Paper 19: How I became a "builder" in Web 3.0
From Teacher, to Lawyer, to Tweeter, Discorder, Web 3.0 Writer / Builder
Hi team - I hope you are all doing okay during this latest downturn in the market.
This is undoubtedly a tough time, and the more I learn about the Luna/UST situation, the more I wonder how so many smart people collectively not only allowed but participated in such a scheme.
It’s a reminder that we should stay vigilant. Smart people make mistakes too. Anyone can get carried away. I really hope we are all able to survive this - this is all that is required right now.
Is there anything positive we can take away from this?
I think when there is less euphoria people can focus on building (rather than just getting overexcited about the chart rocketing) and people become far more accessible as there is less noise and many will disappear with their portfolios.
For example, if you want to shoot your shot with someone, now is probably the time. Don’t wait until the next time we are at all-time-highs when I’ll be in the Bahamas. (Jk I’m addicted I can’t leave now I love this.)
In today’s Paper I explain how I went from being a commercial lawyer with no NFT / Web 3.0 technical knowledge or experience, to going full-time in Web 3.0 and building a very niche product for a Web 3.0 audience.
If you are interested in it after you hear about it below, please DM me to ensure access - we haven’t finalised release dynamics yet.
(Was moving flat this week, podcasts back next week - and have an interview with Zeneca to bring to you!)
The beginning - the law
At the start of 2021 I worked in a very big commercial law firm in the city of London.
I was a litigator (meaning I helped when companies were in dispute with each other). Because it was a “general” commercial litigation practice, we literally dealt with any type of dispute under the sun. Though I specialised in an area of law which I loved (media disputes: reputation management, defamation, privacy, data protection) I was still unfulfilled:
Covid wrecked the system. I qualified not into the office, but into my bedroom. For almost two years I practiced law from home with little physical interaction with my colleagues. This took its toll on me as someone who was looking to develop because there was no smooth and natural way to learn from others. I felt paralysed.
Even if I enjoyed media disputes, in a large organisation there is no guarantee that you can spend the majority of time on what you enjoy most.
I realised not a lot of people like their jobs. I think corporate roles are fantastic for certain people because they genuinely love it (a minority), and fantastic for others because they provide certainty and an enjoyable lifestyle (a majority). I was not interested in certainty or fun. I wanted to wake up and get after something aggressively; not begrudgingly accept work given to me for fine dining, theatre tickets and a guaranteed vacation.
Above everything, I wanted to build something of my own. I think a lot of the analogy of climbing up a ladder as a metaphor for career progression. Specifically, I think if you spend a lifetime climbing up a ladder, you better be sure you are climbing up the right one. There is no point in climbing up a ladder if, when all is said and done, you can’t look at yourself in the mirror and like what you see / respect yourself. It doesn’t even matter what you choose - only that you are actually content and won’t turn resentful in later years for missed opportunities.
The first step - the art
At the start of 2021 I bought my first digital art. I had always liked art, so followed what I liked and my curiosity.
I bought two pieces of art: Xcopy, Afterburn and Trevor Jones, Bitcoin Angel in February 2021. Purchasing on Nifty Gateway felt like a safe way to enter the NFT ecosystem as you could use your credit card.
Prices went up, down, sideways, up again. Was pretty intense. Had no idea into what I had got myself!
I could sense something was up. I needed to dive in further.
The next step - the game theory
I set up a MetaMask wallet, transferred some ETH there, and minted some Punks Comics.
The unique value proposition, whereby we needed to decide if we wanted to “stake” or "burn” our comics for different assets/outcomes was intriguing, fun, and an innovative use case of NFT technology. I thought it brought these digital assets to life, and I began to appreciate the significance of the underlying NFT technology.
Meanwhile, overcoming the fear of sending magic internet money for purchase of magic internet JPEGs was no small deal.
At that time I was so inexperienced I didn’t even know how to find the NFTs I had bought (LOL).
Onboarding help required: Back in May 2021 I literally didn’t know how to login to OpenSea to see my NFTs
JPEG Summer - the speculation
The summer of 2021 will be remembered as “JPEG Summer”.
It felt like a period of time where you could *almost* mint anything and make money.
Even if you couldn’t, the spirit in the space was very fun and optimistic.
During this period of time I took my NFT portfolio and the corresponding sales activity data, and injected it into my veins. I spent innumerable hours on Twitter, Discord, and private chats discussing the NFT market (whilst I still worked my lawyer job).
I sacrificed IRL health, family and friendships.
Was it worth it?
Yes. I had to learn and profit.
I had to learn so that I could build my specific knowledge so that I could have an unfair advantage in the future.
I also had to profit so that I could quit my job and go full-time.
I am grateful I managed to achieve both.
Leaning into your skills - the specialisation
I was happy to take some gains as an “early mover”, but easy and profitable trading would obviously not last forever (without becoming a full-time trader, which I did not want to be).
So the question became: how can I be useful?
As a former teacher and reputation management lawyer, my core skill is “communication”. So I thought a useful way to begin was to write for projects.
My first ever contribution to this space was writing the FAQs for Pixel Vault. There was a community need to understand some reasonably complex game theory, so I jumped in to address it with GFunk, the Founder of Pixel Vault. I did it for free and without expectation. I was in the community too and just wanted to be useful. I figured that all sorts of projects would need work of this nature in future.
