-dao/brick-and-mortar-banks-begin-to-build-on-chain-de0e78413fc2

https://medium.com/centrifuge/defi-2-0-first-real-world-loan-is-financed-on-maker-fbe24675428f

https://genesisblockpod.substack.com/p/rwa

Tradfi > Defi... now Defi > Tradfi (RWA) 

Understanding 15 powerful forms of Distributed Agreements

Crypto Consensus Breakdown

Global concern for climate change and environmental sustainability has grown significantly over the last decade, and has become table stakes in the last couple of years. There are carbon accounting businesses, offsetting businesses, project developers out in the wild sourcing credits, fintechs, and more. Today I want to focus on the application of blockchain technology, which has already transformed the way we interact with financial systems, supply chains, and now, the carbon industry.

Blockchain technology, with its decentralized and distributed digital ledger system, enables secure and tamper-proof tracking of transactions and assets, making it the perfect tool for managing carbon credits and emissions data. The benefits of blockchain in the carbon industry include:

Walking through a Use Case from Credit Generation to Retirement

IBM has partnered with Energy-Blockchain Labs to develop a blockchain-based platform for carbon asset management, using 

. This platform aims to improve the efficiency and transparency of the carbon market, facilitating the trading of carbon assets and credits.

KlimaDAO offers their coin KLIMA to accelerate the speed at which the price of emitting arbon is going up. The business does this buy purchasing credfits from Verra, retiring them, and then minting the tokens via 

. The tokens become Base Carbon Tonnes (representing 1 tonne of carbon removed). KLIMA's are backed by at least 1 BCT, and owners of the token are supposed to grow their share of the coin through bonding more BCT or staking holdings for yield. 

Toucan is the infrastructure that helps crypto carbon projects like KlimaDAO eexist. It turns carbon credits into tokens to be used on a blockchain. They are retired from their source registry to prevent double counting, but haven't been claimed against emissions yet and thus are still viable. Their tokenized CO2 (TCO2s) are semi-fungible, meaning they are not all identical but can be fractionalized and grouped for trading. Toucan was the first platform to allow for the tokenization of carbon credits. 

Nori's blockchain-powered carbon removal marketplace utilizes Ethereum to allow small farm based suppliers to sell to buyers, particularly those in regenerative agriculture. Nori focuses on soil carbon storage, with each carbon credit making up a Nori Carbon Removal Tonne (NRT). Nori will expand internationally and also tokenize their NRTs into NORI tokens to be deployed on Polygon and create a secondary market. Polygon has already partnered with KlimaDAO. Nori has also partnered with Bayer AG, one of the largest pharma / agricultural companies in the world to scale up their NRT supply. 

The Poseidon Foundation's blockchain-based platform, built on the Stellar blockchain, empowers consumers and businesses to offset their carbon footprint by purchasing carbon credits. The blockchain technology ensures the transparency and traceability of these transactions.

Energy Web Foundation (EWF) has developed the Energy Web Chain, an open-source, scalable blockchain platform specifically designed for the energy sector. The platform, built on a customized version of the Ethereum blockchain, allows for seamless integration of renewable energy sources, carbon credits trading, and emissions data management.

Based in Brazil, Moss is a blockchain-based platform focused on tokenizing carbon credits, making them accessible and easy to trade. Moss has purchased parcels of land in the Amazon rainforest and focuses on credits generated from forest preservation projects. It then sells to companies and individuals with the goal of preserving the forest. It leverages the Ethereum blockchain.

Devvio is an ESG blockchain platform and is the parent company of DevvStream. Devvio uses DevvStream to put the carbon credits it gets from its streaming agreements on-chain. On DevvStream, the credits gain distribution benefits. DevvStream also gets priority access to Devvio's commercial clientele who are already using the ESG platform, so that if they need credits, they will go to DevvStream. DevvStream is also partnered with Xpansiv, one of the largest voluntary carbon exchanges, to provide liquidity. 

Xpansiv is owned by CBL markets and uses blockchain technology to create Digital Feedstock, a data-driven digital representation of commodities, including carbon credits. The platform, built on the Ethereum blockchain, provides a transparent and secure marketplace for carbon credit trading and valuation.

