When 17-Year-Old Blockchain Dev. Meets Ecosystem Developer at Ethereum Foundation
Wednesday, 6:49:51 PM —Rocking the collared shirt, pajama pants setup.
6:49:52 — Reality check: About to meet Sina from the EF.
This guy developed the TrueBit Protocol, is responsible for building Ethereum development communities in multiple nations, and knows Vitalik himself personally.
I had been introduced to Sina by winning a pitch competition at The Knowledge Society.
It was not a normal day for a 17-year-old blockchain developer who started writing his first smart contracts only 5 months ago.
3 months ago, I spoke at CASCON x EVOKE on the blockchain’s ability to give artists their creative freedom back.
2 months ago, I finished my first blockchain projects: a blockchain explorer, escrow smart contracts for a luxury items marketplace, and a blockchain game.
1 month ago, I won a global blockchain hackathon by building a peer-to-peer gig economy marketplace platform.
I never would’ve imagined that my days of grinding Cryptozombies would lead me to talking with the guy ushering the world’s transition to DeFi, DApps, Non-Fungible Tokens, and all things Ethereum Blockchain.
Dreams do come true with dedication.
Here are some moments from our jam that I would relive on repeat:
NFTs
Someone bought Nyan Cat for $600,000.
That person now holds the only legitimate copy of Nyan Cat on the internet.
3LAU selling the world’s first NFT collection of a music album has also contributed to the recent spike of interest in NFTs.
NFTs, however, have existed long before the hype in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Unlike Bitcoins or Ether, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are currently assets that cannot be mutually exchanged, but is transferrable from user to user via. smart contracts.
Before the advent of NFTs, there was no way of creating digital art that had a value of uniqueness, since everything uploaded into the internet can be copied. For example, if I were to send 5 people a copy of the Nyan Cat gif before the age of blockchain, each would hold no value because they’re all copies of one another with equal monetary attribute.
NFTs allow there to be only 1 legitimately original version of a creative asset. When they sold the Nyan Cat NFT for $600,000, whoever bought Nyan Cat now has the legitimate copy of the original. This doesn’t mean that the original cannot be copied, of course. It just means that only one person can have the original. It’s like how someone can make copies of the Mona Lisa painting, but in the end there will always be only one legitimate copy. This preserves the monetary value of the legitimate art piece.
Perhaps one of the earliest forms of preserving the uniqueness of digital art through NFTs was with Cryptokitties. Those adorable, fur-ever friends are all unique collectibles. Once you hold a cat, you can sell it to others in exchange for USD. The rarer the cat is, the more it’s worth.
The original Cryptokitties (“genesis kittens”) now sell for 6–7 figures.
Sina and I talked about how properties can be sold in the same way, where tokens of each property can be created and sold. Usually, owners of properties would have to sell the entire property to liquidate the building. Now, NFTokenized shares of each property can also be sold to others for their holding, while the owner maintains majority ownership. This helps property holders liquidate their real estate assets easier, reduces risk with shares of holdings, and allows more people to invest in the market.
Now, back to the realm of monetizing digital art: music creators like 3LAU can use NFTs to sell unique originals of their pieces. The principles are the same. Creators can create exclusive, custom pieces for their fans (and charge for $h*tloads of money), while the fans would buy and hang on to those one-of-a-kind originals.
It’s an interesting usage, but not enough people appreciate the ERC-721 Standards that power these tokens behind the scenes, let alone dive into development to invent new use cases.
It is ERC-721 that allowed current NFT platforms like Cryptokitties and other projects essential to the Ethereum ecosystem to exist. For example, ENS (Ethereum Naming Service) allows each person to use an actual name to transact ETH, instead of having to traditionally copy and paste long lines of ETH wallet keys.
This essentially creates an identity profile attached to your total cryptocurrency balance on the blockchain. Not only that, but you would also be able to construct websites with the .eth suffix, granting it blockchain-based security and censorship protection via. decentralization. The service does this by leveraging the ERC-721 standard to establish each domain as a NFT-like entity, ensuring its uniqueness.
Still, people get excited for original copies of 3LAU albums, but not so much about the “onERC1155Received” commands can literally 3000x the speed at which NFTs are transferred and minted.
