Polkadot Peers, and Para-chains, everybody wants their own white label

~dwulf

para-chains

Crypto Origins

Several years ago, I heard of Bitcoin and read the white paper. On the surface, it seemed an honest store of value, a finite commodity of digital assets, stored in a hash digital wallet with private and public keys. Decentralized, and encrypted, and out of scope from all nation-states or tyrannical agencies.

I happened upon Ethereum and its program environment, Solidity came to the forefront and gave the option of full turing “programmable” smart-contracts, to give more dynamics and lateral movement to the crypto environment, enabling exchanges, staking and yield making assets on-chain.

It was around that time when Dr. Gavin Wood, demonstrated Polkadot’s Substrate, and with a shrink wrapped macbook pro, set up a live test chain in under 1 hour. A 100% Nominated Proof of Stake system, laid the layer 0 scaffolding for all the para-chains to come after it.

On the surface, Polkadot was the best option to develop on and with. But little was known about it. If you mentioned crypto to the average joe on the street, the first thing that may come to their mind is Bitcoin or magic internet money that no one understood. If you asked a moderate joe in the industry, then maybe you would get a answer of Ethereum and Solidity. If you found a joe that was deep in the weeds of the programming minutiae they may mention in passing Polkadot.

Polkadot and its mother company Parity, went so far as to not advertise itself at all, no promotions outside of the circle of experts that were already apart of it, likely Dr. Wood and friends. Parity lawyers took charge to create dialog with the regulators in the US, mostly with the SEC, to ensure that Polkadot would not be seen as a security by the SEC, but instead was seen as software, which is protected by free speech.

Because of this, Polkadot would be less of a target for regulators and the onus of being targeted was put on the para-chains, spawned from the mother ship Polkadot. Para-chains, had to engineer themselves in such a way to avoid the scrutiny of the regulators.

DeFi Defense against the Dark Arts

As such, Polkadot became the spark, that lead to the flame of para-chains on the make. Initially sponsored by the crowd-loans to have network fuel to power their projects. The crowd-loans were typically a 2 year staking commitment to the projects, backing the para-chain projects would allow the backers (i.e. wallet holders) to gain intensives and rewards during that tenure and at the end of the 2 years have their initial $DOT commitment released back to them. For the opportunity cost, the respect, rewards, and refunds came into play.

Almost all the projects were open for contributions from almost anybody with a Polkadot wallet and $DOT to contribute. A few, imposed restrictions based on accident of birth on the wrong part of the planet that happened to reside in the U.S. and other nation-states. Which I did not contribute to as it went against the 5 pillar rule of crypto (open, public, borderless, neutral, and censorship resistant). As an unfortunate result of this, Moonbeam was crossed off my list as they went out of their way to block U.S. residents from contributing, violating borderless, neutral, and censorship resistance. In retrospect, I could of turned on my VPN, and contributed anyways, but since they went out of their way to insist that U.S. citizens were not allowed to participate, I decided to contribute to para-chains that did not impose that restriction.

Centralized banks, Centralized exchanges, and conventional regulation constraints were off my list too. DeFi systems and para-chains that followed the open, public, borderless, neutral, and censorship resistant mantra, held my vote.

Scattered, Divided, Leaderless

So I have been in the trenches for a few years now, posting my medium articles, backing the para-chains I contributed to during the crowd loan period, and even finding favour from para-chains I overlooked initially. As a result, obtained a small writing gig from Nodle, earned ambassador roles with Astar, and Phala, and even earned a senior ambassador rank with Polkadot. I even tried my hand with governance to get accumulated with it and to be apart of the community on a more professional level as well as making earnest attempts to understand the business dynamics of core-time.

My discoveries were unexpected and certainly not what I expected. Acala, I held the most high hopes for as its focus was in DEX, Decentralized EXchange, and I reasoned the exchange component it where the “money is”, so it took a majority of my $DOT during the crowd loan support period. Acala had some issues with a hack that was a result of a misconfiguration to their aUSD peg, my funds were safe, but aUSD was not.