The global carbon market reached a record value of $272 billion in 2021, a 20% increase compared to 2020. The voluntary carbon market, where companies and individuals voluntarily purchase carbon credits to offset their emissions, has also experienced significant growth. In 2020, the market saw a transaction volume of 104 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e), with a value of $320 million. The increased interest in voluntary carbon offsetting creates a demand for transparent and efficient blockchain-based solutions.

As of September 2021, 64 carbon pricing initiatives, including emissions trading systems (ETS) and carbon taxes, have been implemented or are scheduled for implementation. These initiatives cover approximately 21.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, further emphasizing the need for efficient carbon credit management systems like blockchain.

Blockchain Investment in Energy and Climate

A report by PwC found that between 2017 and 2021, over $2.4 billion was invested in blockchain-based energy and climate projects. This investment demonstrates the growing recognition of blockchain's potential to address sustainability challenges, including carbon credit management.

According to a report by the World Economic Forum, 10% of global GDP is projected to be stored on blockchain technology by 2025. This widespread adoption of blockchain is expected to extend to the carbon industry, further enhancing the efficiency, transparency, and security of carbon credit transactions.

Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the carbon industry by providing a transparent, efficient, and secure solution to managing carbon credits and emissions data. While blockchain technology solves many inefficiencies, ultimately it does not solve the "global climate crisis". However, I do believe that blockchain technology does have strong use cases here. 

Blockchain Carbon Solutions

Pink Sink

a project about personal growth and the pursuit of a life less complicated

I was in only three Discord servers for quite a number of years. It was just me and a handful of my close gamer friends who took refuge from poor voice chat implementation by platform holders. Then crypto happened.

It started out innocently enough joining a DAO (that I am still active in) and a few other opportunities here and there. Then the boom happened and servers we coming out of the woodwork like long lost relatives after you win the lottery.

I mean, the promise of upside and potential to get involved was so seductive, wasn't it? I found myself chasing work opportunities, whitelist spots and Discord roles with the best of them. You just never knew what lied behind that verification wall. It was never a question of should I, but could I.

Recently, though, the snow has settled to the bottom of the bull market snow globe to reveal what really should remain. Time to make some cuts. And by make some cuts, I mean be realistic and ruthless with what I let take up my bandwidth. And before you ask, no, muting is not a viable option for me. And also note that I have nothing against any of these servers. It's just... it's not you, it's me.

And to tell you the truth, this is a much bigger problem than Discord servers, but it seemed like low hanging fruit and the problem manifested itself quite obviously through the server lens, so it seemed as good a place as any to start.

The criteria I used for what to keep was very straightforward; a simple yes or no would suffice.

Three strikes and you are out, simple as that. 

If any of these servers become a "yes" in the future, I can always join back up, nbd.

And this is where I let you in on a little secret. That upside we were talking about before. You are probably not missing out on it. 

The thing is, if you do good work, the upside will find you.

it's not you, it's me

Discord spring cleaning

I had no idea that I was going to write this at all. Honestly, given all of the insanity going on in the macro landscape & inside the crypto industry, it would be downright insane trying to build a portfolio now… right?

Well, after the sh*tshow with the FTX sandal, SVB collapsing on itself, FUD around stablecoins, & crypto twitter singing songs of a 2008 moment for the industry Crypto… people are starting to hate it.

Whenever people are terrified, angry, lost & confused; there is opportunity to be had. In the words of uncle Warren Buffet

 “Be fearful when others are greedy & be greedy when others are fearful”.

Being the “oldest” of all digital assets Bitcoin has time and time again proven its economic importance. The holy grail of decentralization & the most robust cryptocurrency of all, this is a staple of any serious long-term portfolio. One of my never-sells. The way I view BTC is one way; away from the tax-hungry hands of governments. While the return potential is lower than many altcoins, it is also the most risk-controlled asset of all.

This is a key component in how I’m balancing the allocations of my portfolio; all great wealth is composed of not only wealth generation, but also wealth retention. Controlled risk means higher predictability & higher predictability means greater potential for wealth retention. Plus, I’m ultra-bullish on Proof-Of-Work.

Given how strong the technology & the founders are, coupled with just some subliminal patterns that stand out to me, SOL is the next ETH. I’m not talking about technologically, I’m talking about from a purely ROI perspective. Money aside, Solana has a multitude of interesting elements underpinning it:

- their incredible ability to attract developers.