Currently, ERC-721 only host non-fungible tokens, supports transferring one token at a time, and requires one smart contract for every new type of token deployed. This results in high transaction costs and very slow transaction speeds, which significantly limits the implementation of blockchain games. ERC-1155 allows one smart contract to be used for infinite token types, as well as batch transfers of tokens. This speeds up NFT transaction processing and reduces transaction fees by reducing redundant bytecode and allowing the transfer of multiple types of tokens at once, reducing overall transaction traffic. Considering how ERC-1155 standard development is essential for Ethereum scaling, we need more projects being built on this standard so that NFTs, like the rest of Ethereum, can scale.
A Part of Something Greater
“(On monetizing from EF) As long as we continue supporting development toward ETH2 and Layer 2 scaling solutions, because that’s the ultimate goal”.
From connecting with global Ethereum development communities to providing grants for layer 2 solutions, every part of Sina’s work is aimed toward benefitting our community. We were able to connect based on this mutual interest and dedication.
His work at the Ethereum foundation was on on something that wasn’t profit driven. Rather, every bit of his role to support projects, communities, and people like to me had the intention of making Ethereum a platform for everyone.
Whether if it’s in the United States or in other nations like China or India, he is there to provide help and resources to make sure those communities are rapidly growing. When we talked about the most exciting things currently in the blockchain space, we touched on the people-centric side of blockchains: smart contracts, governance and liquidity protocols. The DeFi applications of blockchain was ever expanding, and people are beginning to make a transition toward hodling cryptocurrencies because of it.
Most important to both of us, however, was Layer 2 expansions. I could really tell by the way Sina was speaking about ETH2 is the future of Ethereum (and it is). He was wholeheartedly dedicated to doing everything possible to push for any sort of development that would help the global Ethereum community get to that point. I couldn’t agree more: rollups, state channels, the Plasma framework and side chains are all aimed at speeding up transaction processing speeds to allow for more and faster cryptocurrency transactions.
Embodying this mindset of inclusion, Sina was even so kind as to introduce me to more of his pals (which I’ll write subsequent articles on, so stay tuned). It’s about all coming together to advance Ethereum applications and scaling solutions!
When I first started blockchain and cryptocurrency development, it was my dream to create something genuinely applicable to one’s daily life, so that we can bring the decentralized internet to our modern world.
As someone currently trying to create a decentralized online gig-economy platform and online market platform to combat luxury-item fraud, I’ve only gotten to realize that dream with the developer communities that have helped me get here.
I resonated with the fact that every single contribution we all make to the Ethereum Ecosystem (and blockchain in general), no matter how small and in whichever way possible, helps our world transition to the next age of information transfer. Our future is where international monetary transactions can take place in the blink of an eye, where one can pay rent with smart contracts, and where creators can monetize on the works they create through community governance. The path to that future is with Layer 2 scaling solutions. Already, people are using Layer Two to design cool projects like Web3Torrent (allows people who upload files to be paid in ETH as others download) and Loom Network (allows large scale DApps to be run on top of the Ethereum main chain, currently serving as blockchain data platform for healthcare providers, made by the creators of Cryptozombies!).
Opened Gates
The Ethereum Foundation’s recent increase in wealth due to the increase of ETH prices has allowed it to fund even more projects, so right now is the perfect time to start developing. There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube to start writing smart contracts and learning Ethereum development. Cryptozombies.io is also great for starting to learn Solidity development.
Besides for educational content, one of my favorite ways to learn Ethereum development was engaging in projects that I genuinely care about! If you want to get involved but have no idea how, ETHGlobal has some very exciting hackathons coming up — one with building NFTs, and another with building Ethereum scaling solutions. Having fellow hackers to join you on your journey certainly helps, and competitions help you push yourself to completing your project. Don’t let your dreams be dreams!
After all, if a 17 year old who had no prior experience in coding 6 months ago can do it, I know you can too.
Main Takeaways:
- NFTs do more than just help artists monetize on music. There’s lots of hype around it recently… but just like the recent hype with cryptocurrencies only few appreciate the tech behind it.
- Sina is coordinating a globalized effort to push for Ethereum 2.0 — building bigger, scalable Ethereum applications and more developers than ever.
- There is no better time to start learning and building than now.
I’m Xiangan — a 17 year old blockchain developer passionate for learning, and I appreciate you for reading! If you enjoyed the article, please feel free to follow me on my LinkedIn. Check out my website if you want to get into Ethereum development or get connected! Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts!
As a token of gratitude, here is a musically talented axolotl:
