For the last five years I have straddled two distinct worlds. The first is a physical one, the life where I am a neuroscientist, a partner, a permaculture enthusiast, a musician, and a parent. The second is a digital one where I was reborn 5 years ago in 2017, into the world of blockchains and digital currencies.

I remember the appeal of digital currency much earlier than this when I discovered E-gold in 2006. I was looking for an easy, secure way to transfer money to someone overseas and they introduced me to the platform. I was pregnant with my son at the time and remember briefly obsessing over its implications and naively hoarded some “digital gold”.

Unfortunately, although it was a brilliant idea and was fit for purpose, it collapsed not long after (you can read more about the rise and fall of E-Gold here). I was a parent by this stage and my obsession had shifted meaning I went on my way through life, not even bothering to release my funds from the platform. This was also about the same time I sold my first car, a 1975 TA22 Toyota Celica, which is a decision I often regret much more.

I first heard about Bitcoin in 2012 but clouded by my previous experience with digital currency, I assumed it would suffer the same fate. It was not until 2017 that it reinserted itself into my view and I started learning about the fundamentals of blockchains and cryptography. I was blown away, instantly hooked, and my obsession was reignited. I saw several ways it could disrupt global economies, evolve transactional business models, mitigate runaway capitalism, and empower developing countries.

I was growing neurons at the time (I am aware of how weird that sounds) for a friend and colleague of mine, who is a Biological-Artist. He was creating music from brain cells (again-weird) that were grown from his own skin cells. We talked about the difficulty certain types of art face with their documentation, exhibition, and sales. You cannot easily reproduce a gigantic synthesizer that is driven by brain cells, after all. You also cannot exhibit it without someone being employed to grow the cells and keep them alive. Tricky problems to solve right? How does an innovative artist like this support themselves through their art if they cannot document and sell it?

Around the same time (2018), I was dipping my toes into my local music scene gigging and recording, naturally I started thinking about music distribution platforms and royalties. I had recently met my partner who owned an independent record label and we talked at length about some of the current pitfalls in the industry for musicians. This always turned into me trying to convert him to my ideological world of blockchains and how it could solve all these problems, plus all the other problems of the world (I know, I know). Needless to say, for someone who has always been considered very pragmatic and rational, I was swept up in the “vibe” and simplified a lot of things to fit a beautiful version of the future it made me imagine. gm.

I was eager to build a project to prove the potential benefits of the blockchain to those that didn’t yet understand. I decided to start small (or so I thought) and create an extremely niche independent record label for experimental art that is difficult to document. The idea was to self-fund a limited edition run of vinyl records, documenting the music generated by Cellf, the world’s first neural synthesizer.

A digital copy would also be sold using programmable smart contracts (now known as NFT’s) and traced on the block chain so that we could track royalties, generate an exclusive membership key for access to the community and take a percentage of profits from any resales to put aside to fund the next artwork.

I wanted an artist collective to grow organically by building a platform for experimental artists to find their supporters, that could also work as a proof of concept for fair distribution and tracing of royalties. I wanted to create a sustainable model so that funds could be reinvested after each run was completed into the next artist’s work. The main problems I wanted to solve were:

How can we track and distribute royalties to ensure artists are compensated fairly and transparently?

How do we document important world class experimental works that are difficult to represent by traditional means?

How do I help experimental artists reach their niche community?

Can we maintain a record of supporters through smart contracts that we can use for rewarding them directly and trustlessly?

I was not interested in profiting from this venture myself, but I needed to build a model that meant I could get back the initial investment I put in for building the label and getting the vinyl record to full production. The idea being that those funds could be reinvested into the next artist, who would then become a part of the collective. The bulk of any funds raised would go directly to the artist and they would continue to profit if those works were resold.

The concept that you could put the power and profits back into the hands of the creators and destabalize a model that currently exploited artists, was far more alluring than trying to get rich by leveraging off someone elses creativity. The collective’s and the labels goal would be to support each other in reaching their fan base through their common ground and connections in the experimental art/music worlds.

I was still working full-time as a scientist and trying to wear all the other hats I had collected. I joined several blockchain projects and their communities, and I have not had many days disconnected from some of them since.I worked for a DeFi protocol for a while and like a sponge soaked up every last bit of knowledge I could. My own ideas and project soon took a back seat as I became a community member supporting other ventures that I believed in.

Fast forward to today and I am currently working as a Research Strategist for Ninja Syndicate, an Australian based metaverse game studio that is experimenting with player owned digital assets and a slew of economic simulation games. It feels obvious from where I stand, that some of the tools currently being built for Web3 will inform and develop real world applications but I will leave those details for another time. I will say however, that for someone like myself, every day in this space recharges me.

I will finish building my project one day, when the time is right. I have pages and pages of ideas that have grown over the years, some which still keep me up at night with excitement. Interestingly, the best realisation I have had during this time is that it is not a race, I do not need to be first or prove anything to anyone for the idea to work or be successful. This technological revolution is happening whether we like it or not and there will always be space for projects like mine.

This is the natural evolution of a system that has decentralization as a core tenet. In fact, the inherent properties found in the networks that have already been built, means that perhaps it matters less whether the majority of the Web3 space falls victim to predatory capitalism. Even if the world continues to spew up centralized monopolies (which it no doubt will unless we become more aware and accountable towards what we structures we support), it is already too late; the foundation has been built to forever support open, immutable, and trustless public networks. I am incredibly grateful to be in a position where I know what this can truly mean, and can see this clearly.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts through a series of essays that aim to help others understand some of the beautiful possibilities of new technologies as we move forward navigating our digital futures together, regardless of distance.

Peace & Respect.