After spending more time in the space and becoming more knowledgeable / competent, I saw an opportunity for paid work to write for Arweave. I applied and thought it was a perfect role: listen to podcasts, learn, produce quality writing, get paid, build quality relationships, build portfolio of work. I learned how to write quality twitter threads and summary / deep dive articles.
Around the same time I started these Papers. Though you can’t see it on the graph, my first paper was received pretty well and got a bunch of subscribers!
After that it was pretty slow and steady going. I remember getting a ‘SpacePop’ after getting a mention in my friend SpaceWalk’s MetaVault newsletter, and the huge spike was after a MoonCat shout out. A huge takeaway: keep producing, you never know when one of your pieces hits.
I have been loving the content of @BCheque1. It's been a pleasure reading the papers the last few weeks. I always love it when people make quality content that educates people, especially for the newcomers. Def give him a follow if you want to learn more about the NFT spaceI've been writing these papers for 14 weeks - one each week (more or less) It started as an "NFT basics" substack We are about to take an analytical turn https://t.co/0duhMWsrQK https://t.co/Sc0KqCwuz8
BCheque @BCheque1I was then commissioned to write some threads for a friend, Kingmaker (founder of generative art platform, Meraki), after which he recommended me for the task of writing PREMINT’s documentation. So I sent this message off to Brenden Mulligan, founder of PREMINT, and got the gig after some discussion.
I went from offering my writing services for free, to building a strong portfolio of work, to charging a healthy daily rate for my time.
On reflection, what helped me achieve this?
quality work (articles and tweets)
qualifications and experience (lawyer, teacher, organisations with whom I have worked)
very specific knowledge on blockchain, cryptocurrency and NFTs (founders don’t want to have to stop to explain every foundational thing)
relationships and testimonials (knowing people and having them speak highly of your work)
IRL relationships and networking - the connecting
In the meantime I was building relationships as much as I could.
Whilst I believe it is perfectly possible to network and build with people exclusively online, my strong preference for lasting relationships is to meet people IRL.
When I went to the NFT Lisbon event, I was attending my first ever NFT conference. I had no idea what to expect. In the end I had an awesome time speaking with many people who I had previously only known as avatars.
Most significantly, I met Legendary - with whom I shared all sorts of similar history, experiences, and perspectives - and we decided to partner up to build something more serious. The Product section articulated below represents that. And he quite perfectly narrates our meeting experience in this clip!
Product - the building
Now my trades have bought me some time to focus on building 32 Dreams and its media and products. (I still take on ad-hoc writing work to “keep the lights on” and stay sharp.)
So what do we hope to build and why is it important?
Airdrop Szn.
Why you need it?
If you don’t want to miss out on future Airdrops, but have no time to read endless and unclear Twitter threads or conduct deep investigations in Discord, our product will help.
Why it’s important?
The rationale for this is that several protocols aim towards decentralisation which often implies shifting their governance to their community. Often, this process involves creating protocol-native tokens and retroactively rewarding its users via airdrops.
First we believe it is very important to fundamentally understand how these decentralised protocols operate and participate so that you can build your own specific knowledge in this ecosystem.
Second, protocols believe you should be rewarded for your time, effort, and participation in their ecosystem - and the numbers back that up. For example, ENS airdropped 25M tokens valued at approximately $660M on day one, DYDX 75M tokens were valued roughly at $840M on day one and Uniswap’s 150M tokens were valued at a bit more than $1B on the first day of trading. Looking at individual users, the average DYDX user trading between $1,000 and $10,000 received an airdrop worth approximately $16k.
What you get?
For Season 1 of Airdrop Szn, our product will deepen your fundamental understanding of Layer 1 and Layer 2 of Ethereum, and get you exposure to potential Arbitrum Airdrops by providing easy to understand walkthroughs/tutorials.
Why us?
BCheque is a qualified English teacher and commercial lawyer in the UK. He is the founder of 32 Dreams, manages his own digital asset fund, has written for some of the biggest organisations in the space (Pixel Vault, Arweave, PREMINT), and reaches more than 400 people each week with his Web 3.0/ NFT educational weekly newsletter, BCheque’s Papers.
Legendary is a former investment banker and management consultant. He has been involved in blockchain technology since 2017. Over the past two years, Legendary built a curated collection of digital art, collectibles as well as gaming assets and founded his own company advising and investing Web 3.0 and NFT related startups.
DM to express interest. We will release more details soon.
To me, Legendary and I have the perfect combination of skills for this task. Legendary has the deep knowledge of protocols and experience with airdrops; I’ve got the specific skills to make people understand who have not understood to this point. And we both come from backgrounds which demand a level of professionalism to create a quality, useful, accessible product.
I hope that was an interesting history of how I got to this point - and where I intend on going!
In any event, these Papers will continue! This year has been one of the most interesting and exciting years of my life. I am very grateful that you have chosen to come along for the ride. Never hesitate to send me a message if you have any questions. I’ve already met (virtually and irl) with some subscribers who have reached out! I’ll always carve out some time for you legends.
Have a great day,
B
Please do leave me any questions or thoughts here - I respond to every one!
And if you thought this was interesting, please consider subscribing to this Substack here and following me @BCheque1 and @32dreams_ on Twitter for more on NFTs and Web 3.0.
Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered as investment advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the NFTs mentioned in these newsletters.
great story mate, thank you for sharing!