- awesome work on light clients & vision of a mobile network (SMS)

- its monolithic blockchain architecture that creates strong ties between the coin & the network itself

- capital & technological efficiency (low fees & high throughput)

- strong interest from VC’s (which they get a lot of hate for)

Cosmos has done incredible work in positioning itself as a hub to connect blockchains. Its IBC (Inter-Blockchain-Communication) protocol creates a very interesting opportunity to capture the velocity of activity that happens on independent chains. There are actually over >46 chains already connected to the Cosmos Hub 

, including some of the biggest names in the game: (Cronos, Kava, Osmosis, Injective, & Secret) What really attracts me to the cosmos solution is that it is 

they utilize “Hubs” to provide connectivity. As more crypto projects arrive they will need interoperability; given the constant failure & hacks of bridges, odds are they will want something more secure & permanent. My bet is on Cosmos.

The very unique approach to interoperability & innate design of this project caught my attention. There are so many mind-boggling technological innovations happening here that it would be impossible to miss them. Anytime I see a novel Conesus mechanism, I immediately get intrigued because I understand the depth of effort that was put into the engineering. However, after looking into the Snowflake consensus mechanism I was blown away by the brilliance & extremely skeptical at first. If the promises & guarantees that AVAX might deliver to the world come to fruition, Avalanche could be better than any other smart contract platform.

First, the team behind it is world-class. They obviously know what they are doing & are always at the forefront attracting developers. (*I think they might be able to take some away from Ethereum). The level of decentralization with AVAX is as good, if not better than, Bitcoin’s 

. Obviously, they use POS, so they can support ultra-fast finality (<2 seconds). The multi-leveled architecture claims “theoretically infinite” TPS via its subnets (still has to be shown, but I’m a believer.) Ultimately, this is a strict bet on the team & technology.

Chainlink is one of the most important pieces for the construction of a true digital economy. Blockchain’s are like remote island nations, each with its own currency, population & laws. They are not aware of what is going outside of their own islands. There is plenty of data that is not native to a blockchain, such as price. Bitcoin does not know if BTC is trading at 10k or 100k, all Bitcoin knows is that 1BTC=1BTC. As an oracle network, Chainlink brings external real world data to the blockchain. In order to make any DEFI protocol or Dapp work, data must be fetched from somewhere. If somebody is building a decentralized exchange, that exchange needs to source prices & those prices will exist across many different providers. Chainlink’s oracles go to those providers & bring that data on-chain. As of this writing there are over 

This is a project I have only recently started paying attention to after the impressive success of ordinals & the transition of ETH from POW to POS. This isn’t exactly a “pure” layer 2 on Bitcoin, Stacks is its own blockchain network that operates in tandem with the Bitcoin blockchain. However, this feels as though it is something vaguely similar of what Polygon or Optimism is to Ethereum. While I WILL NOT deposit my bitcoin into the STX network, I do think there is a role for them to play in the greater ecosystem.

This is a play on decentralized data storage. There are a lot of other on-chain data storage solutions in the marketplace (Filecoin, Bit Torrent, Storj, Siacoin, and so on.); however, IMHO Arweave is one of the most promising long-term on-chain data storage projects on the market due to the following four reasons:

 MarketCap is fair (~250m). In the event that decentralized data storage takes off as a sector, that would give it a lot of runway for potential ROI. 

(FYI, the Marketcap of AR is 10x lower than the current leader FIL)

The mission of the project is to destroy censorship; as a decentralization maxi when I see something like this, I get all hyped up.

They have actually designed their own consensus mechanism called “proof-of-access”; that is able to provide better TPS (~5,000) & better pricing than many of its competitors

 with some HUGE names: Meta (aka Facebook), Instagram, Metaplex & Mirror.

“oooh-oooh AHAH, Ape together strong”

Kind of a degen play on this one. I am not a holder of any ape NFTs & do not intend on becoming one. Nevertheless, I do believe in the concept of there being a need for a Web3 native token that will fuel the expansion of the creative on-chain economy & culture. Being heavily Web3-focused & having a very strong team of intelligent crypto natives on board, will give APE a chance to compete in the big leagues. The secret sauce here might be that the token’s utility is to support 

This is a pseudo-bet on the success of Polkadot & Ethereum, as well as on Layer 2's. Moonbeam is a lesser talked about project that has actually delivered some interesting developments for EVM compatibility from the Polkadot network. As a parachain on Polkadot, the project has a lot of incredible developer tooling available. Moonbeam has actually been touted as having the most advanced interoperability capabilities between the two networks. While I must be honest that I personally do not see much of a differentiator in terms of technology on this one, I do see a high potential return based on the tokenomics. With 50% of the token already in circulation & a marketcap ~250m; in the event of a bull market, this token might be able to ride the best of all worlds.