My contributions to Astar was genuine, I loved their technical direction and focus on smart contracts, they received a major chunk of my $DOT support and I made some valuable connections through them. Became an ambassador for them and continued to contribute regularly, but their ambassador program was broken, and when leadership passed, I was unceremoniously demoted in my ranks with them, despite my contributions and despite my support. I am none to happy about that, and I made several appeals to this, but they have fallen on deaf ears, which is a shame because I really support Astar as a whole.

Phala, actually reached out to me, to become an ambassador, but have given little direction to me for the methods of their promotions.

Then of course, is the mother ship itself, Polkadot, the only one who sought to promote me, when Astar demoted me and Phala got lost in translation somewhere.

Too much bread and not enough butter to spread

So, it got me to thinking, despite my support and despite my contributions and even despite my attempts to participate in governance, I still faced constraints. Becoming an ambassador for every para-chain is easy, just show enthusiasm for that para-chain, write articles for that para-chain, and mention that para-chain by name. But it is important to note, that not all para-chains have a one-for-all and all-for-one mindset (this totally blew me away). Meaning that, they are not in a position to promote Blockchain and DeFi Crypto. They are only in a position to promote their Blockchain and Defi Crypto only and exclusively. Part of the reason I feel I was demoted with Astar was because I did not always mention them by name and promoted dApps that came from them and their dApp program, but did not specifically mention Astar.

Not every para-chain wants to resonate or even promote the mother ship Polkadot. They want their own “white label”, this makes being a multi-chain ambassador a very involved matter. Paying special mind to mention, by name, para-chains that want to be promoted by their name, but don’t necessarily include Polkadot or even the community with those promotions.

I think it is time to dial into chains that are more inline with my contributions and mantra. For now, Polkadot, is my main focus, they allowed me to ascend to the ranks of senior ambassador, I really have nothing bad to say about them, I was and still am a fan of the Polkadot. They are not demoting me, like Astar, and I was even invited to a private Telegram channel and I know many of the people in the community, but I think they know me more.

As for Astar, I still love them, but I sense that there is a disconnect and the unwarranted demotion has me a bit salty. But, I still make use of their platform, their technology is rock solid, and that is how I judge them, their personnel hierarchy, leaves something to be desired, much like high school social clicks all over again, not really into it then or now.

Phala, I love them, but I would be dammed if I do not get clear guidance from their personnel hierarchy, their Phat contracts are rock solid, allows for many options in off-chain development, I judge their tech first in all things, not so much high school social clicks, but an absence of any social direction.

Nodle, I see so much potential with Nodle, especially with IoT, they invited me to do technical writing for them, I even had discussions with the CEO to eventually shift into engineering which he was receptive to. But because of financial constraints they had to put my assignments on hold, and when they did have engineering positions open up, and I applied, I was denied, so it was not hard to see what was what with them…and they did not even remunerate the work I did do for them with crypto, sad. But I still use their mobile miner and still support them.

Irons in the Fire

So as a result of these setbacks and my tendency to over extend myself, I could not really rely on just being an ambassador to butter my bread, I have actually reached out and have been connected with other business prospects in and around the chain.

Bringing monetary metrics to the table is what it is all about, building personal resources that earn yields, without the judgement and demotions of the people in the mix. Grow the assets in your chain, build the utility your assets require.

I have irons in the fire, but the forge is my own. Helping build out the chain is what I want to do, and being apart of that is important to me. But I have discovered that no matter who you become an ambassador for, or other chains you work on, the most important chain is the link that is your own, to this end, I will work on that first.

If I cannot make the cut for the social cast, I will have to carve kingdom myself. I am already developing A.I. agents for my personal DAOs, and building BizDev clients to introduce them to the Polkadot chain as I think the Polkadot future is going to be a bright one.