Dear Minimalists,
Thanks to everyone who joined our recent community call.
It was a pleasure hearing from you and discussing the state of the blockchain industry. We’re looking forward to our next call. If you want to catch up with what we talked about, you can find the recording of our session here.
Below, we have recapped some of the most important points we talked about. During this time, we had Jazmin, our Technical Communications Manager, Luke, our Community Lead, and Naomi, our Social Media Manager, on stage.
Minima Q1 2022
What are you most excited about for the next few months?
Jazmin: “I’m very excited about getting the miniDapps back out there. We have a lot in store for the community, and I think people will really start to see the utility of Minima and Maxima play out, and realize the possibilities for what can be built on top.”
Luke: “I agree, I can’t wait to see the miniDapps back, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the community themselves will build. Equally, it will be great to open up more avenues for you to earn IncentiveCash tokens and spread the word. And, of course, the mainnet launch as well. That will be a big step.”
Meme Channel Launch
We’ve just opened up a new channel on our Discord server dedicated to all your Minima Memes. What does this channel include, and what does it mean for Minimalists?
Luke: “All you need to do is post your memes in the channel and react to your favorites. We will also run a little competition; the first run will end on the 31st of January, where the winner with the most reactions will receive a prize of 150 Minima coins. We’ll also pick a favorite as the Minima community team.
We anticipate this being a monthly rolling thing and can’t wait to see the memes you come up with.”
Community Member of the Month
Our community member this month is Zach, who has been an outspoken advocate for Minima on LinkedIn.
Could you introduce yourself and tell us how you came across Minima?
Zach: “Hi, I’m Zach and live in the US. I’m the CEO and founder of a small manufacturing company that also runs an e-commerce business. I’ve been watching the Web2 Marketing thing for the last few years and leveraged that to grow the business. But it’s starting to fail, especially with Facebook.
I’ve been following the blockchain space and looking at where Web3 is going, thinking that this might be where businesses are going. As a manufacturer, I’m used to building things from scratch. So I started thinking how would the perfect blockchain look like and mapping it out. And in the midst of doing all that research, I came across Minima.
Which was a relief because it meant I didn’t have to build it myself. And I was really excited to see that someone was building what I thought a perfect blockchain would be.”
What has your journey been in the blockchain space?
Zach: “I first heard about Bitcoin in 2011/12, and in 2013 the price took off, and I thought I should get involved. I remember standing in the kitchen of the little place I was then living in with my wife, with my finger hovering over the buy button — contemplating if I should buy 10 Bitcoin for $900. Ultimately I didn’t. Looking back, I wish I had, but we couldn’t afford to lose anything. In the end, I’d have probably lost it anyway because it was the Mt Gox platform.
I also had the chance to get in early on an NFT project last year and didn’t. I have a habit of being early and then hesitating. And now, in hindsight, the reason I hesitated was a subconscious question about if the blockchain is actually decentralized.
A lot of the new blockchains are optimizing for the wrong thing. And what I think Minima has done is putting all the best we’ve learned about blockchain and put it into a protocol. And then someone like me can look at it and feel confident investing my time and money.”
You are also contemplating using NFTs, potentially in combination with AR/VR?
Zach: “From a business standpoint, it’s hard to make stuff. But it’s hard to sustain if it’s just that, so we’re looking to get into digital and build a digital offering.
What I see in the NFT space is that people drop their NFTs and make a lot of promises, asking for the money up-front. I don’t operate this way. Our idea is to build something valuable up-front. We’re working on an AR app for the automotive industry, and if we end up selling digital products, maybe we do that in the form of NFTs.
In conversations with other business professionals, the more executing use cases for NFTs are IP, access, and not pixelated monkeys. And if you buy a profile picture, at least make sure that the actual image is yours, or you host it on your own device.”
Web 3.0
What was your reaction to the recent criticism around Web 3.0 brought forward by Moxie and later Scott Galloway?
Jazmin: “It was somewhat painful to admit that they were right on a lot of things still. The current so-called Web 3.0 does interact with the blockchain, but it uses centralized infrastructure and systems because it’s easier to use those. I do think a true Web 3 doesn’t exist yet. I’d compare it to renting vs. buying a property. Most people will prefer to own a property, but it’s often out of reach. I believe that giving people choice; most would pick buying. Similarly with running your own server. If it’s as easy as downloading an app, why would you not?”
Building on Minima
If you could build anything on Minima, what would it be?
Luke: “I have a journalist background, and I remember how during the Arab Spring, people used Twitter to share what was happening. And that then got curtailed. I’d like to see or build a citizen journalist platform, where people can share what’s happening in the world without filter and any interference.”
Jazmin: “For me, it’d definitely be a decentralized ID and voting system. You see so much corruption and tampering in voting all over the world; having that would certainly benefit the world.”
Thanks again for joining us, and we’re looking forward to seeing you on our next community call. In the meantime, feel free to ask anything or share what you’d like to see built on Minima on our Discord server.
You can find the recording of our session here.