“An Inverted Chainlink Mapping Big Data ”

I’m not a fan of the AI tokens, nor am I familiar with how to measure the actual value that can be monetized by big data in the blockchain ecosystem. However, GRT kinda-sorta exists at the intersection of the two fields & is one of the most fascinating projects that has crossed my sights while doing research on the space. Referred to as an indexing protocol, the Graph allows for querying data from blockchains; which feels almost like a reversed Chainlink. Chainlink brings data from the outside in, The Graph indexes data in such a way that it reduces developer costs for getting blockchain data out. Fancy technical talk aside, the biggest reason that GRT made it to my list is because since inception that have gone through one hell of an intense token emission. Now with >83% of the token in circulation, the sell pressure from new tokens coming onto the market will be lower than before. (I hope 🤞🤣🤞)

These are all core to the portfolio, they will not be traded. I enter via DCA & I leave once 

. It is possible as the cycle progresses that things will change, if they do, I will do a part two.

I did not mention any of the shitcoin/tokens that might be of interest for margin trading because as I have learned the hard way, investing makes money & margin trading kills it.

May your bags always be full & overflowing 💰

Preparation for the next Cycle

The 10 Token Crypto Portfolio

I'm calling it a mini series... I think it's more likely a draft for something bigger in the future, or the building blocks. I don't know what yet, welcome to my brain, I trust it now, and I believe it will all make sense eventually! There is no plan for the next Twitter issue, although I know it will roll on from this. And it will likely not be next week. There may only be a very small blog next week, and it could be poetry. My emotions will be all over the place. Today however, I am going to chat branding and Spaces. I may have room for more, I may not. I hope you find some useful information amongst my thoughts. 

Creating a clear, consistent and strong brand is key to any form of brand, company or social media growth. And there are multiple ways anyone can do this. I believe that this starts by being introspective and looking at yourself. What are your end goals, what are you like as a person and what values do you look for in people you choose to spend time with? This last one's more important than you may think. We are all drawn to like minded people, people who share our values. Our friends can tell us a lot. 

I knew what I wanted to achieve with Twitter, and I still do. I know this because I was aware of my goals and what I want to see in the Crypto/Web3 space. I want to help make this space as accessible as possible and whilst I understand the need to have growth or sales tactics wrapped into your brand, I believe this space needs something more than that. In a trustless environment, people will still need to interact with each other and 'soft skills' are going to be vital to building relationships. I also believe in discourse and discussion, the need for respect and being open with my values. 

I'm a passionate, heart on my sleeve, kind of guy. I say what I feel but I always aim to be considerate and respectful because I know not everyone will feel, or think, the same way I do. How does this relate to my brand and the brands I am involved in? Primarily I aim to work with people who have the same values as me and I look to embody those values in all of my actions. I don't always get this 'right', but the intention is always with this in mind. 

1/

#Tags - my thoughts - a thread
 
This one is heavily wrapped in experience and opinion. I will share my biggest learns. How you use them is on you. 

Firstly - personal tags are so important and we do not utilise them enough. Here are some reasons;

They are Twitter links...

The human values I look to show are care, compassion, consideration, empathy, kindness, love and trust. I think these values promote so many positive behaviours and the people exhibiting them will naturally lift the people alongside them up. At the same time people, with these values tend to get the best out of the people around them. These people are usually passionate about other people, community focused and positive. 

Showing my emotions and sharing my thoughts is more important to me than promotion. Promotion of my brand, the brands I work with or anyone else's brand. This is because of lessons I have learnt about me over the last few years. When I hide from my feelings, it has a negative impact on me and the people around me. Vulnerability is a strength and I want to use my Twitter account to show how expressing and showing emotion helps me, in the hope I can help someone else. 

Treating people like people has always been important to me and always will be. Too many times in life I have felt like a faceless number, for multiple reasons. I think the Crypto/Web3 Space gives us an opportunity to do business in a different way, and I believe society will need to do business in a different way sooner than many people think. Definitely not tomorrow, but sooner than a lot expect. 